Good Stuff Wednesday

[sjester]

Because it would be a damn good thing for me to think more about things that are good in life than the things that are bad/dragging me down, I'll finally join the GSW bandwagon. Don't know how consistent I'll be about it, but a start is a start. So here goes.

1. Good post-Halloween party last Saturday.
2. Rumsfeld is gone.
3. Democratic control of the House and presumably the Senate as well.
4. South Dakotans sensibly voted down the abortion ban.
5. Actually being intellectually engaged for once this semester in Medieval Philosophy this morning.
6. Having awesome friends.
7. Only a month until the end of the semester; I can make it.

This week I'll stop with seven, the number of completion.

Comments

[seth-e-h.livejournal.com]

It may be presumptive but I've heard senate as well.

[sjester.livejournal.com]

It all comes down to Virginia... Which isn't nearly as close as Madrid/Wilson. Dammit.

[imbrium8.livejournal.com]

Allen conceded Wednesday evening. Democrats have the Senate, too. :D

[sjester.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I'd only heard about the AP's projection from earlier in the day.

[hannah-phi.livejournal.com]

Yay GSW! Feeling better?

[sjester.livejournal.com]

Yes. Details later.

[titilatingbunny.livejournal.com]

What topics are you covering in Medeival? There's going to be a Medeival phil grad course next semester but the prof said it was basically going to be all Aquinas. So I'm just curious to see what you're doing in your class.

[imbrium8.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what the class here is covering - I'm more medieval intellectual history than philosophy - but if there's a medieval philosophy class out there without Abelard, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, the various people from St. Victor's (Hugh and Richard come to mind), John of Salisbury, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Boethius and Anselm of Canterbury, then it's missing out on quite a lot.

Of course, Aquinas wrote enough complicated stuff to occupy a whole class - it just doesn't give any idea of the breadth of philosophical thought in the Middle Ages.

Ooh, Bernard Silvestris, too. And maybe Gregory the Great.

[sjester.livejournal.com]

We're doing a pretty broad overview of medieval philosophy; we did some Muslim and Jewish philosophy as well as Christian. this is the book we're using. So far we've read Augustine, Scotus Eriugena, Abelard, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Bonaventure, and Aquinas. Still to go: Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Nocholas of Autrecourt. We've read pretty small selections from each; we'd probably have time for more (either more from each figure or a more detailed survey including more thinkers) if it wasn't so geared toward undergrads. But, it is, so lectures are more explication of the reading than anything else. *sigh*.

Topicwise, we're doing issues of faith & reason, existence/nature of god, free will, the problem of universals, and the nature of the intellect. Not so much with language and logic, which is the stuff I'm interested in, so that is one of the reasons I'm dissatisfied with the class (see also: lectures). At least now I have a starting point and an anthology of texts. Plus my Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, though that was not required or even optional for the class.