Teh Englandzors!!!!!!

York

2009-02-03T23:37:00.002Z

Finally, we went to York. This may have been the coolest part of the trip, although it is difficult to say what was really the best part.

First and foremost, if I say nothing else: the York Minster. Seriously. This was a fantastically beautiful building, full of all kinds of neat stuff. It was on that site, for instance, that Constantine was first proclaimed Emperor of Rome. It has been the site of no fewer than three major churches, culminating in the largest and most beautiful building for miles around. It still has a crypt and catacombs beneath the cathedral which you can explore, full of old Roman and Saxon artifacts. Also, you can climb to the top of the tower, (a seriously grueling ordeal. Like, seriously. Most of the time, when they say that climbing a tower is difficult, they're just being nice. This was hard.) which affords you a beautiful view, though one that is entirely caged in. I guess because they don't want people falling off the tallest building for miles around, they have caged up the entire roof of the tower.

Also in York, we went to a Castle Museum which contained all kinds of fun stuff about the history of England, and had the best dinner of the entire trip. Also, we went to the Jorvik Viking museum, which is pretty darn neat, (about the Viking community of Jorvik which became the town of York) though it's not very big. Depressingly not very big, in fact.

Finally, in York, I bought a new chess set. It's really pretty.

So, that's pretty much our trip. It was a great deal of fun, though not all of it tells all that well. (Waxing romantic about the fantastic chicken wrapped in bacon that I ate in York is cool and all, but isn't really why you're reading this blog, I presume).

Pictures will be up pretty soon, whenever Erin gets around to it. She took all the pictures, since she has the multi-thousand dollar camera, and it seemed silly to carry two cameras and thereby take the same pictures a dozen times.

Edinburgh

2009-02-03T23:24:00.002Z

Next we spent a few days in Edinburgh.

Oxford is a very beautiful town, and until recently, I would have said it was the prettiest city I had ever been to. That has since changed. Edinburgh is unbelievably beautiful. Granted, it was also unbelievably cold, but there's only so much you can do about that. Our hotel was right next to the center of town, which was also very nice.

Edinburgh Castle is what all castles want to be. It's up on a massive hill in the middle of town, and is incredibly impressive. So, naturally, we went there first. They've got a good-sized war museum in the castle, which was pretty neat, especially all of the stuff about the history of the various Highland regiments. There is also a war monument pertaining especially to the First World War which was beautiful, and quite sobering.

They have a very large cannon that they fire once a day from the castle at 1:00 in the afternoon, and we were up there watching one day as they fired it. It's... very, very loud. Like, louder than that.

It's difficult to describe just how impressive the castle is. Here are some pictures, to try to give you the right impression.

While in Edinburgh, we also went to look at the Scottish National Gallery, which had some very impressive (and famous) paintings in it. One thing they had up was a collection of watercolor paintings by a man whose name I can't remember. I had never seen watercolor paintings that looked anything like this-- far from being washed-out and pale the way watercolors often look, they were impressively vivid and just generally quite impressive.

Also in Edinburgh, we went to a pub, where Erin had some of the best mussels of her life and I had a masterfully poured pint of Guinness. (As well as a hamburger which was pretty good.)

Also, we saw a statue of David Hume, which was pretty neat, since we're both big philosophy geeks. Less neat for the rest of you, who maybe don't care as much.

--Bill

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

2009-02-03T23:07:00.002Z

From London we took a MegaBus (highly recommend it for anyone traveling in England, if you haven't already heard of it. It's hecka cheap and pretty nice) to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for a few days. We were theoretically going to try to meet up with a friend of mine there, but that ended up not working out, which was something of a shame.

Nevertheless, we had a fantastic time in Newcastle. We saw the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, which is really cool in person, particularly. You don't quite realize how big it is in the pictures. We didn't actually get to see it do its fabled opening or closing, but it is still quite an impressive structure.

We also saw the Angel of the North, which is also a very impressive thing in person. It's wider than the Statue of Liberty is tall.

We went to the Newcastle Keep, which is a section of a very old fortress that was pretty darn neat. It had been used in several battles for many years, and had a lot of pretty fun history behind it.

We also stopped by a children's book museum which wasn't, perhaps, quite as neat as we wanted it to be, but did have lots of copies of the original art from the Winnie the Pooh stories, as well as original draft pages and such from some Phillip Pullman books and the Pippi Longstocking books and similar fun things. It also had a whole floor dedicated to the Wind in the Willows, which was really neat.

Furthermore, we had some fantastic food in Newcastle. This was a recurring thing that we did. Fantastic food is an integral part of traveling, including one very nice dinner on the river with a fantastic view of the Millennium Bridge.

So, that was Newcastle, and we went from there to Edinburgh.

New Year's Eve/Day in London

2009-02-03T22:57:00.002Z

So, from the airport in Heathrow, we went back to Oxford for a day to get reorganized, and then went back to London to spend New Year's Eve in Trafalgar Square. Now, by, "spend New Year's Eve in Trafalgar Square," what I actually mean is "spend New Year's Eve in London, somewhere within shouting distance of Trafalgar Square," as we actually ended up hanging out by Big Ben during the fireworks show and the moment when 2009 occurred.

In the first place: there were more people in London at this time than I have ever before seen in one place in my life. Seriously. Like, after we were done, they had to herd us like cattle. At one point, the crowd started to get nervous, and I feared for my life, that they might make a mistake, and I might be crushed to death beneath hordes of rampaging Londoners. You think I'm kidding, but I'm really not. You couldn't move your arms, it was so crowded. It took three hours to get from Big Ben to the nearest Underground Station, which might be a quarter of a mile away. It was ridiculous.

The reason we went there is that they have a gigantic fireworks display over the London Eye (the largest Ferris wheel in Europe, and the largest in the world until 2008). We missed about the bottom half of the fireworks display, because where we were, there was a very large building between us and the Eye, but we still saw the rest of it. It was arguably the niftiest fireworks display I have ever seen in my life, and I've seen some nifty fireworks displays in my time.

Also of note was the fact that we heard Big Ben ring in the New Year, which was pretty darn cool indeed.

(Aside, for V for Vendetta fans-- whenever I see the Houses of Parliament, the 1812 Overture goes through my head. Does this make me a bad person?)

As another interesting note, Capitalism fails in Britain. Here we had the largest crowd of people I have ever seen in my life, and except for a few Asian people selling glowing baby pacifiers, (?) nobody was selling nothing. We later learned that the lack of alcohol was due to the fact that 20 years ago, there was an alcohol-related incident at Trafalgar Square which resulted in a few people dying. Thus, they made it illegal to sell/bring in your own alcohol. The former didn't happen. The latter did happen.

Nevertheless, it made me sad. Were this in America, there would have been stands selling anything you could possibly imagine in that area. Hot dogs? Right over there. Coke? Right over there. Obscure Greek sculpture? Two of them over by that building. Face painting? About every thirty feet. So, that was a note of cultural difference.

The next day, we wandered around London for a while and had some good food, and then went to a showing of Chicago that evening. Though there was something incongruous about going to see a show about an American city in London, it was the most interesting show that was showing on New Year's Eve. It was a lot of fun-- the music in the show is pretty fun, and the band was absolutely fantastic.

So, that wrapped up our two days in London.

Airport Story

2009-02-03T22:52:00.003Z

So, technically, before I get started in London, I have a small, but neat story to tell about the airport in Dallas/Ft. Worth. A while ago, I had managed to wash my poor ol' iPod Nano that I had bought just after high school, and it didn't make it. RIP iPod. I went iPodless for a good time, but then, what did I see in Dallas/Ft. Worth but a vending machine full of iPods and PSPs?

Now, my initial thought was that these iPods and such would be ludicrously expensive. It's a vending machine in a freaking airport, after all. But then, much to my surprise, I take a closer look and realize that they're selling 6G iPod Nanos for $149.99, exactly the same price that they're selling them for online! So... needless to say, I bought one. It was the niftiest, most futuristic vending machine I had ever seen... it picked it up with this neat little arm thing and then shifted it over and dumped it gently into the slot.

Overall, it reminded me that I live in the 21st century. I just bought a portable music player smaller than my hand with a hard drive that can hold more memory than every computer they used in the moon landings for less than $200.00 out of a vending machine in the airport. Pretty dang awesome, if I may say so myself.

Finally...

2009-02-03T22:49:00.001Z

Okay, kids, saddle up. Here follows a series of updates on my adventures the last few weeks. In general, here's what went on:

Erin and I went traveling all around Britain, starting with spending New Year's Eve in London, at Trafalgar Square. (My original plans, to go to Hogmanay in Edinburgh, ended up falling through). From here, we went to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for three or four days, and then Edinburgh for two days, and then York for three days. Then we came back to Oxford and started with the whole "studies" thing. I'm also going to talk a little bit about a play that we went to go see the other day that was absolutely fantastic.

So... yeah. Four updates coming in the next few minutes.

--Bill

The Woman In Black

2009-01-30T02:46:00.000Z

About two weeks ago, the Warners took us to go see a fantastic play called The Woman In Black. It's a two-man ghost story (with a few small appearances by one female actor) which is both terrifying and fantastically clever. It's based on a novel which apparently was pretty famous a while ago, but I had never heard of it before.

At any rate, the basic premise is that this lawyer went out to a small British town to set this crazy old widow's affairs in order after she had died and spends a few days in her house by himself... as you can imagine, the house is very, very haunted, and he learns this, much to his dismay. Many years later (this is the start of the play) he feels he has to tell the story to someone, and hires a young, hotshot actor to play the part in a small play that he's putting on (it's a strange sort of play-within-a-play thing that works really well). The majority of the play consists of the first full-through rehearsal of the thing, with the hotshot actor playing the part of the lawyer, and the old lawyer himself playing every other part in the show except for the ghost, the titular Woman In Black.

The show was absolutely terrifying. Like, I mean it. Brilliantly directed, well-acted, and the lighting was unbelievable. I don't want to spoil anything, since it's doing well enough that it is very possible that you might someday get a chance to go see a production of it. If you do get a chance, go to it. It's fantastic.

--Bill

Oops.

2009-01-21T01:06:00.002Z

So... I know I promised some of you that there would be blog postings this evening about the last several weeks of my life...

But I had kind of a complicated day, and by the time I sat down to write about my holiday, I really couldn't even string together a coherent sentence. I've spent most of the day arguing about various complicated things, and I'm kind of mentally spent, as a result.

so... still to come, I promise, but probably not until tomorrow. If you're still following, thank you very much!

--Bill

Hamlet

2008-11-14T23:48:00.003Z

Just last Tuesday, I went on one of the most nifty theatre trips I will ever go on. I got to see Hamlet, in Stratford, with David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Freaking Stewart as Claudius. It was an absolutely fantastic performance... Tennant was wonderful as Hamlet, and Stewart gave a really great performance as Claudius, although it was a bit more toned-down than you might expect from seeing some of Stewart's other work. This was a much calmer, more detached Claudius than some... and it worked really, really well.

Most of the time, the set was just a blank, primarily circular stage, with a whole row of mirrors behind it. When Hamlet kills Polonius from behind the tapestry, Polonius is actually hiding behind one of the mirrors, and Hamlet shoots him, which shatters a few of the mirrors. The mirrors stay shattered throughout the rest of the play.

