Looking for those presentation quizzes & discussion questions...
Perhaps this wasn't clear to everyone: quizzes need to be posted at least a day in advance of your designated presentation date.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Suspended Belief in America: Sea Monkeys
Saw this on youtube and thought it went really well with the topics discussed in Fantasyland, the book we are reading for class. It describes the somewhat exploitation of kids desires in the 1960s one man, Harold Von Braunhut, decided to delve into. I thought it was interesting. :)
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Voltairine de Cleyre, anarchist/freethinker/philosopher
Overlooked No More: Voltairine de Cleyre, America’s ‘Greatest Woman Anarchist’
At a time of rampant income inequality, stifling social roles for women and church-mandated morality, de Cleyre rebelled against the accepted order.
At a time of rampant income inequality, stifling social roles for women and church-mandated morality, de Cleyre rebelled against the accepted order.
Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times.
By Michael B. Dougherty
At 24, Voltairine de Cleyre appeared before Philadelphia’s Unity Congregation to deliver a lecture, provocatively titled “Sex Slavery.”
She appealed to the assembled crowd: “Let woman ask herself, ‘Why am I the slave of man? Why is my brain said not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not paid equally with his?’ ”
The year was 1890.
It was a time of rampant income inequality, stifling social roles for women and church-mandated morality, and many in the growing American middle class were ready for change.
De Cleyre rebelled against the accepted order and delivered searing critiques of capitalism and state power, whose abuses she saw manifested in many facets of life, from labor to prisons to marriage (proposals for which she twice rejected).
She adopted anarchism as a political philosophy and became one of the movement’s most prominent and determined supporters, establishing a reputation as a transfixing speaker and earning the admiration of her fellow freethinkers.
Her contemporary, Emma Goldman, called her “the poet-rebel, the liberty-loving artist, the greatest woman anarchist of America.”
More significantly, for historians of the period, “she pointed to gender oppression, the power of the state and capitalism as being interconnected,” Sandra Jeppesen, an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies at Lakehead University in Orillia, Ontario, said by email.
Not only was she concerned about women’s issues from a woman’s perspective, but “because she was poor, she was also involved in working class struggles and Jewish immigrant support work,” Jeppesen said.
De Cleyre’s views, which she propagated prolifically in poems and essays, were grounded in personal experience.
De Cleyre, who was named after the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, was born on Nov. 17, 1866, in Leslie, Mich. Her family struggled with poverty. Her father, Hector de Cleyre, was an itinerant tailor from France who won his American citizenship fighting in the Civil War. Her mother, Harriet Elizabeth Billings, came from an abolitionist family in upstate New York.
The youngest of three sisters, de Cleyre created a desk by placing a board on the limb of a maple tree so that she would have a private place to write. She drafted her first poem at age 6.
She spent three years in a Catholic convent school, where she developed a deep animus toward dogma and forced obedience. But the experience also sharpened her rhetorical skills.
De Cleyre was just 19 when she began writing and lecturing on Free Thought, a questioning of traditional religious and social beliefs. She traveled between Ohio and Boston and settled in Philadelphia, where in 1892 she founded a social group called the Ladies’ Liberal League. The group’s purpose was not “to smile men into ticket-buying and shame them into candy purchase,” she said, but to host discussions on sex, prohibition, socialism, anarchism and revolution. For income, she gave private lessons in English, penmanship and music at her home...
By Michael B. Dougherty
At 24, Voltairine de Cleyre appeared before Philadelphia’s Unity Congregation to deliver a lecture, provocatively titled “Sex Slavery.”
She appealed to the assembled crowd: “Let woman ask herself, ‘Why am I the slave of man? Why is my brain said not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not paid equally with his?’ ”
The year was 1890.
It was a time of rampant income inequality, stifling social roles for women and church-mandated morality, and many in the growing American middle class were ready for change.
