When talking, looking at the eyes of the person you talk to in order to show the politeness.
Every group meeting should have its own goal and purpose, namely, we shall settle something lest we put it off to the next meeting.
Aug 30, 2004
Aug 27, 2004
A decision
I have made a decision to write one sentence or two about the new experience per day.
Here are the two for today.
Select more nutrious books or parts of a books, or even parts of paragraph to read so as to get more through reading the same amount.
Be modest, but not humble to whoever I can learn from.
Here are the two for today.
Select more nutrious books or parts of a books, or even parts of paragraph to read so as to get more through reading the same amount.
Be modest, but not humble to whoever I can learn from.
Aug 19, 2004
a contemplative article by my philosophy teacher
July 28, 2004 John Holbo
Philosophy: Come for the answers, stay for the questions
[These are the notes for the orientation talk I gave for incoming freshmen. A bit telegraphic, but maybe these notes will give you some sense of the talk, if you missed it.]
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle writes: “philosophy begins in wonder.” I’m not sure what the Greek is at this point, but it’s nicely ambiguous. Philosophy is looking at the universe, at anything – at the stars, at human affairs – and saying ‘how wonderful!’ Or, ‘It’s a wonder that they haven’t all killed each other long ago!’ And the next step – which is to say, the first properly philosophical step - is to ask: ‘I wonder what’s really going on here?’ That is the one true philosophical question: ‘what’s really going on?’
Our word ‘philosophy’ comes from the Greek for ‘philias’, love; and ‘sophia’, wisdom. Philosophers are lovers of wisdom. That means: you love the really wonderful stuff. And you wonder how is it, why it is, really.
Now, in case you haven’t noticed, what I just said is much too broad. We are all philosophers, according to this definition. All your teachers here at NUS will be anyway. That's why they have to have Ph.D's - doctor of philosophy, in case you didn't know.
This is connected with the history of the university. The first university was Plato's academy. At first it was all philosophy, but since then some of the bits have moved away from home.
And lots of people outside the university are philosophers, for that matter. Dancers, screenwriters, poets, entrepreneurs, creative folks of all shapes and sizes, believers in this and disbelievers in that. This shows how broad the term can be. And how confused you are likely to be about whether majoring in philosophy is right for you. Philosophy sounds attractively broad, but it isn't reasonable to expect that - as an academic course of study - it can really be everything to everyone who has ever wondered anything.
Doctor of philosophy in philosophy? Sounds redundant. What does it do?
Three words about what our department is like, now that the kids have moved away from home: broad, abstract, argumentative.
We're people helping people refute people. But it's not all as pesky as that makes it sound.
The best way to get an idea of whether you would like this might be to browse the extensive online resources for PH1101EGEM1004, including the archives of this blog. You can read the readings, look at notes, see past assignments, see practice exam questions.
Let me conclude my session today by doing a little philosophy before your very eyes. You are currently in a state of wonder: what should I major in? Obviously I don't know the answer. But let me give you some advice, sing two quotes from famous philosophers to help me along. If I seem like wise advice, maybe you will decide take my module.
"To sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good." - Bertrand Russell
In short: come for the answers, stay for the questions. This is why people find philosophy so annoying. But, come to think of it, this passage - with just a little modification - describes the undergraduate university education you are about to get, no matter what you major in. You are going to study some subject matter, but everyone agrees that the real point is to develop your mind - your critical capacities, your expressive capacities - in some deeper, broader sense. It's just that no one knows what sense that is, exactly.
Think about that: no one knows what you are supposed to be doing here. I'm not kidding. No one does. (How could they?) You ought to regard this peculiar position you are in - floating along in the slipstream of everyone's surprising profound ignorance - as imposing a serious duty, but also as affording wonderful opportunities that will quite probably never come again.
First, the duty: do make a concerted effort to drop any bad study habits you may have picked up along the way.
Second, the opportunity: be yourself.
A traveler who had seen many countries, peoples and several of the earth's continents was asked what attribute he had found in men everywhere. He said: "They tend to be lazy." To others, it seems that he should have said: "They are all scared. They hide themselves behind conventions and opinions." In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that there will be no second chance for his oneness to coalesce from the strangely variegated assortment that he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience - why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that forces the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. For the majority it is idleness, inertia, in short that propensity for laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than they are fearful, and fear most of all the burdensome nuisance of absolute honesty and nakedness. Artists alone hate this lax procession in borrowed manners and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone's secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle; they dare to show us man as he is, to himself unique in each movement of his muscles, even more, that by being strictly consistent in uniqueness, he is beautiful, and worth regarding, as a work of nature, and never boring. When the great thinker despises human beings, he despises their laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that men seem like manufactured goods, unimportant, and unworthy to be associated with or instructed. Human beings who do not want to belong to the mass need only to stop being comfortable; follow their conscience, which cries out: "Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, and desiring is not really yourself." - F. Nietzsche
Philosophy: Come for the answers, stay for the questions
[These are the notes for the orientation talk I gave for incoming freshmen. A bit telegraphic, but maybe these notes will give you some sense of the talk, if you missed it.]