The director made some odd choices I wasn't sure I agreed with-- Ophelia may not be the best part in Shakespeare, but you can usually make her a lot more sympathetic than they chose to do here-- she just kinda went crazy for no reason, and they didn't play up her attachment to her father, her brother, or Hamlet really at all. And Gertrude also wasn't given as much time to shine as they might have, but, again, I suspect that was all the director's fault, rather than the actors'.

And, yeah, I have been within 20 ft. of Patrick Freaking Stewart. My friend Taylor actually got a high five from him. I shook Taylor's hand, which is sort of like shaking Patrick Stewart's hand... I may never wash this hand again.

Existentialism Paper IV: The Outsider

2008-11-14T23:45:00.002Z

This paper dealt with Albert Camus' The Outsider (or The Stranger, depending your translator, and originally L'Etranger, in French). This is another important novel in the Existentialist tradition, though, once again, as with Nausea, I found myself having a hard time understanding why anyone would ever want to be an existentialist after reading this novel. I kinda like existentialism, and might even go so far as to say I am an existentialist, but, man, these guys make me not want to be one. The hero, Meursalt, is so apathetic, and so much of a jerk, that I don't care if he's authentic to himself or not.

Existentialist literature serves primarily as a way for its authors to examine their philosophy in a real-world context. Through these novels and plays, the authors can simulate what it would be like to truly live the existentialist life in a real context. Albert Camus' The Outsider serves this purpose as well-- it attempts to provide a coherent image of the life of one existentialist, Meursalt, and his dealings with the world around him. Meursalt is the Outsider in the story, a man who cannot relate to the rest of the people near him, and as he is eventually executed due to this alien status, he has been characterized by some as being something like an existential martyr. As martyrdom, however, implies a devotion to a higher cause, it may seem like a strange word to use in an existential context. There are no "higher causes" in existentialism, so to say that a man is sacrificing himself for one would indicate that he is not a very good existentialist. It is, therefore, the purpose of this paper to examine Meursalt's actions from an existentialist perspective, and then decide whether or not this title of "existential martyr" is a fitting one or not.
The story begins with the death of Meursalt's mother. She has been ill for some time, and he has placed her in a nursing home in the country. Meursalt does not respond to this death in anything like the usual manner. He seems entirely unaffected by it, and to almost view it as trivial. He is not even quite sure when it happened-- the first words of the novel are "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know," (Camus 9). Meursalt then travels to the nursing home for the funeral, where he is again characterized by a general lack of sorrow or emotion over the death of his mother. While he and a few of the nursing home residents are supposed to be staying up all night in the room with her coffin, he finds himself falling asleep and smoking cigarettes. He does not shed a single tear at the funeral, and on his way home, the only thing going through his head is that he "was going to go to bed and sleep for a whole twelve hours," (Camus 22). The next day finds him swimming in the ocean and initiating a tryst with a girl he fancies, as though nothing had happened the previous day.
A few days later finds him tangled up in a murder case-- a friend of his has gotten into some trouble with a group of Arabs, and, at the end of a very confusing day, Meursalt shoots and kills one. It is a bit ambiguous whether or not Meursalt is justified in the murder, and the murder itself is not actually particularly relevant in the context of Meursalt as an existentialist. What matters is his reaction to the murder. Once again, he is not really bothered by it. When asked if he regrets the murder, he responds that "rather than true regret, I felt a kind of annoyance," (Camus 69). Throughout his trial, he is again and again faced with situations where he is asked fairly commonplace questions, and he gives extraordinary answers, answers that make him appear to be inhuman by the standards of his day. Finally, after deciding that he is a menace to society and a murderer, and frightened of his apparent apathy towards the murder and his mother's death, the judge and the jury order him executed. Meursalt accepts this knowledge without a moment's hesitation, and then proceeds to live his last days in his jail cell, apathetic to the end, refusing to see the Chaplain and refusing to help his appeal by way of cooperation at all.
The thing about Meursalt which makes him an existentialist, and the thing which frightens his peers so much, is that he always tells the truth. It is a fairly well-known fact that when a law enforcement officer who may have some hand in determining whether or not you should convicted of murder asks you if you feel regret for having killed the man you killed, you really ought to say "yes," regardless of whether or not you do. It makes you appear more sympathetic to the magistrate, as though you regret your mistake, and wish it had been otherwise. When a loved one dies, even if you are not particularly affected, it is expected that you take on a more somber air for a certain amount of time. But Meursalt, when placed in these situations, refuses to lie to the people around him. He does not feel any particularly strong sorrow or sadness at his mother's death, and so he feels no reason to pretend that he does. The murder and subsequent trial also do not particularly bother him, and so he does not pretend to be wracked with guilt or remorseful. He does not believe in God, and so when the Chaplain comes to him, he refuses to speak with him. On a smaller note, when his girlfriend asks him if he loves her, he responds that "it didn't mean anything, but I don't think so," (Camus 38). Anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows that this is a dangerous thing to say, but Meursalt simply does not feel any need to lie. He does not particularly love Marie-- he thinks she is pretty, and he would not necessarily mind marrying her, but he feels no overwhelming and special attraction to her.
It is this truth-telling which is his undoing. Camus makes it very clear throughout the novel that as there is no evidence in the case to really support whether or not Meursalt was justified in killing the Arab, the trial has essentially become a trial of character. The prosecuting attorney spends far more time discussing Meursalt's lack of emotion at his mother's funeral than he does Meursalt's supposedly premeditated murder. So it is in Meursalt's best interest, if he wishes to be acquitted of the charge, to put on a good show, and pretend to be whatever sort of human being will get him out of the whole mess he is in. It would be better for him not to say that he does not regret the murder, or that his mother's death did not particularly bother him, or that he does not really know why he killed the man. It would be better for him to lie about his feelings, and pretend to be the man they want him to be. But Meursalt is an existentialist, and feels that to lie about such things would be to lie to himself, and he therefore chooses to remain entirely truthful to himself and to behave entirely authentically.
It is a choice that, ultimately, leads to his public execution via guillotine. Had he appeared repentant after the trial, when the Chaplain came to visit him, he might even then have gotten his sentence reduced merely to a time in prison, or he might have succeeded in appealing the verdict. But because he refuses to "play the game," as Camus himself put it in the Afterword, , his society think she is dangerous, and decides to put an end to him (118). It is in this sense, then, that Meursalt can be understood as something of a martyr. Although he is not dying for some "high cause," such as the liberation of a country or a religious ideal, it is his refusal to compromise his own feelings and bow to the will of his society that causes his eventual death. Because he insists on acting authentically and in an existential manner, he is put to death. He martyrs himself both for his own cause, and, arguably, for the cause of existentialism as a whole.

Nietzsche Paper II: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

2008-11-14T23:43:00.002Z

This paper was about Nietzsche's most important work, Thus Spoke (or Spake, depending your translator) Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra, in the German). Yeah, the one that inspired Strauss to write his tone poem which is most famous as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is a weird book... it's part novel, part essay, and part epic poem. But as much as I hate Nietzsche, it's fantastically written, and was a lot of fun (if also very difficult) to read.

