The monotheistic religions made it normal to squash people: "I think there is something really special about the Bible [...] which is precisely this idea that the revelation of truth comes through the suffering of the weak." (Matthieu Poupart)
Then the Renaissance made it easier to blame the victim: With modernity, "it is the person who takes no initiative who is seen as responsible for the emergence of sexual promiscuity." (Matthieu Poupart)
A Return to Attraction to Light and the End of the Public Intellectual
https://www.scifi.global/a-return-to-attraction-to-light-and-the-end-of-the-public-intellectual/
Collective Ethical Patience
https://www.tilley.blog/category/collective-ethical-patience/
The legacies of scholars like Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi transcend borders, belonging to all of humanity. timesca.com/scientists-o... #Science #CentralAsia #IbnSina #AlFarabi #IslamicGoldenAge #IntellectualHistory #ScholarsOfHistory
Scientists of Ancient Central ...
The legacies of scholars like Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi transcend borders, belonging to all of humanity. https://timesca.com/scientists-of-ancient-central-asia-still-relevant-in-the-modern-world-the-idea-of-the-averaged-turkic-language/ #Science #Central Asia #IbnSina #AlFarabi #IslamicGoldenAge #IntellectualHistory #ScholarsOfHistory
3/3
"Philosophy in a New Key" was published in 1942, so today's readers, as well as wincing at her some of her discussion of "primitive" peoples, may also be aware that more than one revolution has since taken place in the philosophy of language and that university presses and learned journals have printed countless pages on the topics in linguistics, psychology, and anthropology on which Langer touches.
Nevertheless, I believe her thinking about aesthetics and symbolism in general is of enduring interest. I very much want to read a later book she wrote devoted to aesthetics, her 1953 'Feeling and Form".
"Philosophy in a New Key" is also of interest from a historical point of view. The book's original publishers, Harvard University Press, were surprised by its popularity; appearing as a Mentor paperback, it went on to sell more than half a million copies. I would guess that popularity is explained by both the postwar expansion of higher education and a public thirst for meaning and value beyond science and technology in a world haunted by memories of the Depression, world war, and extermination camps, and now living with the threat of an atom bomb apocalypse.
In spite - or perhaps because of - this popularity, Langer did not get a full time long term faculty position for years, despite her excellent academic pedigree (Radcliffe/Harvard - Ph.D supervised by A. N. Whitehead), teaching at Columbia, and scholarly productivity. As well as just plain jealousy and suspicions of dilettantism, part of the explanation perhaps lies in the marginal position that aesthetics occupied in US philosophy departments blinded by Quine's dictum that "Philosophy of science is philosophy enough".
Yet one must also suspect that both individual prejudice and institutional discrimination against Langer as a woman kept her trapped in part time and temporary positions. All this would have added to suspicion of aesthetics and talk of feeling as "girly".
I'm glad to see renewed interest in Langer, and I will be reading and think more by her and about her to make sense of kpop and much else besides.
#SusanneKLanger #Philosophy #History #IntellectualHistory #CulturalHistory #Sexism
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6c/Langer_Susanne_K_Philosophy_in_a_New_Key.pdf
Also born on March 4th:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_%C5%81yszczy%C5%84ski
Not only does he sound interesting, so does his reputation amongst 20th century Polish academics.
#History #PolishHistory ##PolishLithuanianCommonwealth #KazimierzŁyszczyński #Atheism #IntellectualHistory