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle writes: “philosophy begins in wonder.” I’m not sure what the Greek is at this point, but it’s nicely ambiguous. Philosophy is looking at the universe, at anything – at the stars, at human affairs – and saying ‘how wonderful!’ Or, ‘It’s a wonder that they haven’t all killed each other long ago!’ And the next step – which is to say, the first properly philosophical step - is to ask: ‘I wonder what’s really going on here?’ That is the one true philosophical question: ‘what’s really going on?’
Our word ‘philosophy’ comes from the Greek for ‘philias’, love; and ‘sophia’, wisdom. Philosophers are lovers of wisdom. That means: you love the really wonderful stuff. And you wonder how is it, why it is, really.
Now, in case you haven’t noticed, what I just said is much too broad. We are all philosophers, according to this definition. All your teachers here at NUS will be anyway. That's why they have to have Ph.D's - doctor of philosophy, in case you didn't know.
This is connected with the history of the university. The first university was Plato's academy. At first it was all philosophy, but since then some of the bits have moved away from home.
And lots of people outside the university are philosophers, for that matter. Dancers, screenwriters, poets, entrepreneurs, creative folks of all shapes and sizes, believers in this and disbelievers in that. This shows how broad the term can be. And how confused you are likely to be about whether majoring in philosophy is right for you. Philosophy sounds attractively broad, but it isn't reasonable to expect that - as an academic course of study - it can really be everything to everyone who has ever wondered anything.
Doctor of philosophy in philosophy? Sounds redundant. What does it do?
Three words about what our department is like, now that the kids have moved away from home: broad, abstract, argumentative.
We're people helping people refute people. But it's not all as pesky as that makes it sound.
The best way to get an idea of whether you would like this might be to browse the extensive online resources for PH1101EGEM1004, including the archives of this blog. You can read the readings, look at notes, see past assignments, see practice exam questions.
Let me conclude my session today by doing a little philosophy before your very eyes. You are currently in a state of wonder: what should I major in? Obviously I don't know the answer. But let me give you some advice, sing two quotes from famous philosophers to help me along. If I seem like wise advice, maybe you will decide take my module.
"To sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good." - Bertrand Russell
In short: come for the answers, stay for the questions. This is why people find philosophy so annoying. But, come to think of it, this passage - with just a little modification - describes the undergraduate university education you are about to get, no matter what you major in. You are going to study some subject matter, but everyone agrees that the real point is to develop your mind - your critical capacities, your expressive capacities - in some deeper, broader sense. It's just that no one knows what sense that is, exactly.
Think about that: no one knows what you are supposed to be doing here. I'm not kidding. No one does. (How could they?) You ought to regard this peculiar position you are in - floating along in the slipstream of everyone's surprising profound ignorance - as imposing a serious duty, but also as affording wonderful opportunities that will quite probably never come again.
First, the duty: do make a concerted effort to drop any bad study habits you may have picked up along the way.
Second, the opportunity: be yourself.
A traveler who had seen many countries, peoples and several of the earth's continents was asked what attribute he had found in men everywhere. He said: "They tend to be lazy." To others, it seems that he should have said: "They are all scared. They hide themselves behind conventions and opinions." In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that there will be no second chance for his oneness to coalesce from the strangely variegated assortment that he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience - why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that forces the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. For the majority it is idleness, inertia, in short that propensity for laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than they are fearful, and fear most of all the burdensome nuisance of absolute honesty and nakedness. Artists alone hate this lax procession in borrowed manners and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone's secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle; they dare to show us man as he is, to himself unique in each movement of his muscles, even more, that by being strictly consistent in uniqueness, he is beautiful, and worth regarding, as a work of nature, and never boring. When the great thinker despises human beings, he despises their laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that men seem like manufactured goods, unimportant, and unworthy to be associated with or instructed. Human beings who do not want to belong to the mass need only to stop being comfortable; follow their conscience, which cries out: "Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, and desiring is not really yourself." - F. Nietzsche
Aug 18, 2004
Ha, this is my online home now!
welcome to soaringman's simple-minded thoughts.
oh,
is there any guest?
I doublt.
oh,
is there any guest?
I doublt.
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