It is probably safe to say that there is no single philosopher more controversial than Friedrich Nietzsche. His attempt to violently overthrow all existing morality and philosophy, coupled with his sarcastic and biting writing style have secured him a place among philosophy's greatest thinkers, but also among its most disliked. He wrote a great deal, but the work of which he was most proud was Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a work of literature which spans the gaps between essay, novel, and epic poem. There are a plethora of possible topics in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but this paper shall look at the political philosophy (such as it is) that is contained in the work; first, to briefly outline it, and second to evaluate it both in a more objective sense and upon its own ground.
The first important thing to note about Nietzsche's political philosophy is that he never directly spells it out. Though there is a chapter in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that is concerned with the State, it is brief, and consists primarily of Zarathustra ranting against the evils of the contemporary view of the State rather than actually spelling out how he thinks society ought to be organized. Thus, any attempts to discover Nietzsche's political philosophy in Thus Spoke Zarathustra have to be inferred from his declarations about personal ethics and a few scattered remarks about the nature of man. Nevertheless, Nietzsche leaves enough clues strewn throughout the text that one can construct a fairly coherent, if not terribly specific, picture of Nietzsche's ideal State.
Arguably the most important characteristic of Nietzsche's political philosophy (and, indeed, his philosophy in general) is that it is entirely concerned with the individual. It is the individual's attempts to overcome himself and become the Superman that drives every aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy, to the point that he, through his mouthpiece Zarathustra, tell his followers to "Flee… into [their] solitude, and to where the raw, rough breeze blows," far away from everyone else (Zarathustra 81). He fears the state, saying that it causes "everyone, good and bad, [to lose] himself," and generally makes it clear that his concern is not with people, but rather with individual persons (individual men, to be specific, but Nietzsche's rampant misogyny is not the subject of this paper) (Zarathustra 77). Thus, any State Nietzsche is going to associate himself with is going to have to have a great deal of respect for the individual, and must not be concerned with promoting any sort of "common good." Nietzsche, however is not concerned with the good of all individuals, but rather only with those individuals who can strive to become Supermen. He quite clearly states that "Men are not equal. And they should not become so, either," (Zarathustra 124). Nietzsche very quickly divides humanity into two categories, and though he never standardizes his names for these categories, we shall call them in this paper the Masters and the Rabble. The Rabble is continually described as little more than an annoyance, pointless people milling in droves, living in fear and resentment. The Masters, on the other hand, are those people who stand some chance of becoming Supermen, and who transcend traditional morality.
It is here that the fundamental purpose of Nietzsche's political philosophy becomes obvious: he wants to create a State that will best serve the needs of the Masters. The Rabble ought to be treated merely as annoyances, and means to the greater good of the Masters. Nietzsche therefore seems to be arguing for a loose form of aristocracy; an "aristocratic anarchism," as Bertrand Russell described it (Russell 729). In direct contradiction to much of the Enlightenment thinkers, especially Kant, Nietzsche does not argue that "all men ought to be considered as ends in themselves." Rather, only the Masters, the aristocratic minority, should be considered as ends in themselves. The Rabble should be viewed merely as means to the good of the Masters. He justifies this distinction by arguing that the Rabble stands no chance of becoming Supermen, and therefore are fundamentally unimportant, as the Superman is the entire point of Nietzsche's conception of human life. Anyone who cannot become a Superman himself, therefore, can only serve a purpose in helping someone else to become a Superman.
The question then becomes how to identify the Masters. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, probably puts it best when he says that in practice, they [the superior few] have usually been a conquering race or a hereditary aristocracy-- and hereditary aristocracies have usually been, at least in theory, descendants of conquering races," (Russell 736). He then goes on to argue that Nietzsche would probably accept this definition, drawing upon Nietzsche's statement that, "No morality is possible without a good birth," and arguing that for Nietzsche, a "good birth" constitutes a biological superiority rather than simply the better environment generally associated with an established aristocracy (Russell 736). Thus, Nietzsche, if Russell's interpretation is to be accepted, would seem to argue that the Masters ought to be a hereditary aristocracy, and the Rabble is everyone else. The purpose of the State, then, should be to help those at the top in their desire to become Supermen, while those at the bottom should be treated merely as means to this end.
This sort of philosophical thinking is fairly unpopular today-- the majority of Western political philosophy tends to agree upon some form of "all men are created equal," whether they be die-hard Communists or anarchists. Even during Nietzsche's time, the majority of the old monarchies and aristocracies were ending, taken over by either democracy or socialism, though there still remained a few vestiges of the old guard. Nietzsche's conception of the State would have been taken a lot more seriously a few hundred years back than it was during his time. It is important to note, however, that at least one major, Western civilization declared itself much in debt to Nietzsche's writings, and must therefore be considered as part of any discussion of the consequences of Nietzsche's philosophy. Germany under Hitler attempted such a State-- arguing that the Germans were the Masters and more or less everybody else was the Rabble. Nevertheless, it is important to note that although Nietzsche did support being cruel to the Rabble if it would help advance the cause of the Masters, he probably would not have condoned the wholesale slaughter of millions of said Rabble, and would therefore probably have rather not had his name associated with the Nazis. Nevertheless, his name has become permanently associated with the Nazi party, such that anyone who might want to resurrect Nietzsche's politics for a contemporary audience would have his work cut out for him. The Third Reich is not necessarily the end of Nietzschean thought, however. As Russell points out, "The Egyptian government was conducted on Nietzschean principles for several millennia," and, "The governments of almost all large States were aristocratic until the American and French Revolutions," (Russell 737). However tempting it may be to think otherwise, therefore, Nietzschean thought does not find its fullest expression in Nazi Germany, but rather in something resembling an older aristocracy.
As one might imagine, Nietzsche's political thought has produced a wide variety of critics, and these critics can primarily be divided into two camps. In the first camp, you find the majority of modern critics. They object to Nietzsche's declaration that "All men are not equal," and argue, along with Kant, that "all men should be treated as ends in themselves." The purpose of the State, they argue, should not be to advance the cause of the upper echelon of society, but rather to help everyone equally. These critics can be very different from one another-- both J.S. Mill and Karl Marx would likely agree on this objection, though they could probably agree on nothing else. The second camp consists of those who agree with Nietzsche's declaration that some men are better than others, and that the purpose of the State should be to serve their interests, but would argue that Nietzsche's State does not really best serve those interests. The question then becomes whether or not Nietzsche can be successfully defended from these critics.
The simple answer to this question as regards the first camp of objectors is "No." There is no way to read Nietzsche such that he satisfies the demand for equality for all, and a government which serves everyone's interests equally. But equally important is the fact that Nietzsche would not particularly want to be defended against these objectors. The difference between the two boils down to a difference in fundamental postulates: the objector believes that all men are created equal, and Nietzsche does not. These postulates run to the very core of these people, and cannot really be proven true or false. It cannot be concretely proven whether all people are equally worthwhile. While it is true that some people certainly make better use of their lives and talents than others, it is more or less impossible to prove whether or not these differences came out of an essential moral inequality or out of circumstantial inequality and personal decisions. Any debate between Nietzsche and objectors in this camp would necessarily boil down to this fundamental difference, and, as it is impossible to philosophically prove one postulate right over the other, they must simply go their separate ways. They have no common ground on which to argue-- Nietzsche does not care that his philosophy does not provide the best opportunities for all people.
The second camp, however, because it does share some common ground with Nietzsche himself, can actually debate with him. The fundamental question here would consist of a discussion about whether or not Nietzsche's proposed State best serves the interest of the Masters. This debate would, as previously mentioned, center around the question of identifying the Masters. Nietzsche restricts the Masters to those who either are a conquering race or are descended from one such conquering race, those whom he believes to have a biological claim to the quest to become the Superman. Nevertheless, it would seem that Nietzsche is glossing over the possibility that someone might be a biologically possible Superman without necessarily being in a position of power. Many of the great people of the ages have not come from existing aristocracies, and many of those in the aristocracy have not been great people. To restrict the ranks of the elite to those who have an obvious hereditary line is to severely handicap these people who might become Supermen in other situations. It might be better, therefore, to allow a bit more flexibility in the system, to allow those who might have been accidentally or wrongfully placed among the Rabble to become Masters, and to allow those who might appear to be Masters by their place in the aristocracy to sink back down into the Rabble where they belong. Even Plato allowed for some possibility of movement between his classes in the polis of the Republic.
Nietzsche never did provide a very clear, direct attempt to define his conception of the perfect State, and it is indeed possible that he did not have such a conception. From the bits and pieces scattered throughout the rest of his work, however, it would appear that although there may be quite a bit of validity to his personal ethics, it is probably better to seek elsewhere for clear and insightful political theory, regardless of where you stand on the subject of human equality. Nietzsche's politics is ultimately either based on entirely the wrong premise, or too flawed to properly satisfy the premise it is based upon.

Existentialism Paper III: Nausea

2008-11-14T23:40:00.001Z

This paper dealt with one of the most important Existentialists of all, Jean-Paul Sartre, and his novel Nausea (Le Nausee in the original French). It's a terrifically depressing novel, and it confuses me why the Existentialists, who theoretically, at least, have quite an optimistic philosophy, write stuff about characters like Roquentin, who is a gigantic jerk. But anyway... here it is.

Jean-Paul Sartre's first novel, Nausea, is one of the founding texts of the French Existentialist movement, and served as something of a launching point for much of Sartre's later thought. The book walks the thin tightrope between novel and essay, becoming what some have called a "philosophical novel." The protagonist's journey from his previous state of despondency into a truly free, existentialist understanding of the world not only serves as an interesting fictional account of a character's psychology, it also provides a way for Sartre to examine the consequences of his existentialist philosophy in a semi-real-world context. But the novel is not without its critics, and there are those who contend that by ending the novel the way he has, Sartre is betraying his existentialist point and contradicting the rest of the novel entirely. It shall be the purpose of this essay, therefore, to examine the ending of the novel, and decide whether or not this ending is an appropriate one, or if it damages Sartre's purpose.
Nausea is written as the diary of Antoine Roquentin, a young man in his early thirties living in the fictional French town of Bouville. Roquentin has lived a somewhat adventurous life-- throughout the novel, we hear of his adventures in England, France, the Middle East, Africa, and even Japan-- but he now spends his days in the quiet town of Bouville, writing a biography of a minor French nobleman. During his time in Bouville, Roquentin becomes increasingly disenchanted with the life around him, and his past adventures. He lives an isolated life, maintaining relationships with only a handful of people: the "Autodidact," (self-taught man), a man who is educating himself on all subjects by reading the Bouville library in alphabetical order, and the patronne of a local café, with whom he has a purely sexual relationship. Both of these relationships fill him more with loathing than anything else-- the Autodidact disgusts him, and the patronne is, at best, a means to fulfilling some of his sexual desires, though oftentimes he only makes love with her out of a sense of habit.
In this isolated state, Roquentin begins to discover a feeling of creeping disgust and horror that he terms "the Nausea" which seizes upon him every so often. At first, he is unable to determine what it is that bothers him so much, but he realizes that his Nausea stems from the fact that the objects around him "are entirely what they appear to be and behind them… there is nothing" (Nausea 140). In other words, that the objects and people around him merely Exist, without any purpose or function whatsoever. Things and people themselves have no inner "essences" which determine their function or purpose. They simply exist. All his adventures of the past were not really adventures, they were merely things which happened to him-- there was no reason or sense of purpose behind them. Truly, he has "never had the slightest adventure in the whole of [his] life," (Nausea 57). Finally, he realizes that his attempts to write the biography of his minor French nobleman the Marquis de Rollebon serve no purpose except as a feeble attempt to justify his own life, and so he must abandon that, as well. Even when he meets his former lover and fellow adventurer, Anny, he realizes that she, too, is going through a similar existentialist quandary, and that his desire for adventure cannot be fulfilled there.
He is alone, and entirely free-- free from any possible hindrances to his own behavior, but also free from any possible guidance or direction from external source. At this point, at the very end of the novel, while trying to decide what he should do now that he cannot continue his biography, he finds himself listening to a piece of jazz he has always particularly enjoyed. While listening to the music, he begins to think of the songwriter and of the singer, and of their lives, and of what must have led them to write this music and then sing for the recording. Finally, it dawns upon him that he may be able to do something similar-- he may be able to himself write a novel in the same way that the song's composer wrote the song, and may be able to make other people who read the novel thing about him, and that he may be able to somehow justify his existence through this creative act.
This comes as something of a strange end to this otherwise bleak novel. Roquentin has just spent some 250 pages realizing that his life contains no meaning and purpose, and that he merely exists. He has already realized his attempt at self-delusion through his attempt to write his biography of Rollebon, and he has decided that there are no adventures and no "perfect moments" where the world seems to simply line itself up and work the way you want it to. Yet here he is, deciding to embark on a course of action so that he might "be able to recall [his] life without repugnance," and make others think of his life as he thought of the life of the singer and the composer, "as something precious and almost legendary," (Nausea 250). Some critics have gone so far as calling his actions here at the end of the novel "transcendental" and "redemptive," which are strange words to hear in an existentialist context. One cannot transcend anything in an existentialist context, because there is nothing above and beyond the existence of things. One cannot be "redeemed," because one cannot commit any sins.
There would seem to be two major arguments to be made here, then-- either Sartre is betraying his initial point and succumbing to the desire for a happy ending when there can be no such things, or he is somehow remaining consistent. Indeed, an argument could be made that Sartre is not betraying his initial point because of the way in which Roquentin makes his choice. Roquentin does not feel himself to be seized by the call of destiny, or by a "sense of adventure" the way he does at other times throughout the novel when he is still unaware of the total Existence of things (Nausea 194). Roquentin makes the decision to write a novel freely, and without pretending that his actions will have any grand sense of purpose. Roquentin is certainly not as unswervingly certain of this decision as he is of his previous sense of adventure which met with such failure. He feels "irresolute," and he dares not to make a decision yet (Nausea 250). Rather than seeking for his essence in the hands of a pre-ordained situation, he is taking his first few cautious steps towards the goal of self-reliance, authentic behavior, and individual essence creation. If he is "transcending" anything, it is human measures, and human notions of pre-ordained essences. He is finally aware of "the collapse of the human world of measures, of quantities, of bearings," and is seeking to make the best of his situation (Nausea 184).
But this seems like a flimsy rebuttal. Although he is aware that such a story cannot happen, his intended novel is to be an "adventure," and he wants it to be "beautiful," despite his earlier declaration that the human world's measures and relationships have collapsed (Nausea 250). He desires to look back on this moment and say that "It was on that day, at that moment, that it all started," (Nausea 251). He still wants to go on an adventure, even though he has realized that such things are not possible. But I am not willing to go so far as to suggest that Sartre has betrayed his initial point, or that he has discredited his worth as a novelist by contradicting myself. I would like to suggest that Sartre knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote these last few pages, and that Roquentin is, in the context of the novel, deceiving himself once again.
Roquentin has progressed towards his goal of the proper existentialist life-- he is still making strides in his desire to create his own destiny, and he is now seeking to define himself in his own terms, rather than in the terms of the Marquis de Rollebon, but he has not quite reached his goal yet. He comes to all of these realizations while he is listening to a piece of music which he rather likes-- not moments before, he complains about the "idiots who derive consolation from the fine arts," imagining a concert hall full of "humiliated, injured people who close their eyes" and seek to find their sufferings echoed in the music (Nausea 246). From an existentialist perspective, he knows enough to hold these people in contempt, and yet a few pages later, when the music washes over him, he also finds his sufferings and his ills echoed in the music through the lives of those who created the music. He has fallen once again into the trap he just finished identifying, just as he has so often fallen into the trap of perceived adventure.
Roquentin is intended once again to remind the reader that it is very, very difficult to truly live an existential life, if not perhaps entirely impossible. His best efforts still lead him to unconsciously betraying the tenets of existentialism and falling once more into the "human world of measures" he so despises (Nausea 184). Some might argue that Sartre himself fell into this trap with the ending of the novel-- that he intended to show a truly free man and instead just showed a man a bit further down the path of truly authentic action, and it is, indeed, impossible to know what Sartre's true intentions were in this matter. I would like to think, however that Sartre knew what he was doing, and desired to end the novel without pretending that it was the end of Roquentin's journey, but merely the ending of the first leg. Roquentin's life will forever be a battle between his existential desires and his essentialist upbringing-- there is no point at which he has conquered all of his demons and can now live the perfect existentialist life.

