Category Archives: education

Thoreau

Podcast Thoreau and the American Idyll

In Our Time Podcast BBC

Melvyn Bragg; Kathleen Burk, Professor of American History at University College London; Tim Morris, Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Dundee; Stephen Fender, Honorary Professor in English Literature at University College London.

Unitarianism

Jesus inspired by God but not divine.

Transcendentalism

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson-intuitive nature of the divine.

Romanticism:

-Walt Whitman
-Emily Dickinson

Dark Romanticism:

Herman Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allan Poe 

“The Dark romantic authors represented a response to the optimism of the ideology of Transcendentalism.” from “Dark Romanticism.” Dark Romanticism – New World Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2017.

Quaker’s Inward light, follow your own conscience.

Mexican-American War (1846-1848)

Socrates: The examined life is not worth living.

William Paley‘s Of the Duty of Civil Obedience

Roger Williams founder of Rhode Island and advocate of religious freedom (separation of church and state).

Machiavelli’s The Prince

Podcast: Machiavelli: Nigel Warburton and Prof. Quentin Skinner

Machiavelli’s The Prince

The Prince as a centaur:

“He says that the ancients understood state craft better, when they figured The Prince as a centaur. The centaur is half man and half beast, and that’s what it is to understand state craft. Manly virtue will never be enough, you’ve got to be ready for beastliness, and the centaur is half beast. Now, that is presented directly as a satire of Cicero.”- Prof. Skinner

Cicero: the fox and the lion

“Cicero had said, ‘Force is beastly and is to be avoided, that is simply the lion. Fraud is beastly and that is to be avoided, that is simply the fox’. And Machiavelli says, ‘Since you need to know how to be beastly, you had better know which particular beasts to imitate, and then in the most famous phrase in the book he says, ‘Those who have done best as princes in our time have known how to imitate the lion and the fox’.” – Prof. Skinner

‘You’re going to have to cheat, you must do your best to appear not to be cheating’, and that again is satirical in respect of Cicero’s De Officiis, because one of the things which Cicero keeps telling us is, ‘Fraud will always be found out. So you cannot gain true glory by pretence’, I’m now quoting Cicero, ‘because your pretences will always find you out’ And that becomes a biblical thought too. ‘Be sure your sins will find you out’. Now, one of the most important things that Machiavelli wants to tell The Prince is not to worry about that, because it’s not true. And he’s very keen on the fact that The Prince is not performing his politics in republican conditions. In republican conditions, you’re out in the piazza, everyone has a vote, it’s all public. People are watching you. You’ve only been elected, their turn will come, it’s a communal activity, everything is in the bright light of day. It’s not so for The Prince.” – Prof. Skinner

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From Chapters 15-24 “‘Be courageously evil where it’s necessary to be evil, but otherwise follow what people regard as the virtues as much as possible. Because if you don’t, they’ll hate you, and if they hate you, you’re in trouble’. -Prof. Skinner

Illustration of Othello and Iago. Charles and Mary Lamb, Tales from Shakespeare (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1901). Via Wikimedia.

See Shakespeare’s Iago

The Prince as a critique of Seneca‘s ‘De Clementia’, ‘De Beneficiis’ ‘concerning benefits’, and Cicero’s De Officiis, Concerning One’s Offices.

La muerte de Séneca. 1871. Manuel Domínguez Sánchez. Museo de Prado, Madrid. El título completo dado por el pintor fue: Séneca, después de abrirse las venas, se mete en un baño y sus amigos, poseídos de dolor, juran odio a Nerón que decretó la muerte de su maestro. Via Wikimedia.

La fortuna

Essarai non buono

“Machiavelli does himself say at one point in Chapter 15 – this pivotal and notorious chapter where he introduces the virtuoso prince who is not always virtuous. He says ‘I’m teaching you that sometimes you must learn, how not to be good’, and it’s interesting he doesn’t say there, virtuoso, he says buono, a good person. ‘Essarai non buono’ – how not to be a good person.”” – Prof. Skinner

Salus populi suprema lex esto (The health of the people should be the supreme law) from Cicero’s De Legibus.

Machiavellian morality vs. Christian morality and classical morality.

“If you’re a prince, you need to go against conventional Christian or classical morality, if you’re an ordinary person, perhaps, you may want to carry on according to Christian or classical morality.” -Prof. Skinner

Read:

Isaiah Berlin’s essay The Originality of Machiavelli

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Nobel Laureates 1999-1995

Günter Grass 1999

Germany (novel, drama, graphic design) Nazi Germany

Work:  The Tin Drum, Cat and MouseDog Years (Danzig Trilogy

José Saramago 1998

Portugal (novel)

Work:  Memorial do Convento (Baltasar and Blimunda), O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ), Ensaio sobre a cegueira (Blindness), História do Cerco de Lisboa (The History of the Siege of Lisbon)   

Dario Fo 1997

Italy (drama)

Work: Guerra di popolo in Cile, Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga! (Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, Il Papa e la strega (The Pope and the Witch)

Wisława Szymborska 1996

Poland (poetry)

Work: Love At First Sight poem (Watch Three Colors: Red), Here, View With a Grain of Salt: Selected Poems

Seamus Heaney 1995

UK/Ireland (poetry)

Work: Beowulf 1999 translationDeath of a NaturalistThe Spirit Level

NOBEL LAUREATES 2004-2000

Elfriede Jelinek 2004

Germany (drama/novel)

Die Klavierspielerin (The Piano Teacher), Die Kinder der Toten (The Children of the Dead)Greed, Lust

J. M. Coetzee 2003

South Africa (novel/essay)

Work: Boyhood, Life & Times of Michael KWaiting for the Barbarians 

Imre Kertész 2002

Hungary (novel)

Work: FatelessnessKaddish for an Unborn Child

Sir V. S. Naipaul 2001

Trinidad and Tobago/UK (novel)

Work: The Loss of El DoradoThe Enigma of ArrivalGuerrillas  

高行健 Gao Xingjian 2000

China/France (novel/screenwriter)

Work: 給我老爺買魚竿 Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, 靈山 Soul Mountain一個人的聖經 One Man’s Bible

Nobel Laureates 2015-2010

Svetlana Alexievich 2015

Belarus (born in Ukraine SSR) (Soviet history/essay)

Work: Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Patrick Modiano 2014

France (novel)

Work: Lacombe, Lucien (1974) (screenplay), The Occupation Trilogy

Alice Munro 2013

Canada (short story)

Work: Dance of the Happy Shades, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Progress of Love 

管謨業 Mo Yan 2012

China (novel/short story)

Work: 红高粱家族 Red Sorghum, 丰乳肥臀  Big Breasts & Wide Hips, 酒国 The Republic of Wine:

Tomas Tranströmer 2011

Sweden (poetry/translation)

Work: Baltics, For the Living and the Dead, The Great Enigma

Mario Vargas Llosa 2010

Peru/Spain (essay/novel)

La ciudad y los perros, García Márquez: historia de un deicidio (essay)