De Cleyre rebelled against the accepted order and delivered searing critiques of capitalism and state power, whose abuses she saw manifested in many facets of life, from labor to prisons to marriage (proposals for which she twice rejected).
She adopted anarchism as a political philosophy and became one of the movement’s most prominent and determined supporters, establishing a reputation as a transfixing speaker and earning the admiration of her fellow freethinkers.
Her contemporary, Emma Goldman, called her “the poet-rebel, the liberty-loving artist, the greatest woman anarchist of America.”
More significantly, for historians of the period, “she pointed to gender oppression, the power of the state and capitalism as being interconnected,” Sandra Jeppesen, an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies at Lakehead University in Orillia, Ontario, said by email.
Not only was she concerned about women’s issues from a woman’s perspective, but “because she was poor, she was also involved in working class struggles and Jewish immigrant support work,” Jeppesen said.
De Cleyre’s views, which she propagated prolifically in poems and essays, were grounded in personal experience.
De Cleyre, who was named after the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, was born on Nov. 17, 1866, in Leslie, Mich. Her family struggled with poverty. Her father, Hector de Cleyre, was an itinerant tailor from France who won his American citizenship fighting in the Civil War. Her mother, Harriet Elizabeth Billings, came from an abolitionist family in upstate New York.
The youngest of three sisters, de Cleyre created a desk by placing a board on the limb of a maple tree so that she would have a private place to write. She drafted her first poem at age 6.
She spent three years in a Catholic convent school, where she developed a deep animus toward dogma and forced obedience. But the experience also sharpened her rhetorical skills.
De Cleyre was just 19 when she began writing and lecturing on Free Thought, a questioning of traditional religious and social beliefs. She traveled between Ohio and Boston and settled in Philadelphia, where in 1892 she founded a social group called the Ladies’ Liberal League. The group’s purpose was not “to smile men into ticket-buying and shame them into candy purchase,” she said, but to host discussions on sex, prohibition, socialism, anarchism and revolution. For income, she gave private lessons in English, penmanship and music at her home...
(continues, nyt)
Friday, September 28, 2018
Ted Talk- How do you explain consciousness? David Chalmers
As I make my way through the 20+ books on my coffee table over this semester, I find myself continually drawn back to Chalmers and his views on consciousness...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhRhtFFhNzQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhRhtFFhNzQ
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Happy Cosmos Day
"Cosmos" premiered on this day in 1980. In one of its most wondrous moments, Carl Sagan explains how stars are born, live, die, and give us life: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/17/carl-sagan-cosmos-stars/ …
Christine Blasey Ford's opening statement
Christine Blasey Ford has accused Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school in the early 1980s. On Thursday the psychology professor is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Read her opening statement below.
Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Feinstein, Members of the Committee. My name is Christine Blasey Ford. I am a Professor of Psychology at Palo Alto University and a Research Psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
I was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina and earned my degree in Experimental Psychology in 1988. I received a Master's degree in 1991 in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. In 1996, I received a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Southern California. I earned a Master's degree in Epidemiology from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2009.
I have been married to Russell Ford since 2002 and we have two children.
I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. I have described the events publicly before. I summarized them in my letter to Ranking Member Feinstein, and again in my letter to Chairman Grassley. I understand and appreciate the importance of your hearing from me directly about what happened to me and the impact it has had on my life and on my family.
I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I attended the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1980 to 1984. Holton-Arms is an all-girls school that opened in 1901. During my time at the school, girls at Holton-Arms frequently met and became friendly with boys from all-boys schools in the area, including Landon School, Georgetown Prep, Gonzaga High School, country clubs, and other places where kids and their families socialized. This is how I met Brett Kavanaugh, the boy who sexually assaulted me.
In my freshman and sophomore school years, when I was 14 and 15 years old, my group of friends intersected with Brett and his friends for a short period of time. I had been friendly with a classmate of Brett's for a short time during my freshman year, and it was through that connection that I attended a number of parties that Brett also attended. We did not know each other well, but I knew him and he knew me. In the summer of 1982, like most summers, I spent almost every day at the Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland swimming and practicing diving.