Existentialism Paper II: Crime and Punishment

2008-11-14T23:37:00.002Z

My next paper concerned Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, as you might have guessed. I love that book, and always have, and so I was quite excited.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's famous work Crime and Punishment has long been treated as a forerunner to the 20th century Existentialist movement. Indeed, though it was published in 1866, some twenty years before Jaspers and Heidegger were even born, two of the main characters of the novel behave much like early existentialists. Both Raskolnikov and Sonya find themselves in particularly difficult and morally complex situations and are forced to search out their own personal moral codes rather than merely acquiesce to the standard, conventional morality around them. Through their struggles, Raskolnikov and Sonya attempt to define themselves according to their own personal, subjective moral code. By so doing, they follow the standard existentialist desire not to accept any existing morality as inherently true, but rather to strike out on one's own in pursuit of a personal, subjective moral code. As the focus of the story is upon Raskolnikov, however, it is in Raskolnikov that we really see the creation of this moral code come about. Sonya has already completed much of her journey, and acts rather as a guide; someone who has finished her existential journey and now has her own morality.
In order to understand the complexity of their searches for personal truth, it is necessary to briefly summarize their situations. Raskolnikov is a young student who commits a horrible double murder. His first victim is an old woman pawnbroker and lender who could rightly be regarded as something of a blight on society. Though she is incredibly wealthy, she shows no mercy or understanding whatsoever in her dealings with her customers: she charges exorbitant interest rates and is unreasonably merciless when it comes to being paid back on time. If one is so much as a day late in paying off a loan, she will immediately keep your "pledge," (some form of collateral) and will still expect to be paid back at the same exorbitant interest rate. Raskolnikov therefore decides that he shall murder her and give her money and valuables back to the people she has taken them from. It is important to note that Raskolnikov does not kill her out of a desire for revenge or personal gain. He does it because he considers himself morally allowed, and possibly even morally obligated, to do it. In the end, he does not profit so much as a copeck from the murder. His second murder is not so well thought out. The old woman has a mentally disabled sister named Lizaveta who comes home just after Raskolnikov has killed the old woman, and he panics and kills her almost automatically, without really having time to think about it. The rest of the book is concerned with showing Raskolnikov's rationalization for the first murder, both before and after, and it is in this search for rationalization that his quest for a personal moral code is really made manifest .
Sonya's situation is probably the more sympathetic. She is a young, virtuous girl of about eighteen years of age who lives with her father and stepmother in a very poor section of St. Petersburg. Her father is a tremendous drunkard who steals from his family to support his habit, and her stepmother is slowly dying of consumption and overwork. Her father rarely brings in any money, and any money he does bring in is almost immediately spent on vodka at the drinking-house. Driven to desperation, Sonya's stepmother Katerina Ivanovna insists that Sonya go and become a prostitute. Realizing that her family may starve unless she does this, she agrees. Received Christian morality argues that prostitution is a great moral sin, and does not condone its practice, no matter what the circumstances. Sonya is certainly not happy about this situation, and once it is no longer required, she immediately stops, but she feels that it is her duty to her family, and would rather go against traditional morality than allow her family to starve. Sonya has thus risen above the traditional Christian moral argument that prostitution is wrong no matter what, and believes that she can justify it in her case. All of this discussion, however, happens before the book begins, and is related to Raskolnikov in a very early scene, before he has even committed the murder. Sonya's personal existential journey of moral self-discovery happens entirely off-stage, but it provides a suitable foreshadowing for Raskolnikov's journey, which does take place in full view of the reader.
Raskolnikov has apparently begun his search for a personal existential code long before the book begins. Porfiry, the inspector who believes Raskolnikov to be guilty of the murder, discusses an article Raskolnikov had written for a local magazine some six months ago. In this article, Raskolnikov puts forth the Nietzschean idea that "the human race is divided into the 'ordinary' and the 'extraordinary'. The ordinary must live in obedience and do not have the right to break the law… the extraordinary, on the other hand, have the right to commit all sorts of crimes and break the law in all sorts of ways" (CP 311). Raskolnikov apparently believes himself to be one of these "extraordinary" people, an Ubermensch, and to therefore be above the ordinary standards of morality set for the normal person. He is among the second class of people, the people who "move the world and lead it towards a goal," and so if there is some good that can be achieved by breaking the traditional standards of morality, he believes he would have every right to break those standards (CP 313). Though this, in and of itself, sounds a bit like some early Existentialism in that it shows a significant disregard for conventional, established morality; Dostoyevsky does not himself subscribe to this philosophy. He later goes on to describe this Nietzschean, nihilistic belief as a "strange, unheard of and unprecedented plague" sweeping across Europe (CP 626). Dostoyevsky is not endorsing this philosophy, he is instead using it merely for the purpose of characterization.
This nihilistic philosophy does not seem to really work for Raskolnikov at all. He becomes detached from the world around him and alienated from his fellow people. Because he views himself as an Ubermensch rather than a normal human being, he does not feel that he can connect in any way with anyone who is not also an Ubermensch. Furthermore, he begins to suspect that he is not one of the extraordinary people at all. The people he has imagined to be extraordinary feel no regret after having committed any of their actions, they merely accept them as necessary and then move on. Raskolnikov, however, is wracked with guilt and fear both before and after the murder. In his internal monologues (which make up most of the first half of the book) he always refuses to refer to his act as a "murder," instead referring to it simply as "that." However intellectually interesting it may have been, Raskolnikov finds no truth in the popular idea of nihilism; though he has espoused it for a while, it is not really his own, personal moral code, and he is therefore dissatisfied with its results.
Raskolnikov also attempts to justify the murder in terms of utilitarianism, of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people." Earlier in the novel, Raskolnikov overhears a conversation between a student and an officer about the old woman which motivates him to commit the crime. In this conversation, the student asks the officer to imagine the "hundreds, possibly even thousands of lives that could be set on the right road; dozens of families saved from poverty, break-up, ruin, depravity, the venereal hospitals—and all of that with her money," (CP 101). It is this conversation that truly inspires him to commit the murder. However appealing this may have been, however, it becomes ultimately futile-- Raskolnikov fails to lay hold of the chest full of several thousand roubles and instead steals a collection of past "pledges" and the old woman's small purse. Once he has these things, however, he is so wracked by paranoia that he first attempts to throw his ill-gotten treasures away in the river, and it is only once he believes that he will be caught if he disposes of them in this way that he hides them in a construction site. He never returns for the items, and all of the good that he might have done with the old woman's money is left undone. The strictly utilitarian philosophy, therefore, has also failed him. He cannot bring himself to follow through on its demands, and so he eventually abandons it, a well.
Nihilism and Utilitarianism were two of the dominant philosophical trends in the 1860s, led by Nietzsche and Jeremy Bentham respectively, and by rejecting both of these philosophies as well as the received morality, Raskolnikov has forced himself to attempt to discover an intensely personal code of morality. None of the other options are available to him. It is only at the very end of the book (in the last few pages of the Epilogue) that he does come to a morality he can truly adopt for himself, and so we will here pause a bit to look at some of the other characteristics that make Raskolnikov a sort of proto-existentialist before we discuss what conclusion he does come to.
Raskolnikov not only acts like an existentialist in his search for truth, he shows some similar priorities. One of the key points of the story is Raskolnikov's sister Dunya's engagement to Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, a fairly unpleasant fellow who does not treat Dunya very well. Raskolnikov surmises (probably correctly) that the only reason Dunya is planning to marry this unpleasant person is so that Raskolnikov himself can profit from it—she hopes to set Raskolnikov up in a business partnership with her fiancé, or, at the very least, she hopes that Luzhin's money will allow Raskolnikov to go back to school. This particularly bothers Raskolnikov, arguably even more than the murder itself. It is not that Dunya is being self-sacrificing that worries Raskolnikov; he himself often gives all of his money away in random acts of charity, and it is Sonya's willingness to sacrifice herself for her family that makes her so attractive to him.
What bothers Raskolnikov is that unlike Raskolnikov or Sonya, Dunya is trying to enter into a permanent arrangement which will define the rest of her life for Raskolnikov's sake. Short of some major tragedy, Sonya can just stop being a prostitute when it is no longer necessary, but Dunya is essentially selling herself into permanent prostitution just so that her brother can live a slightly better life. In so doing, she is sublimating her entire existence for the sake of another, and allowing herself to be defined by Raskolnikov and Luzhin, and not by herself. Sonya is only selling her body, but Dunya is selling her soul. That this makes Raskolnikov so angry is proof that he is behaving much like an existentialist-- the core of existentialism is self-definition. To thus allow oneself to be permanently defined by someone else is anathema to a proto-existentialist like Raskolnikov.
As a further point, both Raskolnikov and Sonya deal with these questions entirely on their own. Sonya, despite the fact that she is a devout Christian, never attempts to meet with a priest to discuss her options. She makes the decision to sell her body on the street entirely on her own. Raskolnikov, as well, never really seeks advice from another person, not even when he believes they know of his crime. He does go to Sonya shortly before his confession, but he goes out of a desire to be comforted, as he already really knows what he must do. Though Raskolnikov does attempt to use some of the popular philosophy of his time as a guide, as we have already discussed, he eventually rejects it and prefers instead to go forth on his own and sort out his own morality, without anyone in any kind of position of authority whatsoever dictating what he ought to do.
It is not until Raskolnikov has confessed his crime and has become a prisoner in Siberia that he finally comes to a conclusion about his personal morality. He has left such an impression on Sonya that she chooses to leave St. Petersburg and come with him to the village in Siberia near the prison (she no longer needs to support her family, as they have come into a great deal of money). He falls ill approximately a year into his eight-year sentence, and Sonya does her best to take care of him during this illness. He realizes as she is taking care of him that he can finally put an end to his search-- Sonya is the epitome of everything he really wants to be, and so it is Sonya's own morality that he will adopt as his own.
At first, this may seem like an un-existentialist end to an otherwise existentialist journey, and, indeed, this is not quite the way that the later existentialists will say one ought to arrive at one's own personal morality, but it is not quite as straightforward as it might seem. Sonya never proselytizes to Raskolnikov, she merely acts and shows him her personal morality in action. "At the outset of his penal servitude, he had thought she would torment him with religion, talk about the New Testament and press books on him," but she never even offers him a New Testament (CP 630). It is at this point that Raskolnikov wonders "What if her convictions can now be mine, too? Her feelings, her strivings, at least…" (CP 630). He is won over to her way of life not through active evangelism, but rather because he has finally found the way he wants to live, and has found it in its fullest expression in the young ex-prostitute standing before him.

