“Humility” isn’t a word that most academics — or Americans — identify with. Indeed, if there is a single attitude most closely associated with our culture, it’s the opposite of humility. The defining trait of the age seems to be arrogance — in particular, the kind of arrogance personified by our tweeter in chief; the arrogance of thinking that you know it all and that you don’t need to improve because you are just so great already…
Read the full story at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
June 5th, 2017
The 18th-century critic, Samuel Johnson, once tried to refute the Irish philosopher George Berkeley’s view that nothing is material by kicking a rock. “Thus I refute him!” he reportedly declared. For a long time, I thought this proved that Johnson should have kept to literary criticism and left philosophy to the professionals. Berkeley’s view, after all, was that everything we perceive is an idea — rocks (and rock-kicking) sensations included.
Read the full article at The Stone here.