“Middlesex university philosophy department to move to Kingston university” plus 3 more |
- Middlesex university philosophy department to move to Kingston university
- ‘Useless, impractical’ philosophy asks the questions that matter
- Kingston University saves philosophy department
- Homebrewers embrace philosophy of 'the more you do it, the better you get'
| Middlesex university philosophy department to move to Kingston university Posted: 15 Jun 2010 11:08 AM PDT Posted: 6.43pm Tuesday 15 June 2010 News & Reports This article should be read after: » Colleges strike back by Sadie Robinson The philosophy department at Middlesex university is moving to Kingston university in response to Middlesex bosses' attempts to shut it down. The transfer announcement follows a battle to save the department. Students occupied the university's Mansion House building in protest at the closure and received messages of support from around the world. "Our campaign raised the profile of the department and enabled it to be set up elsewhere," Anindya Bhattacharyya, a Middlesex philosophy student, told Socialist Worker. "But I don't think we can call this a victory. We set out to save philosophy at Middlesex and it is still closing. The undergraduates and two staff members won't be moving to Kingston. "Transferring the centre isn't a solution to cuts—other courses that are less prestigious won't be given this option." Students and staff across Middlesex have now set up a rank and file network to fight cuts at the university. They are also campaigning to support three lecturers and five students who were suspended as a result of the occupation. Disciplinary hearings for the suspended staff were being held as Socialist Worker went to press. The following should be read alongside this article: © Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original. Share this story on:Delicious | Digg | reddit | Facebook | StumbleUpon If you found this article useful please help us maintain SW by » making a donation. » comment on article | » email article | » printable version Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | ||
| ‘Useless, impractical’ philosophy asks the questions that matter Posted: 16 Jun 2010 02:03 AM PDT
2010/06/15 | INSIGHT - Pedro Tabensky LET'S set things straight, philosophy is a useless subject. What, after all, do philosophers produce and what skills will they give us that will improve our chances of landing a good job, that is, a highly profitable job (which will get us fancy cars, big Tuscan-style mansions, and make us irresistibly sexy)? Worst of all, they are gadflies buzzing around our heads, forcing us to ask difficult questions that seem to have no answers, and which will take us way beyond our comfort zones. Philosophy is a useless subject. One silly question that philosophers would ask if told to their faces their subject is useless is: "What do you mean by 'useless'?" Now this is indeed a silly question, for everyone knows what we mean by "useless". Something is useless if it serves no practical purpose. Surely this answer is straightforward enough, but the annoying philosopher will want to ask a further useless question: "What do you mean by 'impractical'?" And the philosopher will not be content with an equally straightforward response to this question: Surely something is impractical when it is useless. The philosopher will accuse me of going around in circles, of defining the concept of uselessness in terms of the concept of impracticality and the concept of impracticality in terms of the concept of uselessness. The philosopher will demand that I walk out of this circle and that I take a closer look at what I mean by the concepts of impracticality and uselessness. The gadfly may even suggest that in order to ask this question, one has to go deeper; one needs to ask questions relating to the very ends of human living. If something is useful or practical, the philosopher will suggest, it will probably be measured as such in relation to the role that it plays in furthering basic human aims. So the philosopher will ask me to take a close look at what these aims may be, but this clearly can be nothing but a waste of time! And I will try to avoid getting all tangled up in the web being spun around me by offering another of my straightforward replies: Everyone knows what the aim of life is. Surely we all aim to live good lives. But, "What do we mean by 'good'?", the gadfly will continue to ask. And this bug of a person will readily admit that finding an answer to this question is no easy task, and he may suggest that the standard replies floating in the air of our times are deeply mistaken, and they are so in accordance with our own implicit standards of what is right. Floating around us is the largely unquestioned view that the aim of life is wealth, or something like this. But, the philosopher will suggest, when we are thinking straight and honestly, very few of us would continue to hold the view that the aim of life is wealth. Most of us, the philosopher will continue, at best think that wealth is a means to furthering some more basic aims or that it does not even typically do this. Some of us may even suggest that wealth can sometimes get in the way of achieving these basic aims. The philosopher will admit that abject poverty is an evil we should all wish to eradicate, but he will then qualify his claim – philosophers are always far too keen to qualify their views – by stating that people do not only live by bread alone and that the primary reason abject poverty is such a terrible evil is that it does not allow people to live dignified existences. So, our aim, when fighting to eradicate poverty, should, according to the philosopher, be dignity rather than prosperity. But it is one thing to say, the philosopher will continue, that abject poverty is bad and quite another to say that we must ideally aim to be wealthy. What we need, according to the philosopher, is the minimum amount of material means to carry out those human aims that are most truly worthwhile. And, then, after this long ramble, the philosopher will turn the analytical scalpel against my original claim, and make me reconsider the question that originally led to this exchange. The philosopher will accuse me of using the wrong criteria for choosing a career. The philosopher will point out that, according to my own deep convictions, the standard by which I choose a career should ideally not be profit maximisation and that profit maximisation is not the measure of the practical and the useful. Instead, the philosopher will ask me to ponder about what I think is really valuable in life and to get a career that will help me live in accordance with the values that are most precious to me. The philosopher will then change tack and remind me of Socrates's sacrifice. Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers of all times, the philosopher will continue, sacrificed his life in the name of justice. He may then relate the life of Socrates to the life of South African heroes such as Mandela, and remind us that someone like Mandela is our hero precisely because he is someone who lived his life in accordance with values that we – most South Africans – believe are of the highest and most important variety. He will remind us that what moved Mandela was not the rand or the dollar, but ideals of justice, integrity and love. And we admire him, the philosopher will continue, rather than the stockbroker or the real estate tycoon, because he lives his life in accordance with ideals that we should all be fighting for, living for. Mandela, above all, is a practical man. And the stockbroker is not if the driving motive of his life is wealth maximisation. These are the sorts of ideas that we explore on a daily basis in conversations with our students at the Department of Philosophy at Rhodes University. And it is a sad fact of contemporary life worldwide that careful and deep thought has been largely relegated to the small corners of the academy. Pedro Tabensky is associate professor of Philosophy at Rhodes University and his most recent book is The Positive Function of Evil. Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Kingston University saves philosophy department Posted: 16 Jun 2010 12:35 AM PDT Kingston University steps in to save philosophy department5:50am Wednesday 16th June 2010 Kingston University has stepped in to save the top-rated philosophy department at Middlesex University, where a proposed closure sparked international academic protests and a 12-day student occupation of the department. The north London university told students and staff in April that it would close the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy for financial reasons, claiming the subject failed to attract enough competitive funding and had to be subsidised by other areas. Both Kingston and Middlesex gained university status in 1992, and the proposal provoked national debate about whether humanities had a role in new universities. Sixty renowned academics from across the world declared the closure was of "national and international concern". However, the research centre, including four senior staff members and PhD students, is now set to transfer to Kingston University in September, bringing philosophy to the campus for the first time. In a joint statement, the universities said: "Middlesex and Kingston universities have been in discussions on the transfer of postgraduate philosophy programmes and research, plus associated staff, from Middlesex to Kingston. Those discussions are at an advanced stage and neither institution is able to comment further at this point." The save Middlesex philosophy campaign claimed the move as "partial but significant victory", and said: "Unlike Middlesex, Kingston is expanding rather than cutting back its provision in humanities subjects, and is investing in research in these areas. "The campaign has directly refuted the line that Middlesex managers have repeated for many years now – a variation on the line there is not alternative but to follow the neoliberal way of the world and close down small academic departments in favour of large vocational ones." Your Say YourKingston Fred1, Surbiton says... Your sayYour Kingston
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| Homebrewers embrace philosophy of 'the more you do it, the better you get' Posted: 17 Jun 2010 01:11 AM PDT John Palmer probably wouldn't earn many slaps on the back if he showed up at a family barbecue with vintage comic books or binoculars for bird watching. But the 31-year-old Okemos resident's hobby is much more barbecue friendly. He doesn't collect comics, and his bucket list includes more brewpubs than exotic birds. Palmer is a craft beer aficionado and homebrewer. Homebrewers are beer enthusiasts who brew their own beer at home. "It's just like cooking," Palmer said. "You develop a recipe and go for it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The more you do it, the better you get." Lenny Wroblewski works at the Things Beer homebrew supply store at Michigan Brewing Company in Webberville. The 34-year-old Fowlerville resident said he's surprised by the uptick of "twenty somethings" buying homebrew starter kits from MBC. "When I was 20 I just wanted to drink, I didn't care what it was," Wroblewski said. With a stove, large pot and a few additional tools, homebrewers can make any kind of beer they want, from an India Pale Ale to a Russian Imperial Stout. For a generation that's less likely to work with their hands for a living and more likely to keep an eye on their budget, the hobby blends tinkering and frugality. Amateur brewers use gadgets like levers, hydrometers and spigots. And the result? Beer that costs less than $1 per bottle. He brews about 10 five gallon batches each year, yielding 500 bottles of beer. There's still a stain on his garage floor from the first time he tried to brew by himself. "When you throw the extract into a boiling pot, it's like cooking oatmeal," Palmer said. "It all of a sudden just rises and starts to foam and the next thing you know it's boiling over. And that boil over is very sticky." He suggests brewing with friends, or joining a homebrew club to make the process a social gathering. (Brewing takes several hours, and then the beer takes about a week to ferment.) Shiawassee County Area Brewers Society president Greg Gerding started the local homebrew club to give brewers a chance to learn from each other. Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | ||
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