Oedipus

2008-11-14T23:19:00.003Z

On October 27th, the Warners took us to a production of Sophocles' Oedipus, starring Ralph Fiennes (Yeah, you know, Voldemort) as Oedipus. It was in the London National Theatre, and it was absolutely fantastic.

I don't know much about Greek Tragedy, and I'm going to assume you don't either, so I don't know how much of this is standard for a true-to-form Greek play, and how much of this is unusual, but the stage was a large, slightly raked circle, with only two set pieces-- a huge (like, 15 ft. tall huge) stone gate and a table. The doors of the gate would, in fact, open and close throughout the show as people needed to move in and out of the "palace" that the gate represented. Most interesting, though, was the fact that the entire stage would rotate. Thus, the gate did one full revolution around the stage as the play went on. But the table in the corner didn't move at all-- I'm not sure quite how they did it, but it was really neat.

Oedipus, for those of you who don't know, is an ancient Greek legend about a guy named Oedipus, whose parents, King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes, hear a prophecy that their son will kill his father and marry and have children with his mother. They're obviously a bit scared of this, so they order one of their servants to go out and expose the child. (Exposing a child was actually a fairly common Greek practice in case of deformity or other problems. You took the baby out, left him or her on a mountain somewhere, and left. Yuck.)

The servant they entrust the child to, however, feels sorry for the baby and gives him to a passing shepherd, who takes him to the King and Queen of Corinth, who raise him as their own. Many years later, a passing comment from a drunk man makes Oedipus wonder if he is adopted-- he asks the Oracle, who tells him the same prophecy she told his real parents-- he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Terrified, he flees Corinth.

Well, guess where he goes-- straight to Thebes, where he meets a man on the road and kills him, and then rescues the city from the Sphinx. In return, the Thebans crown him king, and he marries the late king's wife. I think we can all see where this is going.

Many years later, the city of Thebes is suffering from plagues, famine, drought, and general unpleasantness, and it becomes apparent that this is because the man who killed the previous King has not yet been punished. Oedipus decides to seek him out, and realizes that not only is he the one who killed the King, but that the King was his father and his mother, Jocasta, is the woman to whom he is currently married, and with whom he has four children. Yuck. Jocasta kills herself in grief, and Oedipus gouges out his own eyes with some of her jewelry.

Yeah, it's a delightful play, full of hope. But anyway, Ralph Fiennes was absolutely brilliant as Oedipus, and the Chorus was fantastic-- they would actually sing snatches of their lines here and there, with these wonderful contrapuntal a cappella lines of music that really sounded quite eerie. My one complaint was that the actress playing Jocasta seemed to think that when agitated, all middle-aged women squeak and their voices crack, all the time, and this got a little hard to listen to, after a while. Even so, the show was absolutely fantastic.

So yeah.

--Bill

Blenheim Palace

2008-11-14T23:05:00.002Z

On the 25th of October, we went to Blenheim Palace-- this was the palace built by Queen Anne for Sir John Churchill (yeah, one of those Churchills) between 1705 and 1724 as a reward for Churchill's victory at the Battle of Blenheim (Blindheim in the German). That battle helped turn the tide against Louis XIV of France's attempts at European domination, and was therefore quite important to the English.

It's a ridiculously huge and beautiful place. (There are pictures on my facebook account. Well, there will be after I'm done with this post, at least). First, however, we went to St. Martin's, a little church down the road from Blenheim where Winston Churchill is buried (along with Consuelo Vanderbilt and several other nifty folks).

Blenheim Palace is probably most interesting to me from a historical perspective because it's the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, and, although he was never really in line to own it, an important part of his childhood. As you might imagine, a great deal of the Palace exhibitions are dedicated to Churchill, and they have, among other things, a large collection of his paintings. I didn't know Churchill was a painter. He was. And he painted like an Impressionist. And he wasn't half bad, either.

Anyway, the tour of Blenheim was mostly unremarkable, except for the architecture. The pictures will do a better job of showing that than my words, so I'll leave you to them.

Right.

2008-11-14T20:14:00.003Z

So, like, now I'm actually going to update some stuff. The last few weeks have been pretty horrifically difficult, but they're over, now, so tonight, prepare for a veritable flood of blog posts. Not right this second, but in a few hours.

If I don't get at least some of them done tonight, feel free to disown me as your friend and neighbor.

--Bill

Don't throw any rotten vegetables yet!

2008-10-27T13:32:00.001Z

No, I haven't forgotten to update, I just figured I might as well wait until tomorrow, since I don't have much to say this week, and after this evening, I will have gone to see Oedipus at the London National Theatre with Ralph Fiennes in the lead role.

So, yeah... talk to y'all tomorrow!

--Bill

Nietzsche Paper 1: German Universalism

2008-10-20T15:05:00.003+01:00

So, this one is definitely not the best paper I have ever written. In my defense, this was sort of a trying week, what with the whole break-up thing and whatnot.

However, I said I'd post them anyway. So, this is a paper for my Nietzsche tutorial-- even though Nietzsche isn't mentioned once, I don't think, in this paper. The idea was to take a look at some of the ideas that Nietzsche would be reacting against/add his own ideas on to, and so I looked at several of the important German philosophers who came just before him.

So, yeah. And, by the way, the stuff about Marx is true and all, but that's totally not the most important part of Marx and Universalism-- that would be Marx's idea that everyone has a universal goal: the defeat of capitalism and the creation of the communist state. So, yeah. A bit of incorrectness, there.

The study of philosophy consists not only of discussing the various differences between philosophers, but also of tracing the lineage of ideas from one philosopher to the next. Often one may find that one of the fundamental ideas of one particular philosopher's thought has its basic roots in another, very different, philosopher, and so it is in a discussion of the concept of universalism among German Enlightenment and early post-Enlightenment thinkers. Universalism is a very broad term with many possible meanings. In the broadest sense, however, it refers to any concept which is meant to apply in all logically possible situations regardless of the specific circumstances. As a noun, a universal is a type much like a Platonic Form, whose characteristics stand true in every particular instance of that type. As an adjective, a universal theory refers to any theory, usually moral or aesthetic, which argues that its principles hold true for all people anywhere, regardless of culture or education. As with so many other important discussions in modern philosophy, a discussion of universalism in the context of early post-Enlightenment German philosophy must naturally begin with Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, and it is in Kant's philosophy that the idea of universalism is most fully realized. However, Kant's notion of universalism found itself repeated in the ideas of many of the philosophers to follow him, especially those of G.W.F. Hegel, though also to a lesser extent in the those of Arthur Schopenhauer, and even in a very limited form in the writings of Karl Marx.

The word "universal" can be applied to nearly every aspect of Kant's philosophy. He appeals to universality in his ethics, his metaphysics, his epistemology and his aesthetics. Kant's first major publication, the Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781, was concerned with metaphysics and epistemology, both how the real world was structured, and how we know what we know about said real world. In an attempt to end the debate between the rationalist and the empiricist schools of thought, and particularly the ideas of Leibniz and Hume, Kant argued that though all specific knowledge about the world must indeed come a posteriori, or from empirical examination, this knowledge would be meaningless without a "repertoire of concepts contained the understanding itself," (GP 20, 33). Kant therefore posited the existence of certain a priori categories into which experiences are sorted. These categories, Kant claims, are universal and necessary for the human mind to understand its experiences at all. Every single human being contains within his head these categories. All true a priori truths, Kant argues, are inherently both necessary and universal-- these are, in fact, the criteria for determining a true a priori truth (GP 26). As his best example, Kant discussed mathematics. 5+7=12 whether you live in Oxford, Denver, Koenigsburg or Tokyo, and is also necessarily true, as it is impossible to imagine a logically coherent universe where 5+7 did not equal 12. This is also Kant's first real example of the synthetic a priori in action.

Kant's reliance on universality continues in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. In his first formulation of the famous Categorical Imperative, Kant states that one must "act only on that maxim which [one] can at the same time will as a universal law," (GP 77). In other words, an agent must imagine that the basis of his actions should become the standard by which the entire world operates. If I want to cheat on a test, for instance, I must imagine that everyone in my situation always cheated on tests. If the world I imagine then produces either a logical or psychological contradiction, I must not do the action. Since if everyone always cheated on tests, the teachers would A probably stop giving tests and come up with some other, more foolproof way of evaluating students' knowledge and B never trust anyone's test results even if they did keep offering tests, this produces both a logical contradiction (it is self-defeating) and a psychological contradiction (if no one ever believes my test results, I get in a lot of trouble and cannot get into graduate school). Kant's emphasis upon universality is the heart and soul of this moral tool. The rational laws to which the Categorical Imperative in all of its varied formulations appeal are completely universal. They apply to everyone at all times, regardless of his culture, society, religion, or color.

Kant's discussion of universality continues into many varied and different other branches of his philosophy, and a full explanation of every aspect of universality in Kant's theory would probably make a legitimate topic for a master's thesis. Since this is not a master's thesis, however, we shall move on to a discussion of how Kant's theories of universality are further explored in the works of G.W.F. Hegel.

Hegel was only 11 years old when Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason, and in his philosophic studies, he found himself constantly immersed in Kantian philosophy. He therefore viewed Kant's philosophy as "the basis and point of departure for modern German philosophy," and spent much of his life "improving" upon Kant's original theories (GP 119). Hegel agrees with Kant's theory that the rational laws of morality are universal, but also believes that they are not entirely sufficient as a moral tool. Because Kant insists that moral action must be entirely free of any personal desires, "his theory can yield only the bare, universal form of the law; it cannot tell us what our specific duties are" (GP148). In order to remain fully rational without lapsing into the kind of pure, abstract, universal reason that Hegel believes led to the Terror of the French Revolution, one must create a State, an organic community, which respects those personal desires and embodies the universal law of reason in its institutions (GP 155). Pure universal rationality merely prevents us from being self-contradictory. In order to be truly moral, we must become part of this "organic community" and freely, rationally choose to do our duties in this community. By thereby circumscribing our own personal desires within the bounds of this community, we truly fall in line with the universal laws of reason put forth by Kant but also stop them from becoming mere empty forms without any actual practical content. Hegel has thus taken Kant's notion of the universal as it pertains to rational laws, narrowed it and given it a more practical form.