One evening that summer, after a day of swimming at the club, I attended a small gathering at a house in the Chevy Chase/Bethesda area. There were four boys I remember being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth, and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I remember my friend Leland Ingham attending. I do not remember all of the details of how that gathering came together, but like many that summer, it was almost surely a spur of the moment gathering. I truly wish I could provide detailed answers to all of the questions that have been and will be asked about how I got to the party, where it took place, and so forth. I don't have all the answers, and I don't remember as much as I would like to. But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult... (continues)
Christine Blasey Ford didn’t try to play it cool. She didn’t worry about being perfectly composed. When she needed caffeine, she asked for caffeine. When nerves got the better of her, she giggled nervously. She smiled at odd times, the way all of us smile at odd times.
And when Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee preened and sniped and made vaguely self-important fools of themselves, she showed her confusion, her amusement, her surprise. She wasn’t some partisan warrior. She was America.
I’m writing about her testimony alone, and I’m writing before Brett Kavanaugh’s turn. It’s important that he get one and be treated with respect and an open mind.
But she was impressive. She was persuasive. I sensed no outsize anger. I detected no guile. If she was pushing an agenda, I didn’t catch a whiff of it. If she was relishing the spotlight, I didn’t spot a sign of it... (Frank Bruni, continues)
Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Feinstein, Members of the Committee. My name is Christine Blasey Ford. I am a Professor of Psychology at Palo Alto University and a Research Psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
I was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina and earned my degree in Experimental Psychology in 1988. I received a Master's degree in 1991 in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. In 1996, I received a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Southern California. I earned a Master's degree in Epidemiology from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2009.
I have been married to Russell Ford since 2002 and we have two children.
I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. I have described the events publicly before. I summarized them in my letter to Ranking Member Feinstein, and again in my letter to Chairman Grassley. I understand and appreciate the importance of your hearing from me directly about what happened to me and the impact it has had on my life and on my family.
I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I attended the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1980 to 1984. Holton-Arms is an all-girls school that opened in 1901. During my time at the school, girls at Holton-Arms frequently met and became friendly with boys from all-boys schools in the area, including Landon School, Georgetown Prep, Gonzaga High School, country clubs, and other places where kids and their families socialized. This is how I met Brett Kavanaugh, the boy who sexually assaulted me.
In my freshman and sophomore school years, when I was 14 and 15 years old, my group of friends intersected with Brett and his friends for a short period of time. I had been friendly with a classmate of Brett's for a short time during my freshman year, and it was through that connection that I attended a number of parties that Brett also attended. We did not know each other well, but I knew him and he knew me. In the summer of 1982, like most summers, I spent almost every day at the Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland swimming and practicing diving.
One evening that summer, after a day of swimming at the club, I attended a small gathering at a house in the Chevy Chase/Bethesda area. There were four boys I remember being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth, and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I remember my friend Leland Ingham attending. I do not remember all of the details of how that gathering came together, but like many that summer, it was almost surely a spur of the moment gathering. I truly wish I could provide detailed answers to all of the questions that have been and will be asked about how I got to the party, where it took place, and so forth. I don't have all the answers, and I don't remember as much as I would like to. But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult... (continues)
Christine Blasey Ford didn’t try to play it cool. She didn’t worry about being perfectly composed. When she needed caffeine, she asked for caffeine. When nerves got the better of her, she giggled nervously. She smiled at odd times, the way all of us smile at odd times.
And when Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee preened and sniped and made vaguely self-important fools of themselves, she showed her confusion, her amusement, her surprise. She wasn’t some partisan warrior. She was America.
I’m writing about her testimony alone, and I’m writing before Brett Kavanaugh’s turn. It’s important that he get one and be treated with respect and an open mind.
