“‘Acceptance & Happiness with Stoicism,’ Ep1 of Philosophy Bakes Bread”
by Eric Thomas Weber
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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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No State is permanently safe except on a foundation of justice. And justice cannot be fundamentally in contradiction with the essence of democracy.
The group was from Dallas’s ‘s Uplift Education charter schools. We met in Bryant Hall, where we talked a little bit about my field, philosophy. I explained the major branches of philosophy, and then we talked about how practical philosophy is or can be. To illustrate that, we covered a controversial case in medical ethics, concerning euthanasia. The young men and women were very bright and a lot of fun to engage in discussion.
This piece, published in 2014, represents an important early step in a book project in progress, titled A Culture of Justice.
Abstract
In this essay, I review the writings of three philosophers whose work con-verges on the insight that we must attend to and reconstruct culture for the sake of justice. John Rawls, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty help show some of the ways in which culture can enable or undermine the pursuit of justice. They also offer resources for identifying tools for addressing the cultural impediments to justice. I reveal insights and challenges in Rawls’s philosophy as well as tools and solutions for building on and addressing them in Dewey’sand Rorty’s philosophy.
Read the paper on Academia.edu
Citation
Weber, Eric Thomas. “Converging on Culture: Rorty, Rawls, and Dewey on Culture’s Role in Justice.” Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 22, Issue 2 (2014): 231-261.
“‘Coping with Uncertainty,’ Ep3 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.
Episode 3 of Philosophy Bakes Bread is out! It’s called “Coping with Uncertainty.” You can listen to it here, visit the podcast site’s page for the episode, or subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed here. Or, you can also download it to listen to it later.
iTunes has it updated there too, though for some reason presently out of order. I’ll look into that.
“Coping with Uncertainty”
This episode focuses on challenges for live and work that concern uncertainty and fear of the unknown. Philosophical ideas about the nature of knowledge can be of help, as well as some conceptual and practical tools for addressing or overcoming our worries.
The transcript for the episode is here.
If you haven’t already, check out the first two episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread on the podcast site.
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.
Check out the nice brochure that the University Press of Mississippi designed for Uniting Mississippi. Here’s the printable, two-sided PDF file:
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.