Arthur Schopenhauer owes of his philosophy to Kant's notion of the universal than he does to Kant's notion of the phenomena and the noumena, but glimmers of it still remain in his philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, in Schopenhauer's discussion of aesthetics, he begins to speak of the objective, "timeless reality of Ideas," (GP 286). These Ideas which a true genius artist begins to get a passing, fleeting glimpse of are the same, Schopenhauer argued, as the Forms of Plato and Kant's Noumena. Although many philosophers through the years have argued that he unfairly conflates these two ideas, and that the Noumena and the Forms are not really identical concepts (and Schopenhauer himself realized that it was not technically true), Kant's influence in the discussion of Universals is still very much in play. Schopenhauer's Ideas are the universal Types which distinguish all of the particulars of one type from another. The Idea of a chair is universally different from the Idea of a table. Finally in Schopenhauer's idea of the Will, he believes that all of the universe is made up of this Will, and that all actions, whether taken by objects animate or inanimate, have behind them a kind of blind Will (GP 254). This common factor is another kind of universal-- all things in the world have this one thing in common, whatever their other differences, whether the are animate or inanimate, large or small, intelligent or unintelligent. Thus, although Schopenhauer's conception of universality is much less important to his philosophy than Hegel's is, one can still find the glimmers of Kantian universality hidden throughout his philosophy.

Last, and perhaps most tenuously connected to Kant's notion of universality, comes Karl Marx. Marx drew most heavily upon Hegel, but as Hegel drew heavily upon Kant, it stands to reason that some of Kant's philosophy would have found its way into Marx. Marx is certainly not going to agree to the notion that there is a universal rational law to which one must subject oneself, the way Kant and Hegel would. It is unlikely he even would have discussed the concept seriously, and even if he had, he most likely would have filed it away as another of the "false ideologies" put forth by philosophy and religion up to this point. However, it is one of Marx's most famous statements that we can still find the pieces of Kant's universality. Marx opens The Communist Manifesto with the famous declaration that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." By uniting all of history under one banner, that of class struggle, Marx has again showed his debt to Kantian universality. Marx does not argue that some of history is about class struggle, or that there have been some important class struggles in history, but rather that the entirety of history, universally, is a struggle between the rich and the poor, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Just as Kant argues that there are certain universal and necessary truths about humanity-- that all people take in their experiences through the synthetic a priori of the Categories and that they ought to appeal to the Categorial Imperative and universal rational law in their moral dilemmas, Marx argues that there is a universal and necessary truth about humanity-- that all of history has been class struggle. This may seem like a potentially weak link, and although it is certainly true that Marx is not anything like a proper Kantian, this idea of universality is one of the fundamental points of Marx's theory-- all working class people everywhere are oppressed, not just those in Germany or Russia, and it has always been this way, and this idea has its origination in Kant's obsession with universality.

Kant, therefore, although he would probably not have been pleased about it, managed to influence not only his obvious intellectual heirs such as Hegel and Schopenhauer, but even the radically different philosophy of the early Communists in Karl Marx, through the notion of universality. While it is not, of course, exactly true that Kant is the originator of the notion of universality-- if anyone can truly be said to hold that honor, it would have to be Plato, with his idea of the Forms, it was Kant who truly brought it once more into the foreground by making it such a foremost part of all of his major theories. This influence then trickled down the philosophical family tree and spread its influence widely throughout the next century, at the very least. Though by the end of its lineage here, the notion of universality was very different than when Kant found it, it still stands as one of the uniting factors in early German post-Enlightenment philosophy-- though Kant and Marx could probably agree to nothing else, they would agree that there are some aspects of the human condition which are completely universal.

Existentialism Essay #1: Kierkegaard

2008-10-20T14:50:00.003+01:00

This was my first essay for a tutorial here in Oxford. It's... not as good as it might have been. In my defense, however, my primary text was Kierkegaard's Journals, which are nigh-incomprehensible. They are, quite literally, his diary entries over a period of twenty years. Yeah. You try sorting through those in an attempt to get at some philosophical worth. It was quite an experience, but it was dang hard. So, here it is: Essay #1, Søren Kierkegaard vs. the Church

As a child, Søren Kierkegaard may have "seemed to be very conservative, to honor the king, love the Church, and respect the police," but in later years he would become famous for standing against the Danish Church and all that it stood for (Kirmmse 11). His radical philosophy and theology not only helped create a new form of Christianity which was significantly different than anything else suggested at the time, it laid much of the groundwork for the 20th century Existentialist movement. Many of his ideas sprang originally from his dissatisfaction with the Church of Denmark and, indeed, all of what he called "Christendom." Though he found many things about the state Church upsetting, much of his criticism seemed to center around two different, though interrelated, themes: the predominance of an emotionless, Hegelian emphasis on the objective and a general trend in the Church towards the de-emphasis of the individual Christian in the Church.

Kierkegaard's conception of Christianity was that of a highly private, individual and subjective experience. It was not a collective journey towards redemption, but rather an individual "life-and-death struggle between man and God," (Journals 575). "Christianity," he felt, "does not unite people-- no, it separates them-- in order to unite every single one with God" (Journals 574). The Church, he felt, was not allowing for this true life and death struggle between an individual man and his Creator, but was rather expending "every effort… to have us all look alike," to treat all of the individual Christians not, indeed as individual Christians at all, but rather as part of a vast body. It was this tendency that caused him to rebel against the Church and lay the foundations of his own proto-existentialist theology.

Many of the Christians of Kierkegaard's day, namely the Danish People's Church, were attempting to adopt Hegel's concept of the "Absolute" for their own use by equating it with their own form of Christianity. Kierkegaard opposed this adoption of Hegelianism because he believed it distracted the Christian away from what he viewed as the true purpose of Christian theology: the actions of Christ. For Kierkegaard, "Christian dogmatics must be an explication of Christ's activity… since Christ established no teaching, but was active," (Journals 14). Hegelian Christianity, however, as Kierkegaard saw it, "teaches that there is something absolute, and demands of the Christian that his life express that something absolute exists" (Journals 331). In other words, the Christian's life should easily show the objective nature of the Absolute that is God. Kierkegaard, however, is quick to point out that he has "never seen anyone whose life expressed that," and that despite all their exhortations for objectivity, their lives "express that man exists in relativity," (Journals 331). Kierkegaard argues that this emphasis on a cold, objective Absolute calls for a life which no person can really live. It is impossible to live in a way which really speaks to the existence of this objective truth, because it is the nature of man's daily life that he must exist in subjectivity. Not only is this impossible, but this emphasis paints Christianity as a cold, purely mental series of discussions about an abstract concept rather than as a dynamic and highly personal way of life.

Why, then, Kierkegaard asks, would one want to be a Christian? Kierkegaard argues that the life of a Christian is a difficult one, and that there are two answers to this question. The first, the Hegelian one, is in Kierkegaard's own rather entertaining words, "Shut up! Christianity is the absolute, you just have to!" (Journals 342). This is not a very compelling answer, Kierkegaard argues. Simply ordering someone to be a Christian so that he can be in line with the march of some abstract Absolute is not terribly convincing. The other answer is Kierkegaard's own subjective, emotional appeal that "because the consciousness of sin within [the Christian] grants him no peace, the pain of it gives him the strength to bear all else if only he can find redemption," (Journals 342). In other words, if a person believes he can find redemption through Christianity, he will have the strength to bear anything. One should not become a Christian simply because one has to be in line with the march of history, but rather because it gives one the strength to carry on despite one's sin and guilt. Any other reason is "quite literally lunacy" (Journals 342).

Kierkegaard's other worry was that the church was radically de-emphasizing the importance of an individual's own search for truth. He fears that as the church is constantly attempting to prove its own authority through creeds and attempting to "hit people over the head with the Bible" it is discouraging any individual pursuit of truth (Journals 43). Hegel and many of the other "profound thinkers" argue that "isolated subjectivity" is evil, and that objectivity is the "saving factor" (Journals 468). Kierkegaard agrees that true isolated subjectivity is an evil, but that the way to cure it is to "go all the way through to 'the single individual' -- face to face with God" (Journals 468). The problem with isolated subjectivity is not that it is subjective, it is that it is isolated the solution is to continue in the subjective path to the point where God is once again a subject and not merely an object. In the Church's attempts to standardize Christian beliefs across the board, they are reducing God to the status of an object, an impersonal Something rather than a Someone. By encouraging people to seek their own, subjective truths, rather than standardizing an objective truth, they will ensure that the people who come to Christianity in this way will view God as a subject, a Someone, and not merely as a collection of scattered ideas without any real emotional content.

Faced by the onslaught of objectivity, Kierkegaard feared that real Christianity was practically nonexistent in "Christendom," replaced only by a hollow, state-sanctioned church which perverts the purpose of Christian theology and suppresses the individual's true spiritual needs. In response, Kierkegaard founded a theology based entirely on subjective experience, on searching for the "truth for me," rather than an impersonal objective truth (Journals 32). In contrast to the cold, Hegelian rationalism, Kierkegaard argues for a Christianity of which love is the "mainspring" and "fear and trembling" is the "balance in the watch" (Journals 101). His Christianity, rather focusing primarily on a series of creeds and professions of faith, turns them loose under their own power to determine the meaning of Christianity by themselves. Indeed, it is unclear (from his journals, at least) whether or not Kierkegaard wished for there to be any form of organized religion at all. Indeed, when he says that there is "nothing so dangerous in Christianity as an official priest and professor," he may well be arguing for no Church at all (Journals 575). But it may be in his discussion of the proper nature of worship that we find his most interesting addition to traditional Christian theology.

Kierkegaard explains that Christ came to the world as a "prototype," constantly telling his disciples to follow his example, but that the people "turned the relation around" and "preferred to worship the prototype" until eventually, "in Protestantism it became presumption to want to emulate the prototype" (Journals 585). Again, "the apostle" does the same thing, but again, the people prefer to worship him rather than emulate his example. Kierkegaard, however, declares that "the only kind of worship God demands is imitation" (Journals 585). The proper way to worship God is not to sing hymns and go to church, it is rather to emulate the example of his prototypes. The appropriate way to live is to change one's life such that one begins to act like someone else entirely. It is in this idea, along with the basic idea of the subjective truth, that lays the foundation for the Existentialist notion of "essence creation." It is not best to simply memorize a series of creeds and to attend church regularly, but rather to consciously change one's own behavior after a model, and to seek out the truth for oneself, unhampered by any official priests or professors who "hypocritically falsify" Christianity (Journals 575). Thus, although Kierkegaard did have a desire to see "what the Deity really wants [him] to do," and he therefore probably would not have gone so far as to say that "existence precedes essence," he does believe that one can radically alter one's own behavior based on an imitation of someone else, and that one can seek out the truth on own's one and not simply take things on authority alone (Journals 32).

Faced with the notion that all of life's problems could be solved rationally, Kierkegaard created a theology that relies heavily upon emotions and subjectivity, requiring a "leap of faith" rather than a purely logical argument. Rather than suggest that authority should conform people to its pre-ordained idea of the perfect Christian, Kierkegaard argued that Christians should seek their own truths and their own ideas. Rather than deal with a passive theology which strove primarily to teach the concept of the "Absolute," Kierkegaard placed the emphasis firmly back upon Christ's actions, and exhorted people to imitate Christ if they wished to worship God. These emphases upon action, subjectivity and personal responsibility laid the basic foundations for the 20th century Existentialist movement. By taking the responsibility for a person's spiritual development out of the hands of Authority and placing it firmly in that person's own hands, Kierkegaard planted the seed for the Existentialist notion of personal "essence creation."

Hope you enjoyed it.

Essays

2008-10-20T14:49:00.001+01:00

So, it occurs to me that one thing that might be fun for those of you who care about such things would be to see the essays that I write each week. So, I'm going to start posting them here. If you're not interested in obscure philosophy, don't read them!