But she was impressive. She was persuasive. I sensed no outsize anger. I detected no guile. If she was pushing an agenda, I didn’t catch a whiff of it. If she was relishing the spotlight, I didn’t spot a sign of it... (Frank Bruni, continues)
Time's up...
 | Nigel Warburton (@philosophybites) |
|
Interesting that everyone seems to be going for what JS Mill called ‘lower pleasures’ here in replies: food, drink, and sex (not necessarily in that order). twitter.com/antonioparis/s…
| |
Pretty sure I'd not watch the Kavanaugh hearings.
What would Aristotle say? Aristotle on pleasure & happiness...
What would Aristotle say? Aristotle on pleasure & happiness...
Or Samuel Scheffler?-
...==
Consider a hypothetical scenario. Suppose you knew that although you yourself would live a long life and die peacefully in your sleep, the earth and all its inhabitants would be destroyed 30 days after your death in a collision with a giant asteroid. How would this knowledge affect you?
(continues)
Beware the dark side...
RuPaul & religion (?)
 | MTSU Religion (@mtsu_religion) |
|
We are excited to be hosting a special panel and drag show performance as part of this year’s programming for MT Engage Week. Panel features: Dr. Chris Purcell, Sister Reya Sunshine, Prof. Lisa Gasson-Gardner, and Dr. Robert L. Carlsen. #mtsureligion #mtsu #poprelmtsupic.twitter.com/SVDhhcp53B
| |
"Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Register, and VOTE!
Today is National Voter Registration Day....
There are two outdoor registration tents today: one by Peck on west campus and one by Honors on east campus.
The MTSU Register to Vote button on university web pages across campus: 
Its URL is http://mtsu.edu/amerdem/
Its URL is http://mtsu.edu/amerdem/
On-campus registration locations:
- American Democracy Project office, Honors 221
- Albert Gore Research Center, Todd 128
- Center for Educational Media, LRC 101S
- Walker Library, Atrium kiosk
Voter registration for the fall elections ends in only two weeks. Oct. 9 is the last day to register in order to be able to vote Nov. 6.
If students have already registered in their home counties and have voted at least once in person, they may apply for an absentee ballot to vote back home. They must immediately, right now, mail in an application for an absentee ballot to their home county election commission: https://sos.tn.gov/products/
Otherwise, LIVE HERE, VOTE HERE. It’s easy to re-register locally in Rutherford County, where they now reside, and vote here in Rutherford County while they are in school at MTSU. The MTSU Register to Vote button will assist them:
American Democracy Project for Civic Learning
MTSU Box 267, Honors College 221
Middle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
(615) 904-8241
Little Rock Nine
On this day in 1957, nine African-American students were successfully registered at Little Rock Central High School, breaking the state’s longstanding policy of segregation. Arkansas was one of the most segregated states in the country, alongside Mississippi and Alabama. The students, dubbed the Little Rock Nine, had been chosen by the NAACP based on good grades and behavior, and were asked not to respond to any taunts or threats for fear that things might escalate. Just weeks earlier, Governor Orval Faubus had mobilized the state’s National Guard to blockade the children from entering the all-white school. When they approached the school, the students and black journalists covering the event were chased and harassed while the National Guard stood by and did nothing.
Media coverage of the event focused national attention on Little Rock. Armed with the recent Brown v. Board of Education decision, Thurgood Marshall and other lawyers for the NAACP took the case to court and successfully had the governor’s policy ruled unconstitutional.
After spending weeks in failed attempts to negotiate with Faubus, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the state’s entire National Guard, taking power away from the governor, and sent federal troops to Little Rock to open the blockade. An angry mob heckled and spat at the students as members of the Screaming Eagles 101st Airborne Division escorted them through the school’s front doors.
