“‘Acceptance & Happiness with Stoicism,’ Ep1 of Philosophy Bakes Bread”
by Eric Thomas Weber
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Professor Chris Skowronski, Associate Professor of Practical Philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy at Opole University, Poland, interviewed me at the Berlin Practical Philosophy International Forum conference on August 13, 2015.
I’m grateful to Chris and to Maja Niestroj for the interview, the video, and the hospitality while I was in Berlin. It was a great conference on a wonderful public philosophy, Dr. John Lachs, who has been my mentor in philosophy since around 1998 or 1999.
Scholars tend to be shy or humble, often going to great lengths to avoid anything that might smack of self-promotion or over-confidence. There’s good reason for this. The academy trains you to be skeptical, to demand evidence, and to be reserved about matters that you’ve not yet carefully considered.
There are two troubling consequences of this phenomenon, however. The first is captured in one of Bertrand Russel’s famous sayings. In New Hopes for a Changing World, he wrote that
One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.
It’s a riff on William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” where he writes that “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
In other words, self-doubt and the training for skepticism, so vital to good philosophy, can lead scholars not to speak up, while so many ignorant voices cry. If scholars are waiting for certainty, we’ll never hear from them. This is one of the troubling dangers.
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“‘Purpose in Life and Work,’ Ep2 of Philosophy Bakes Bread”
by Eric Thomas Weber
Sorry, listening to the audio on this website requires Flash support in your browser. You can try playing the MP3 file directly by clicking here.
Here’s episode 2 of Philosophy Bakes Bread, titled “Purpose in Life and Work.” You can listen to it here above or you can visit the podcast’s page for this episode here. You can subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed here. If you prefer, you can download the MP3 file here and listen to it later.
iTunes has it too, though for some reason as I post this the episodes are out of order.
“Purpose in Life and Work”
This second episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread considers the challenge of envisioning and choosing the right purposes for oneself and for one’s organizations in life and at work.
The transcript for this episode is available here.
Check out the other episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread here.
Finally, if you’d prefer to “watch” the podcast on YouTube, here it is:
If you prefer that format, here’s a playlist of the podcast episodes on my YouTube channel.
I gave an interview in 2010 on the Day of Dialogue at the University of Mississippi on February 22nd. You can watch the interview here.
| Date: | February 22, 2010 |
|---|---|
| Time: | 09:00-09:15 a.m. |
| Appearance: | 2010 Interview on Memphis’s WREG, Channel 3’s Live at 9 Morning Show |
| Outlet: | Memphis's WREG, Live at 9 Morning Show |
| Location: | Memphis, TN |
| Format: | Television |
If you'd like to invite me to come speak with your group, visit my Speaking page.
Gave a 2013 interview on SVT Nyheter, Sweden’s national TV news service, talking about corporal punishment in Mississippi. You can watch the interview here.
| Date: | August 29, 2013 |
|---|---|
| Appearance: | Interview in 2013 on corporal punishment for the Swedish National TV News Service |
| Outlet: | SVT Nyheter, Sweden's National TV news service |
| Location: | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Format: | Television |
If you want me to come speak with your group, visit my Speaking page.
Looking forward to giving an interview about Uniting Mississippi on WDAM’s television news, channel 7.
| Date: | January 29, 2016 |
|---|---|
| Time: | 11:45 a.m. -12:20 p.m. |
| Appearance: | Interview on Uniting Mississippi with WDAM of Hattiesburg, MS |
| Outlet: | WDAM, Channel 7, Hattiesburg, MS |
| Location: | Hattiesburg, MS |
| Format: | Television |
If you're interested in inviting me to speak with your group, visit my speaking page.
If people treated gluttony like they treat some other sins, they’d tell me “No, you may not have fries with that!”
The economy in the U.S. would really take a hit too, I’d wager.
Cartoon by Kevin Frank, from May 28, 2015. Visit KevinFrank.net to check out his work. This particular cartoon is on his site here. I’m grateful to Kevin for permission to post his artwork. He’s a nice fellow.
While on Kevin’s site, I ordered a copy of his book, True North, which I’m looking forward to enjoying. Check it out.
On returning home from Germany, I was startled to hear a voicemail from a white supremacist campaigning for President. It repeated the old trope that there is a genocide being perpetrated on the white race. In the United States, we often throw around words like “Nazi” and “genocide.” Seinfeld’s funny “Soup Nazi” story is one thing, but ridiculous demonizing of political opposition is another. The Iowa Tea Party offered one blatant example, but so do national commentators warning of “liberal fascism” or labeling conservatives “Nazis.” We should sober up and remember what real genocide looks like.
In Democracy and Leadership, one of the key virtues of democratic leadership I wrote about is moderation. Today people so often dismiss moderation, seeing it as a weakness of will, as a lack of principled character. I find that view tragic, as it inspires such polarization that even the Federal government was shut down in 2013, despite the fact that the world is watching and the credit rating for U.S. debt was downgraded in 2011. Unstable societies are risky investments, as are unjust societies.
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One of the remarkable things rarely considered among average museum-goers is the somewhat unbelievable fact that nations in the Western world have gone to places like Egypt and taken out of sacred and historical landmarks beautiful cultural treasures. It is true that archaeologists get permits. It is true that the explorer who found Tutankhamun’s tomb spent the better part of a decade looking. It is true that he secured and invested somewhat incredible financial resources to have upwards of 100 people helping him to dig and to search for years. There was enormous work that went into finding Tut’s tomb. Nevertheless, I can’t help but appreciate the point of view which says that relevant artifacts belong to the people and region from which they came.
Of course, I also appreciate the view which says that the labor one puts into a work makes it partly yours. Tut’s tomb may have remained lost to this day without the investment of time and money that helped find it. The issue would be less troubling for me if Egypt were not a quite poor country, compared with the U.K., and had the U.K. not had troubling colonialist practices of domination and exploitation.
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iTunes has it too, though for some reason as I post this the episodes are out of order.
“Acceptance & Happiness with Stoicism”
This first episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread presents a very personal story about how stoic philosophy can make a profound difference for the better in our lives when we encounter difficulties beyond our control.
The transcript for this episode is available here.
Check out the other episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread here.
Finally, if you’d prefer to “watch” the podcast on YouTube, here it is:
If you prefer that format, here’s a playlist of the podcast episodes on my YouTube channel.