Also, that will hopefully remind me to write good essays, if I'm going to post them here on the Interwebs for all to see and hear...

The Eagle and Child

2008-10-20T14:40:00.004+01:00

So, on Saturday, my friend Joel and I went to the Eagle and Child pub here in Oxford. For those of you who don't know, the Eagle and Child is the pub most famously associated with a literary circle called the Inklings, whose members included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. So, since Joel and I have always been huge fans of those two geniuses, we thought it might be a good time to go to the pub.

I had kind of been hoping for a sort of spiritual experience, sort of like this:

As we sat near the benches where those brilliant minds had once sat, drunk, joked and discussed their genius with each other, I felt a trembling inside. The room seemed to go dark, and then all at once there was a flash of Light. Standing before us were two ghostly figures, their countenances obscured by an unearthly radiance. They raised their hands before us and solemnly intoned that we, Joel and I, were their intellectual heirs, and that we should go forth and change the world as they once did. All at once, the radiance passed, and I saw before me the faces of two of the world's most brilliant minds, Lewis and Tolkien themselves. The shade of Tolkien lit an ethereal pipe, and that of Lewis grinned a mischievous grin, and then they were gone, as quickly as they had come. The room was brightly-lit once again, and everyone else in the pub seemed to be entirely unaware of what had just happened. Joel and I stared at each other in silent wonder, and returned home, somberly aware of our new responsibilities.

As it was, that didn't happen. The Eagle and Child is a nice pub, with some very friendly staff, and instead of pictures of ducks or whatever, it has pictures of the Inklings or old front covers of The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.

So, yeah. It'sapub.

But it was cool anyway.

--Bill

Oxford's Academic Structure

2008-10-20T14:31:00.004+01:00

So, I had another relatively uninteresting week by tourist standards, and I began to wonder what I would write about today. (Or yesterday. I'm late.) But then I realized that not everyone would necessarily know how my study is structured, and since it's very different from an American college, I feel it might be interesting to talk about it some.

In the first place, I only have two "classes," if you will, a term, and there are three terms from October to June, Michaelmas, Trinity and Hilary (no relation to a the Democratic almost-nominee). My first class meets eight times during the term (that's once a week) and my second meets four times (that's once every two weeks).

But good grief, Bill! You may say. That's not difficult at all! In America we take between four and six classes, and they all meet at least twice a week!

But there you would be wrong. In the first place, my classes aren't really "classes" at all, but are properly termed "tutorials." They consist of one-on-one meetings with the tutor. Before each meeting, I have to have read an ungodly amount of stuff (depending on how thorough I'm feeling, between 500 and 1200 pages of material) and then write a paper on that topic. The papers are not always specified in length, and they run from about five pages double-spaced to about 15 pages double-spaced, depending on the tutor and the subject matter. (And, obviously, the sincerity of the student.)

In these meetings, the tutor takes your paper, explains to you why you're an idiot, metaphorically rips your paper apart with gusto, and then discusses the reading and the paper with you. This can be a bit intimidating. In a properly run tutorial, the student does most of the talking, and there is no one else for him to fall back on when he doesn't know what to say. You can't just hope that the kid who sits in the front row will answer this question.

Thus, you do, in fact, actually have to do all the reading. This comes as somewhat of a shock to those of us who are used to public highschool, where the reading is more or less entirely optional. I had plenty of friends who got more or less straight As in highschool and maybe read 10% of the material. You can't do that in tutorials.

So, this term, I have two tutorials: my Major is in Existentialism, and my Minor is in Nietzsche. Thus, I have three essays due every two weeks, all of them about fairly complex philosophical subjects. Yippee!

So, the next time you say "Bill only has to go to class three times in two weeks," remember that the "class" is much, much less pleasant than your average college class of 100 students.

--Bill

So...

2008-10-14T21:54:00.001+01:00

This week was more or less unextraordinary... I don't know as there's really even anything worth commenting on. I wrote a paper on Kierkegaard, and now I'm working on a paper on Dostoyevsky and another on Hegel, Kant and Schopenhauer.

So... yeah. More to come next week, I guess.

--Bill

Love's Labour's Lost

2008-10-10T01:56:00.005+01:00

Later that evening, we went to a production of Love's Labour's Lost by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at their temporary theatre in Stratford. Love's Labour's Lost is also kind of a strange play, in that it's a comedy that doesn't really end happily, and many critics think that it was one of Shakespeare's earlier works, when he was still trying to prove his mettle to himself and his critics. Although it may not quite be up to the standards set by Much Ado About Nothing or The Taming of the Shrew, it is still quite a hilarious play in its own right.

For those who don't know the plot, it boils down to this: The King of Navarre and three of his closest friends, including Berowne, who is probably the lead character in the play, have decided to devote themseles to study for the next three years, which necessitates that they abstain entirely from the company of women, which they all swear to do. They can't even talk to them. Well, as luck would have it, there's some political stuff going down between Navarre and France, and the French king sends his beautiful daughter and three of her ladies to go and talk to the king of Navarre and his buddies.

Thereby forced to partly break their oaths, for matters of political necessity, each of the men finds himself falling in love with one of the women, and is forced to try to woo the woman he loves without letting any of his buddies know that's what he's trying to do. Hilarity ensues.

The part of Berowne was played by David Tennant, a very good Scottish actor who is probably unknown to most Americans. Tennant is the current Doctor Who (thus, much of the audience at Love's Labour's Lost consisted of rabid Dr. Who fans) and played a small part in the fourth Harry Potter movie as Barty Crouch, Jr. I'll be seeing him play Hamlet opposite Patrick Freaking Stewart as Claudius in just a few weeks as well.

The show was very well done. Tennant was hilarious, and certainly earned my respect as an actor worth following in the future, and the direction and chemistry between the various characters certainly made my day. It was quite an enjoyable evening.

When I got back to Oxford, I learned that all of the rest of the Jewell students who had been waiting to arrive in Oxford and Cambridge had gotten here. The American invasion of England is complete. Bwahahahahahah...

Warwick Castle and a bit of Stratford-upon-Avon

2008-10-10T01:42:00.004+01:00

On Thursday morning, we took an excursion to Warwick Castle, which, depending on how you want to count, is between 700 and 900 years old. It's heavily connected with William I, William II, Henry VI and Edward IV, among many other interesting folk. To read more about the history of the place, go to the Wikipedia article about it.

In terms of my own experience at Warwick, I should have photos up shortly. I got to see an oubliette for the first time, which is kinda nifty, if somewhat terrifying. (An oubliette was a small hole in which a disliked prisoner was thrown and then forgotten about. Literally. He starved to death down there, entirely away from anyone who cared.)

Perhaps the strangest thing about the castle, though, were the various wax models scattered throughout the castle. Since Madame Tussaud's bought the castle off of the Earl of Warwick in the '70s, the traditional hyper-realistic wax statues that Tussaud's is famous for are all over certain parts of the castle. There's something terrifically surreal about constantly turning corners to see what looks like people holding unnaturally still. The detail on those things is incredible.

We then went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see a production of Love's Labour's Lost (more detail in the next post). Before we went to the show, however, we went to the church which contains Shakespeare's tomb. It's a beautiful tomb, and it's a bit strange to think that you're standing only feet away from the last bodily remains of the greatest poet in the English language. It's a beautiful church, too, as they all are.

On an unrelated note, that evening, we went to a pub in Stratford called the "Dirty Duck," and I had a pint. Which makes me feel all grown up and stuff.

Oops...

2008-10-10T01:40:00.001+01:00

So, I'm sorry a missed an update just this last week. Things got a bit crazy around here, and I flat forgot about it on Sunday, and so on and so forth. Anyway, here it goes.

The pre-Raphaelites

2008-09-28T18:52:00.003+01:00

For those of you who don't know (which would have included me until I got here), the pre-Raphaelites were a group of Oxfordian artists who resented the traditions of painting found in their academic schools, the very Raphaelite Renaissance. Rather than simply break with all convention entirely, however, they chose to mostly go back to the old Medieval style of painting and architecture, but with a heavier reliance on nature. Overall, you get a very interesting brand of painting and architecture with an incredible attention to detail and a very Medieval style.

Anyone interested in seeing pictures of their work or learning further, check out the works of Dante Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Frederic George Stephens, among others. Wikipedia has some pretty good stuff in there.

Anyway, Francis Warner (who, I would like to reiterate, knows everyone and everything) took us on a tour of Oxford to show us some of the pre-Raphaelite art and architecture around Oxford. It's everywhere. We went to the Rhodes Hall (for Rhodes scholars) and to several of the colleges (which are, apparently, more or less always open between 2-5 p.m. on weekdays, which is something I'm definitely going to exploit). We then ended up in the Ashmolean Museum, an art museum which is, apparently, free.

Probably the coolest single part of this tour was our trip to Keble College, one of the more Anglo-Catholic schools in Oxford. The chapel was absolutely unbelievable. Every last inch (including the organ pipes themselves) was painted with beautiful pre-Raphaelite scenes from the Bible. In a small room next door was "The Light of the World," arguably the single most famous painting of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and maybe of the 19th century in general (depending on who you ask). Look it up. Read about all the symbolism. Yeah. I saw it in person. Maybe 5 feet away.

Be jealous.

--Bill

Shakespeare's Bedroom

2008-09-28T18:46:00.003+01:00

On Tuesday, after Erin got here, we went on a small tour of things related to Shakespeare in Oxford. There aren't too many, but there is a pretty cool one-- Shakespeare, on his way to and from Stratford and London, would often stop in Oxford, and had a particularly family with whom he often stayed. They probably would have given him the guest room, and we got to see that guest room. It's actually in a building which houses a whole collection of offices and such, and the room itself is an office. It seems somewhat unremarkable, but actually, hidden behind a couple of wooden panels, there is a particularly beautiful hand-painted wall which is beautifully preserved and looks more or less just as it would have when Shakespeare stayed there.

We also got to see a couple of courtyards in which early performances of Hamlet and Othello are reported to have taken place.

Overall, this tour was pretty cool, but I suspect it was primarily designed just to split the group of us into two groups so that Francis Warner would have a smaller crowd for his pre-Raphaelites tour, which I went on on Thursday.

More about that later.

--Bill

Erin Clare McNeil

2008-09-28T18:40:00.004+01:00

So, apparently my housemates are very, very sneaky.

I came home for a short nap on Tuesday, and I discovered a strange woman in my house... a woman who does not live there...

Worried for my life, I discovered that it was my girlfriend, Erin McNeil. Apparently she had conspired with my housemates to arrive a couple of weeks before she needed to get here and surprise me! It was outstanding!

I love her a lot.

Anyway... thought you ought to know-- now not only am I in England, I'm in England with the most beautiful, wonderful girl in the whole world.

--Bill

Timon of Athens

2008-09-28T18:02:00.003+01:00

"It's a very strange play." With these words, Dr. Barry Webb introduced his lecture on Shakespeare's least-known play, sometimes called such delightful things as "The stillborn twin of King Lear." It is a weird play-- the consensus is that the play is a rough draft of some sort or another, and that Shakespeare probably only wrote about half of it. The other half was probably written by a fellow named Thomas Middleton, although there is still technically some discussion about who the other author is.