Although the soldiers remained in the school for the rest of the year, the nine black students were taunted, humiliated, and abused. Melba Pattillo had acid thrown into her face and fireballs thrown into her bathroom stall. Minnejean Brown was suspended for defending herself against an angry mob of boys, prompting some white students to circulate cards reading “One down, eight to go.” It would be 15 years after the first students were registered before all of Arkansas’ schools would finally become integrated. The desegregation battle at Little Rock is widely seen as one of the most significant moments in the Civil Rights movement. In 1999, the original nine students were invited to Washington and awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for their service, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Monday, September 24, 2018
Andersen on conspiracy "thinking"
Kurt Andersen is interviewed in this segment.
 | CBS Sunday Morning |
|
Earlier this year, several families of victims filed lawsuits against Alex Jones, the online provocateur whom they feel is mainly responsible for spreading lies and conspiracy theories concerning the murdered children of Sandy Hook. @tonydokoupil reports cbsn.ws/2O37kfr pic.twitter.com/w0gCX7JV3M
| |
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Banned Books Week
 | Secular Students (@SecularStudents) |
|
Banned Books Week 2018 begins today! The annual celebration of the freedom to read runs Sept. 23 – 29. This year's theme is “Banning Books Silences Stories.”
Join us in calling out censorship. What are some of your favorite challenged or previously banned books? #bannedbooksweek pic.twitter.com/ksJLnZ0esB | |
Candidates are running as socialists, even in Tennessee
HOUSTON — There was no question on primary night in Texas last month that Franklin Bynum would win the Democratic nomination to become a criminal court judge in Houston. The 34-year-old defense attorney had no challengers.
But for his supporters who packed into a Mexican restaurant that evening, there was still something impressive to celebrate. Many in the crowd were members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or D.S.A., a group that has experienced an enormous surge of interest since the election of President Trump, even in conservative states. And Mr. Bynum was one of their own — a socialist who, along with at least 16 others, appeared on the ballot in primary races across the state of Texas.
“Yes, I’m running as a socialist,” Mr. Bynum said. “I’m a far-left candidate. What I’m trying to do is be a Democrat who actually stands for something, and tells people, ‘Here’s how we are going to materially improve conditions in your life.’”
Rather than shy away from being called a socialist, a word conservatives have long wielded as a slur, candidates like Mr. Bynum are embracing the label. He is among dozens of D.S.A. members running in this fall’s midterms for offices across the country at nearly every level. In Hawaii, Kaniela Ing, a state representative, is running for Congress. Gayle McLaughlin, a former mayor of Richmond, Calif., is running to be the state’s lieutenant governor. In Tennessee, Dennis Prater, an adjunct professor at East Tennessee State University, is running to be a county commissioner... (continues)
==
Are you a democratic socialist? Take a quiz to find out...
But for his supporters who packed into a Mexican restaurant that evening, there was still something impressive to celebrate. Many in the crowd were members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or D.S.A., a group that has experienced an enormous surge of interest since the election of President Trump, even in conservative states. And Mr. Bynum was one of their own — a socialist who, along with at least 16 others, appeared on the ballot in primary races across the state of Texas.
“Yes, I’m running as a socialist,” Mr. Bynum said. “I’m a far-left candidate. What I’m trying to do is be a Democrat who actually stands for something, and tells people, ‘Here’s how we are going to materially improve conditions in your life.’”
Rather than shy away from being called a socialist, a word conservatives have long wielded as a slur, candidates like Mr. Bynum are embracing the label. He is among dozens of D.S.A. members running in this fall’s midterms for offices across the country at nearly every level. In Hawaii, Kaniela Ing, a state representative, is running for Congress. Gayle McLaughlin, a former mayor of Richmond, Calif., is running to be the state’s lieutenant governor. In Tennessee, Dennis Prater, an adjunct professor at East Tennessee State University, is running to be a county commissioner... (continues)
==
Are you a democratic socialist? Take a quiz to find out...
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Teach in Japan
Learn about teaching opportunities in Japan after graduation through the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. There are two upcoming special information events:
Friday, Sept. 21, Bragg 104, 4:15pm
A panel of JET alumni will share their experiences about the JET program in this interactive session. If you are interested in teaching English in Japan after graduation but are not familiar with the JET program, make sure to attend this session.
