The Liberal Skew In Higher Education: Becker-Posner Blog

Here is the post.

I like this comment by Posner:

“Some of the most distinguished intellectuals of the twentieth century attacked social, cultural, political, or economic features of their societies from the Right–think of Martin Heidegger, William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman.”

That’s important to remember.  As for Americans, maybe we could add Camille Paglia to the list.

One possibility is that the less likely a community is to be well-educated and well-read, then it might have a tendency to possess a more radicalized professoriate; if the social and community goals have little to do with learning, then ideas could be more zealously pursued in the University—right or left, though so often left.   That’s stretching, though.

They had another post about Free Speech issues in universities as well.

Addition:  The comment section is very good.  Many people seem to suspect that liberal/conservative analysis of academic faculties has its flaws. 

What Can Make A Job Miserable?

The Volokh Conspiracy wonders about whether or not law professors are any more or less miserable than those in any other profession. How do you know if you’re miserable, anyways?  just having a bad year? or that isn’t just another intellectual fad with a grain of truth?

1. “The first sign of a miserable job is anonymity, which is the feeling that employees get when they realize that their manager has little interest in them a human being and that they know little about their lives, their aspirations and their interests.”

2. “The second sign is irrelevance, which takes root when employees cannot see how their job makes a difference in the lives of others. Every employee needs to know that the work they do impacts someone’s life–a customer, a co-worker, even a supervisor–in one way or another.”

3.  “The third sign is something I call “immeasurement,” which is the inability of employees to assess for themselves their contribution or success. Employees who have no means of measuring how well they are doing on a given day or in a given week, must rely on the subjective opinions of others, usually their managers’, to gauge their progress or contribution.”

Those aren’t bad reasons for becoming unhappy at work. 

There is a response here as to whether or not they’re valid, and whether or not they especially apply to law professors.

Here’s Nick Burns, your company’s computer guy.

Addition:  Update here.

A Comment On Plato’s Aesthetics

The rest can be found here.  

“From Plato to New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, influential people through the centuries and across cultures have worried about the power of the arts to influence, and potentially to corrupt…”

Giulani and Plato?

“His problem (Plato’s) with the arts was that they operated by images rather than by ideas, and thus that they might cloud the truth rather than clarifying it.“

Yes, and religious traditions, for example, also have interpretations of how one ought to reproduce the image…a lot of their thinking has roots in Plato.

“Whatever one thinks of Plato’s solution to this problem, I suggest that this is one of the problems that elicited his proposals for severe censorship of the arts he so obviously loved and had been trained in.”

Is there any way to discuss what we ought to be exposed and free to do without a discussion of morality?  moral philosophy? and so often…moralism? 

See Also:  Some paintings Saddam kept in a safehouse.

The Differences Between Men And Women

By an Italian…a little too cute?…kind of like something some art council funded that they show before the movie. 

Wednesday Poem: Wallace Stevens-Anecdote of The Jar

Anecdote of the Jar 

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

-Wallace Stevens

Throw something at it and see if it sticks.  I like Helen Vendler’s interpretation….

What do you do with an uncivilized, wild land?  Import European learning and literature “atop” it? 

The nature/culture divide?  Nature is wonderful but it is to culture where we must return.  If you are an artist, you turn towards direct experience in this land, but…you also turn to that which inspires you…European learning and thought….the products of other cultures.

Here’s a previous quote, or one way to approach it:

“Thus any spectator who beholds massive mountains climbing skyward, deep gorges with raging streams in them, wastelands lying in deep shadow and inviting melancholy meditation and so on, is seized by amazement bordering on terror, by horror and a sacred thrill.  But since he knows he is safe, this is not actual fear:  it is merely our attempt to incur it with our imagination, in order that we may feel that very power’s might and connect the mental agitation this arouses with the mind’s state of rest.  In this way we feel our superiority to Nature within ourselves, and hence also to Nature outside us insofar as it can influence our feeling of well-being.”

-Immanuel Kant

So, direct experience and nature are important, but what will we think about that experience, and how can we know nature?

Addition:  I’ll try and get beyond Nietzsche’s big gamble, Emerson’s transcendental perfectionism (and even Santayana’s aesthetics) if you do too.   I also promise not to rest blindly upon Kantian transcendental idealism or Platonic idealism in epistemological or political affairs either.

Addition:  I should just post the poem.

Another Addition:  The work that Emerson did, and the depth of his arguments are not fully appreciated nor discussed in this post.

Merry Christmas

I hope you have a merry Christmas.  If you are with your family or not, at home or not, healthy or not, rich or not, successful or not, may you find joy in what you have.

 

The Times Online Has Best/Worst Literary Quotes Of The Year

Please click here.

Some of what you’ll find:

“It seems like a really original and interesting read.”

Penguin turns down chapters from Pride and Prejudice, submitted by David Lassman.

and…

“When not writing [Ira] Levin used to play the piano in his Park Avenue apartment, and watch his neighbours through a giant telescope.”

Obituary, The Daily Telegraph.

Merry Christmas.

 

Are You A Statist?

What do you say to someone who argues that:

“Government is voluntary.”

“Violence is OK as long as it’s for self-defense.”

“You’re part of the social contract.  Love it or Leave It.”

Here are some ideas, especially for you libertarians. 

Addition:  Here is a wikipedia (the absolute authority) definition of statism.

Addition:  One of Daniel Deudney’s suggestions is that libertarians get back to freedom from violence.  There’s a potentially large, untapped pool of Americans who could respond to the stagnation of current two-party polarization by flocking to the ideas of a third party.   

 

Review of Britain’s “Lost Cities” In The Guardian

There is a book by Englishman Gavin Stamp chronicling the change of 13 British cities from the 1930’s until now.  The Guardian reviews it.  In particular, Stamp argues that many plans to ”modernize” Britian were particulary short-sighted and wasteful.  

“Stamp’s thesis is familiar, but it has rarely been so combatively expressed.”

There really were some beautiful, grand old buildings; there’s even an American Chapter of the Victorian Society as well.   Too much preservationism, however,  can be a bad sign.  A little pride is good, ennui…maybe not so good.

“City after city was blighted with modernist buildings that, in an almost totalitarian way were obsessed with function and efficiency and often looked like multistorey car parks, even when they weren’t.“

Yes, some of the buildings are ugly, but I also smell a little Robert Moses-is-the-devil kind of thinking here. 

“The frontispiece of Stamp’s book shows Darley Street, Bradford, where the Kirkgate Market, with its welcoming human scale, was demolished in 1973…” “…Its replacement is a shopping mall of awesome brutalism.”

Awesome brutalism?

I just like the pictures.

See Also:  Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?

Asteroid May Hit Mars On January 30th

It has a 1 in 75 chance.  Not great odds.  But in the larger picture those are phenomenal odds.

They are comparing it to the size of the Tunguska event.

More Mars info here.

Addition:  MSN video here.  There’s also a brief bit about Shoemaker-Levy.  Interesting.

Addition:  From Volokh, three high school students find an asteroid.