Writing Paragraphs on Philosophical Terms and Philosophers

Philosophical Terms

Topic Sentence: identify the term in a general statement. 

 

Supporting Sentences: specific statements in which you describe, explain, discuss and comment on the term. Develop general points with discussion, illustrations and examples.  Suggested descriptive points: 

 

Definition 

Origin and history of the term/the use of the term 

Explain the term
Examples and illustrations of problems and questions surrounding or falling under the heading of the term 

What other people have said about the term 

What you think about the term, your views 

Significance? 

 

 

Philosophers, Theologians and Figures of Philosophical Interest 

 

Topic Sentence: identify the figure in a general statement. What is the figure’s significance or place in the history of ideas? 

 

Supporting Sentences: specific statements in which you describe, explain, discuss and comment on the figure. Develop general points with discussion, illustrations and examples.  Suggested descriptive points: 

 

Significance (possibly continued from your topic sentence, or make this(these) remark(s) at the end of your paragraph) 

Biography 

Publications and work 

Figure influenced by_______________ 

Figure influenced_______________ 

(Remember, influences—in either direction—can include other figures, history, politics, the history of philosophy, biographical matters, and the world of schools and school teachers.) 

Main ideas (What are the figures most important ideas?  Also, possibly use the “Moral Philosophy in Context” tool: 1) Metaphysical beliefs, special claims for reason or logic, theory of human nature. 2) Moral Philosophy. 3) Political Philosophy.) 

What other people have said about the figure (you might want to return to significance) 

What you think about the figure, your views (again, you might want to return to significance) 

Possible final statement: Why is the figure significant? 

Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I

Optics: the activity of an interpretation or the interpretation of an activity?

Problematic

Keeping a Record

Horace Vernet, Jeremiah on the ruins of Jerusalem (1844)

...will be the biggest telescope on Earth

 

Please click HERE.

A Philosophy of Spontaneous "Systems" Organization

I am currently reading Apollo 13 Owners' Workshop Manual: An engineering insight into how NASA saved the crew of the failed Moon mission by David Baker. The author goes into amazing detail describing the technology and the processes by which the Apollo 13 mission--crew, mission control, engineers--transitioned from a moon landing mission to an ad hoc rescue effort. Although there were contingency plans for technical failures that might occur at virtually every stage of the flight, the particular emergency Apollo 13 faced was not anticipated; the extraordinary conditions were met with an extraordinary response. At one level, the book provides amazing descriptions of Apollo technology, at another, the book describes an extensive and flexible institutional "apparatus" comprising thousands of engineers, managers, and technicians in NASA, industry, the military, and government. 

Compare, in a sense, Xenophon's descriptions in The Persian Wars of the 10,000 suddenly (and very cleverly) re-organizing after the murder of the Greek generals, and so on.

Plato and Aristotle, Two Key Distinctions

1 Theory of Forms                                                       

Plato: Everything in this world is a mere imitation of an ideal form that really exists in Eternity.                                                        

Aristotle: Form is a component of matter.                    

2 Eudemonia

Plato: We should seek eudemonia in the next life, in Eternity. This life and certainly this world impede our search for eudemonia.

Aristotle: We should seek eudemonia in this life as well as the next.

Raphael, The School of Athens (1511, detail)

 

 

 

 

Octo-Emanations reaches Nigeria

It has taken five months, but a copy of Octo-Emanations has finally reached poet Ebi Robert in Nigeria. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are yet waiting for a copy to reach India, and I have been advised that not much is getting in these days. Stay tuned.

Michael Butterworth, 2020

Michael Butterworth's website has been updated with information about his projects and activities in 2020. Octo-Emanations gets a mention. Please click HERE.

Michael Butterworth reading in Berlin

Utopian and Dystopian Literature

Utopian and Dystopian Literature

Utopian

Plato’s Republic (But is it utopian?)

St. Augustine, The City of God (413-426)

Sir Thomas Moore, Utopia (1516)

Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1627)

James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)          

Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1888)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman Herland

H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905)     \

B.F. Skinner, Walden Two (1948)          

Dystopian

Plato’s Republic (But is it utopian? Or a warning against “justice” as a moral and political criterion—elsewhere in Plato, and keeping with Socrates, Aristotle, Locke and Jefferson, “eudemonia” is the moral and political criterion.)

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels Book III

Jack London, The Iron Heel (1907)

Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1920),  War with the Newts (1936)

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (1932)

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925)

George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (1945)

Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading (1938), Bend Sinister (1947)

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

 

Along the Shore of Emotional Belief

 

... there stood in division of conflict ...

The Rage of Achilles, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
(Athena prevents Achilles from killing Agamemnon)

 

 

            

What god was it then set them together in bitter collision?

Zeus’ son and Leto’s, Apollo, who in anger at the king drove 

the foul pestilence along the host, and the people perished...

            -- The Illiad Book I: 8-10

Looking Ahead (again) to Emanations 9

In early December I posted my thoughts concerning appropriate timing for a Submissions Call for Emanations 9 (please click HERE).

At this point, I should like to revise that estimate. 

Now, I cannot say for sure, but I envision a Call going out near the end of this April.  If things work out this way, the review of submissions would begin sometime in August. 

"Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus" by John William Waterhouse