Tag Archives: philosophy/religion

Christopher Lasch

Posted on August 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

Christopher Lasch: (1932-1994) American social critic and cultural historian. Lasch, a professor of history, is best known for his penetrating analyses of contemporary American cultural and political phenomena. In The Culture of Narcissism (1979), which became an unlikely best-seller, Lasch examined the effects of an increasingly self-centered worldview on the family and the community. He consistently challenged contemporary Americans’ reliance on experts to determine standards of behavior and thought. The Minimal Self (1984) examines individual freedom and privacy in the light of the agencies for social control in our lives. Lasch’s last work, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1994), took its ironic title from Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses (1930) and argued that the greatest threat to democracy is now from a technocratic oligarchy at the top and not from revolution from below.

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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A Fortiori

Posted on August 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

“A Fortiori From the stronger: with greater reason, or being logically a more obvious truth if a preceding assertion is true; by inference; all the more so.

‘Marlow’s interrupting voice also deepens our admiration for Conrad’s narrative technique. That is, it is an artifice which intermittently calls attention to itself. So also, a fortiori, is the obtrusive and disjunctive surface treatment of Molly Bloom’s maundering mind.’ Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Alfred Adler on Neurosis

Posted on August 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Every neurotic is partly in the right.”

Alfred Adler

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Cultural Literacy: Free Will

Posted on August 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of free will. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions.

In other words, it barely introduces, and in no way does justice to, one of the big, big questions in philosophy and religion. But as an adjunct to a fictional allegory on protagonists with circumscribed lives? This might be a useful document. In any case, it is formatted (like most of the things you’ll find on this blog) in Microsoft Word, so it is open source and therefore yours to do with as you need or wish.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Cultural Literacy: Ethics

Posted on August 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on ethics. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences.

I wrote two questions for comprehension. It’s worth mentioning, I think, that the first question, “What is ethics?”, looks a bit awkward because of the disjunct between singular verb (is) and plural predicate noun (ethics). Needless to say, I am treating ethics as a singular noun because it is a single field of inquiry and study.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Fundamentalism

Posted on August 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on religious fundamentalism along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

This reading from The Intellectual Devotional Modern Culture focuses tightly on the origins of Christian fundamentalism in reaction to scientific developments in the nineteenth century and the growth and development of this theological trend across time. If I have noticed anything across the span of my life, it is the growth of fundamentalism across the globe and its religions. Moreover, there has been a tendency toward moral absolutism and certainty, and misplaced faith in things like financial markets, that has not, in my opinion, benefitted human civilization. What I mean to say, I suppose, is that these documents might be a good place to start a discussion with students about conformity and rebellion, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and intellectual freedom and bondage.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Ambrose Bierce on Philosophers

Posted on August 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.”

Ambrose Bierce

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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The Index

Posted on August 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

“The Index: The popular name for the Index Liborum Prohibitorum (Latin, ‘index of prohibited books’), the Vatican’s ever-changing list of proscribed publications, which Roman Catholics were forbidden to read except in special circumstances. The first index was made by the Inquisition in 1557, although St. Gelasius (pope 492-96) issued a list of prohibited writings in 494. In 1571 Pope Pius V set up a Congregation of the Index to supervise the list, and in 1917 its duties were transferred to the Holy Office. In addition to the Index there was the ‘Codex Expurgatorious’ of writings from which offensive doctrinal or moral passages were removed. The Index and the Codex were banned in 1966.

All books likely to be contrary to faith and morals, including translations of the Bible not authorized by the Church, were formerly placed on the Index. Among authors wholly or partly prohibited were: Joseph Addison, Francis Bacon, Geoffrey Chaucer, Benedetto Croce, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Rene Descartes, Edward Gibbon, Oliver Goldsmith, Victor Hugo, John Locke, John Milton, Montaigne, Girolamo Savonarola, Voltaire and, for a long time, Copernicus, Dante and Galen.

Index Liborum Prohibitorum was also the title given to the first ever bibliography in English of erotic and pornographic writing. It was published in 1877 by Henry Spencer Ashbee (1834-1900), businessman, book collector and member of the Royal Academy of Madrid, who left his collections of erotic and Spanish literature to the British Museum. Some experts have suggested Ashbee as the pseudonymous ‘Walter,’ author of the pornographic classic My Secret Life (1888-92).”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Pat Conroy on Serving as a Teacher

Posted on August 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

“There’s no word in the language I revere more than ‘teacher.’ My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher.”

Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides (1986)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Cultural Literacy: Ego

Posted on July 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of ego. This is a half-page worksheet; the reading is three sentences, though two of them are longish compounds, and there are three comprehension questions.

This is a concept students should understand. The virtue of the reading in this document is that it situates the ego in Freud’s structural theory of mind, (without, interestingly, ever mentioning Sigmund Freud himself) so students will also learn about the id and the superego. This is a good general introduction to this subject. That said, there is clearly room to expand this document (easy for you to accomplish, since like everything on Mark’s Text Terminal, this is a Microsoft Word document) for further exploration or exposition of psychoanalytic theory. If I were to expand this in any way, I would make sure students walked away with a basic understanding of Freud’s biography and his ideas about the psyche.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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