Wednesday, Sept. 26, HONS 106, multiple sessions
The JET Coordinator from the Japanese Consulate Office in Nashville, Mr. Tye Ebel, will be visiting MTSU to conduct workshops and drop-in sessions on two topics: JET Program and MEXT Scholarship Program. MEXT is a Japanese government-sponsored program that helps undergraduate and graduate students to study in Japan on FULL scholarship. There are multiple sessions available:
1:30-2:00: MEXT Info Session
2:00-3:00: JET Drop-in Session
3:00-4:00: Teaching Overseas Workshop
4:30-5:30: Teaching Overseas Workshop
Please contact me if you need any further information or a flyer for dissemination.
Thank you,
Priya Ananth
プリヤ・アナンタ
Priya Ananth
Associate Professor of Japanese
Coordinator, Japanese Program
Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Middle Tennessee State University
Chair, Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award Committee
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Honors Movie Night
I saw this at the Belcourt in Nashville when it came out last Spring, and was truly heartened that a sell-out crowd wanted to celebrate the humanitarianism of Fred Rogers. Go see it!
Lyceum
Alfred Frankowski
Southern Illinois University
Spectacle Terror Lynching, Public Sovereignty,
and the Architecture of Lived Racial Violence
Friday, September 21, 2018
at 5:00 pm,
COE, Room 164
architecturally lived structure in the past and in the present. The history of lynching is
thought to have had its most extreme effects on black men by erasing them through brutal
public murder. This history itself seems to have undergone its own erasure. This paper
problematizes and complicates the notion that anti-black violence in general and lynching
violence in particular is linked to spatial invisibility or amnesia. Rather what is erased is
both the question of public sovereignty and spaces in which this sovereignty is also
representative of the embedded violence that structures the political lifeworld, both past
and present.
Alfred Frankowski is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Southern
Illinois University, Carbondale. His research focuses on 19th and 20thCentury Continental
Philosophy, Aesthetics, Critical Race Theory, Post-Colonialism and Genocide Studies. He
is author of The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Toward a Political Philosophy of
Mourning (2015) and co-editor of Rethinking Genocide in Africa and the African
Diaspora (forthcoming, 2019). His current projects concern decolonial aesthetics, anti-
black colonialism, genocide and the African Diaspora, necropolitics, and the architectural history of lynching.
How to live better, according to Nietzsche
John Kaag’s fascinating new book about the German thinker seeks to tether philosophy back to the mess of daily experience.
The dubious notion that philosophy is a guide to calmer living is as old as the field itself. Saint Augustine described philosophy as a “harbor” for troubled souls in a fourth-century monograph on the happy life, and the sixth-century Roman senator Boethius titled the treatise he wrote while awaiting execution “The Consolation of Philosophy.” More recently, in his Philosophical Investigations (1953), Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that the aim of philosophy is not to seek the truth but rather to provide relief—“to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” Wittgenstein didn’t embrace “a single philosophical method.” Instead he concluded, “There are indeed methods, different therapies” to quiet the buzz of our puzzlement.
Nietzsche, by contrast, had no stomach for palliatives. As John Kaag reflects in his new memoir cum philosophical excursion, Hiking With Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are, the German thinker aimed “to terrify rather than instruct us.” “Become who you are,” the quotation that Nietzsche chose for the epigraph of his graduate dissertation, is a line from the Pythian odes of the Greek poet Pindar. Bereft of context, this pronouncement can sound as flabbily vacant as the text of a self-help manual. After all, how could anyone fail to become who she is? Is there any instruction more trivial? The full Pindar quote, however, outlines a daunting assignment: “Learn and become who you are.” Nietzsche knew that if philosophy can serve as therapy, it’s by delivering an electric jolt to the soul...
(Atlantic, continues)
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