INDIVIDUALISM:Calvin

Calvin has an undeservedly bad name nowadays. He is known in popular culture as the founder of Puritanism,(meaning the morality of super uptightness) the enemy of the laid back. In the sixties when people claimed they were discovering leisure, ethnic food and sexual ecstacy Calvin was the symbol of what they claimed they were shaking free of. He symbolized what was called "the Protestant Ethic" a big drag I hope we'll see that Calvin should be treated with respect and there are several sources that do.
First there is Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" which makes Calvin the most important founder of the modern world. A good instance of practical Calvinism(mentioned by Weber) is "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" a great read about a life of discipline. Franklin was the kind of person we resolve to be after we have debauched ourselves(I'm too old for this) on New Year's eve. he coined phrases such as "a penny saved is a penny earned." Another great presentation of calvinism is Bunyan's"the Pilgrim's Progress.

-"on the benefits of university"

This should cheer you up. From a review by Martha Nussbaum, of EXCELLENCE WITHOUT A SOUL. How a great university forgot education. By Harry R. Lewis. 288pp. New York: PublicAffairs. $26. - 1 58648 393 5.in TLS July 14

Of the eighteen US Presidents since 1900, however, only seven went, as undergraduates, to any Ivy League institution.
(Harry Truman never went to college at all.) Among the various people who represent or govern me as a resident of Illinois, only one had even a passing connection, as an undergraduate, to the Ivy League. I conjecture that a similar story would emerge from a study of leaders in business, journalism and the arts. Bill Gates himself dropped out of Harvard in his third year and never finished college

The State

Fareed Zakaria's "The Future of Freedom" is manageable, thoughtful and discusses a significant chunk of the material in our coursepack. Chapter 1 is a brief survey of some of our topics.Zakaria is very smart.He is the editor of Newsweek International and hosts a TV program on current affairs(available on the web).A Newsweek coumnist once told me that he and his colleagues are trained to write prose that can be read in a dentist's office. Zakaria meets this standard even though he deals with weighty subjects.
This book raises a forgotten question:what is the difference between a liberal society and a democratic one. We will consider this question when we consider Locke and RouseauBriefly, a liberal society gives priority to free speech, freedom of the press,and an independent judiciary. A democratic society calls for the rule of the people. As we know the people don't always want free institutions. Plato argued that a domcratic society was one step towards tyranny. During the Cold war someone asked a sampling of Americans to give their opinions on the Bill of Rights in the American Constiution,without telling them its source. The majority thought it was Bolshevik text.
Zakaria argues that one of the tensions between the west and the rest of the world is that in the west we moved from liberal societies to democratic ones, whereas in the rest fo the world is moving towards democracy without first having adopted the above named institutions of liberalism. Alarming he notes that these very institutions are under attack in America.

Miscellaneous

Many students ask about Wikipedia Here is an interesting and to me authoritative article on the subject from the New Yorker According to the author Wikipedia has a spectrum of reliability ranging from the article on "Global Warming" which one of Wikipedia's critics claims is the the best article on this subject in print, to articles on a subjects such as G.W.Bush which are revised every few minutes. (I've seen articles on controversial subjects which change several times a day) One person who worked for Wikipedia sums it all up by saying Wikipedia"gives no privelege to those who know what they're talking about." Check with other sources

Hobbes

A number of years ago a friend of mine created a sensation by writing an article showing that Clint Eastwood's "Fistful of Dollars" was a great commentary on the philosophy of Hobbes. At that time the idea of finding philosophical ideas in popular culture was outlandish-movies were for escape ,not for study. Today there are lots of philosophical books and article about films ("The Matrix" is a favorite)
I thought the best presentation of Hobbes on film was Scorsese's "The Gangs of New York (see A.O Scott's review Dec.20 2002) It ends with a ruthless display of force by the state to crush the riots and gang war that plagued New York during the Civil war,thus allowing the city to emerge into the New York we all love.Do you buy this?

UTILITARIANISM: J.S.MILL,We will be discussing Utilitarianism when we come to John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism is associated with the phrase "the greatest good for the greatest number, and Jeremy Bentham's calculus of pleasure and pain.Many consider it a trivial philosophy, yet utilitarianism is championed by
Peter Singer now at Princeton. Singer is very controversial.He argues (roughly )his version of utilitarianism is concerned with pain, and starting with the premise (I am oversimplifying) that pain is evil arrives at support for abortion as well as for euthanasia. His arrival at Princeton was marked by demonstrations and other expressions of outrage. His critics accuse him of taking ideas and driving them over a cliff. He has a liberationist side . He is one of the most famous champions of animal rights, and the uses of Darwin in ethics.
His web site is excellent and has reference to many of his articles. Feel free to choose one for your tutorial essay.

CONTEMPORARY:
While I was in London (England that is) I stopped in to see Tom Stoppard's new play "Rock and Roll" (Check out the review by John Lahr in the New Yorker Set in England and Czechoslovakia,it is a memoir of the last days of communism and of the hopes raised by a succession of alternatives to communism:the Czech Spring of 1968,socialism with a human face etc. It suggests throughout that when all has failed there is still Rock and Roll. I know many of you will sympathize with this apotheosis. I like Rock and Roll(my son is a musician) but I would say ,when all is said and done there is still Chinese food.The play is rather depressing but ends with ecstatic vusuals of the great Rock musicians: Rolling Stones etc. The material is promising but the play is unfocussed. I have a copy with an introduction by Stoppard if you want to do an essay on it In a cast of excellent actors the strongest character is Max, the old unreconstructed Bolshevik who has the best lines including app.I'm a Eurovegetarian ,I eat lambchops.

THE STATE Here is the first in a series of views of the state(ignore the references to the Lebanese war.) Thecommon wisdom holds we live in a post state era, one in which the state is superseded by international organizations which together make up globalized world. Timothy Garton Ash, renowned columnist who became famous for his reports on the fall of communism, thinks that this view is too neat ,that the world is much messier.