It was only put into the First Folio, the first major collection of Shakespeare's works, published in 1623 by some of his close friends, because they couldn't secure the rights to Troilus and Cressida. It's strange, because unlike the rest of Shakespeare's plays, which are, of course, famous for their incredible depth of character, Timon of Athens himself is somewhat shallow, and not particularly easy to sympathize with. He's alternately incredibly generous (to the point of absurdity) and incredibly misanthropic. There is no middle ground.

The general plot, summarized in a short paragraph: Timon has a whole bunch of money, and he is unreasonably generous. Thus, he gives his money out to anyone who wants any. And I mean anyone. Thus, he develops a whole crowd of hangers-on who say they love him and are his friends. At some point, however, he runs himself into debt and he asks those same friends for help (which they should be able to give.) They don't give it to him, and he loses everything he owns and gets thrown out into the streets, and becomes a gigantic misanthrope, living in the wilderness, until he dies.

Anyway, whatever the quality or nature of the play, I got to see a very rare performance of it at the Globe Theater in London, which has been reconstructed to almost exactly the way it would have been in Shakespeare's day. The Warners, who know everyone (Francis knew Lewis and Tolkien, and taught Sir Ian McKellen theater!) taught the director, Lucy Bailey, some years ago.

Faced with such a strange and difficult play, Ms. Bailey opted to do something a little strange with the show. Now, normally, as anyone who has ever heard me rant about our prodcution of Othello knows, I don't really go for re-setting Shakespeare or doing anything otherwise odd, but she did something very interesting, and I think I liked it quite a bit.

She said she had trouble with the show until she began to think of Timon's hangers-on as being like vultures attacking a corpse. Thus, she designed the stage to have a huge net on which various people would crawl about and, from time to time, swoop down on bungee cords and grab at things from the audience. The costumes were also designed to be vaguely avian.

It was nifty. More importantly, I was at the Globe, witnessing plays performed the old Elizabethan way-- no electronics, most of the crowd standing right next to the stage (as in, you're allowed to lean on it) and a great deal of interaction between the actors and the audience.

So that was cool. In the process, I got to go to Southwark Cathedral, a lesser-known cathedral in London which, though perhaps not quite as beautiful as St. Paul's, is still an absolutely stunning piece of architecture. Some of you may have postcards coming from that part of the adventure. I didn't actually get to go to St. Paul's-- I would have had about thirty minutes, and I decided that was not enough time at all.

Overall, that was an absolutely outstanding excursion to London-- the play itself was, perhaps a bit strange, but the performance was certainly quite enjoyable, and the trip to London was outstanding.

-Bill

New Plan

2008-09-28T18:00:00.004+01:00

So, I began to realize, as this week went on, that in order for me to post after every single cool thing I do here in England, I will quickly run out of time to do much of anything else.

That and the fact that this week got a little busier than I thought it would (for reasons I will explain shortly) means that I think I will now adopt the following policy:

I think I will just update this blog every Sunday evening (afternoon for you guys, wherever you are) with a series of separate posts for every cool thing I do. That way I can not be just constantly writing every evening, but you can still hear about all of my adventures.

If this, for some reason, isn't amenable to you, e-mail me at coberlyw@william.jewell.edu or Skype me at william.coberly.

--Bill

Real British People and Hampton Court Palace

2008-09-19T21:00:00.003+01:00

Two main stories, one from yesterday, one from today.

Yesterday, through a long and strange chain of events (nothing too dramatic, just very odd) we met up with a church group of Oxfordians for pizza and ice cream. That's right, a group of Real, Live British People. They behave mostly like American people, but things are "a bit mad" instead of crazy and "rubbish," instead of any of a number of words meaning worthless. And one of the guys looked a great deal like Michael Palin (who, I just found out, does have ties to Oxford. Maybe he's related?). We had a great deal of pizza and then ice cream at G&Ds, which most likely the best ice cream shop I have ever been to. Overall, it was a perfectly wonderful evening, although there isn't too much more to report here.

Today, the Warners took us on a tour of Hampton Court Palace, built by Cardinal Wolsey, then stolen and continued by King Henry VIII, then refurbished by William and Mary some years later, and now a museum commemorating all of those various and interesting things, but mostly King Henry. I uploaded a great deal of photographs to Facebook on this subject, and I think I'll let them do most of the talking. Oh, and give you this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Court_Palace where you can learn more about the architecture and stuff. It is definitely interesting to note the parts where the old Tudor architecture runs right up alongside Christopher Wren's Baroque style. If William and Mary had had their way and hadn't run out of money, they would have knocked down the whole dang thing and rebuilt it, but instead, they only got about halfway there.

It was very, very awesome (in the old sense of awe-inspiring) to walk in a place that Wolsey, Henry VIII, Ann Boleyn, Edward VI, Charles I and William and Mary all called home at various times. This was also the place where Charles I was beheaded at the end of the English Civil War! The sense of age was palpable-- it's the oldest architecture I have ever seen in person. I'm used to buildings of approximately 100 years of age being considered "old." These were about 500 years old.

That's all, I think. More to come later-- this weekend, I intend to finish settling in, explore Oxford a little more fully, and hopefully go to another pub.

--Bill

Introductory Lunch

2008-09-17T19:26:00.005+01:00

We had our introductory lunch today. Thought I would mention a few things about it.

The lunch was held in the Theberge (yeah, I don't know how to best pronounce it either) Room of St. Peter's College, which is a fairly beautiful place. (The college. The room is more or less straightforward). What particularly struck me, however, was the fact that they greeted us not only with sandwiches and orange juice, but also with wine. Many bottles of wine. Just a sign of the different attitudes towards alcohol found here in the United Kingdom, I guess. I can't imagine an American school ever serving wine at an introductory lunch kind of thing, even if they were quite sure that everyone was legally allowed to drink.

Anyway, moving on from the alcomohols, I thought I would go over what look like they might be some of the high points of the introductory course. We have a number of lectures which look like they ought to be fun, but most interesting is the manner of excursions we're going to be taking over the next few months. First, on Friday, we're taking a trip to Hampton Court Palace, which ought to be pretty cool. Hampton Court is a royal palace built by Cardinal Wolsey, then seized by King Henry VIII, then almost entirely rebuilt by William and Mary.

Next Monday, I'll be going to Timon of Athens at the Globe.

In about a week, Francis Warner and Barry Webb (whoever that is) will be taking us on a tour around various parts of Oxford looking for pre-Raphaelite and Shakespearean... stuff... which will take us into the Oxford Union and several of the colleges.

On October 2nd, we're taking an excursion to Warwick Castle and Stratford-upon-Avon. I don't know much about the specifics of that trip, except that we're going to see Love's Labours Lost that evening. I'm terrifically excited. Like, a lot.

Anyway, on October 25th we'll be going to Blenheim Palace, and on the 27th, we'll be seeing Sophocles' Oedipus at London's National Theatre's Olivier Theatre, which ought to be pretty nifty. Ralph Fiennes (Yeah, Voldemort) is playing Oedipus.

Next (which is the thing about which I am probably the most excited) we'll be seeing a production of Hamlet at the RSC Courtyard Theatre on November 11th. The reason I'm so excited (above and beyond the fact that I'll finally be seeing a production of Hamlet) is the fact that Patrick Stewart is in it. Yeah, Freaking Patrick Stewart. Make it so. He plays Claudius, and David Tennant (pretty well-known theater actor, but also played Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter IV) plays Hamlet.

On November 17th, I'll be seeing Wilde's An Ideal Husband at the Oxford Playhouse.

And that's it for this term, though there will be more fun at the beginning of this next year. Go ahead, try to tell me you're not jealous without lying to me. Try it. David Tennant, Ralph Fiennes, and Freaking Patrick Stewart.

--Bill

First impressions continued...

2008-09-16T12:07:00.001+01:00

So, I all of a sudden got very tired typing the last post last night and dang near fell asleep at the computer. There was nodding off going on.

Anyway, among my other experiences included a trip to a real English pub yesterday. It was pretty nifty, although there wasn't anything all that cool to write home about. I didn't drink anything (although what's neat is that I could if I wanted) but I'll probably remedy that sometime soon (though not to excess. Being drunk in a foreign country is something I'm going to try to avoid).

The one interesting thing is that you order at the bar and then they bring you your food at your table. We weren't sure how to do the protocol and had to ask the bartender how to order, which made us feel kind of silly. Thankfully, he was patient with the ignorant Americans.

What was particularly interesting about the pub, however, is that it was a very, very old building. The building itself dated back to about 1250, as I recall, (though it was a private residence and not a pub, then) and became a pub officially in about 1600, as I recall. Since I'm used to thinking of buildings that are about 100 years old as "old buildings," being in a 750-year-old building was quite an experience.

My house is about a 30 minute walk from the center of Oxford, which isn't too bad. It means we don't have as much traffic as I'm sure we would if we were closer to the City Centre, but it also means that it's a bit of a walk to the nearest real grocery store, although there is a convenience store closer.

I got to see one of the other houses today, and I think I like mine better, which is a good feeling.

Anyway, nothing much interesting has happened yet today. I think we're about to eat dinner, which is pretty cool. Other than that, I think a whole group of us are going out to a pub later.

Initial Reaction

2008-09-15T20:27:00.003+01:00

It is 20:28 England time, and I have been in the United Kingdom for just short of 12 hours, and in Oxford for approximately 8.

Before I say anything else, I want to state that Oxford is possibly the most sublimely beautiful place I have ever been. The green trees and grass, the Thames serenely rolling through the city, and most of all, the beautiful architecture. I had lunch today in a pub that has its roots in about 1300 A.D. Everywhere there are spires and statues and stone and enclosed courtyards and beautiful churches, and I find myself stopping and staring at Christ Church every time I've walked past it. Even the houses and the shops are housed in old, beautiful buildings.

But onward, to a discussion of first impressions.

Oddly, one of the first things I noticed was that everyone had a British accent. You wouldn't think this would be particularly surprising. I was fully aware of that fact before I got here. But I think it makes sense that this was surprising-- when you're on a bus or in a crowd in America, if you hear a foreign accent, you tend to pay some degree of attention to that voice for a few moments. The unusualness of the accent grabs your attention. You wonder what that person is doing in America, whether he or she is visiting family, or working, or taking a vacation.

Well, I find that my brain still identifies the British family of accents as an "unusual" or "foreign" accent, even though such accents now make up the majority of my auditory intake. As a result, I'm always finding myself being drawn to certain conversations and people more or less at random, because they just happen to speaking in a British accent. So, when everyone around you fits in the category of "Other," it still comes as something of a shock, no matter how much you were expecting it.

My house (flat?) is a lot of fun. It's small, but I like it a lot. I have met two of my three housemates, and Jillian and Melanie seem like really nice people so far. We went out to lunch at The Chequers, an old (really old, been a pub since 1600, been a semi-historic building since before that), and I see no reason why we won't get along. Which is good.

I have uploaded pictures to my Facebook account, so if you want to see them, go there!

Thanks!

--Bill

Ten hours and counting...

2008-09-14T08:39:00.000+01:00

So... I'm sitting in my room at about 1:30 the day before I leave, unable to sleep, stressing out over random little details, hoping that I haven't forgotten anything important.

It's sort of a strange feeling-- it alternates between moments of deep shock that this is actually happening-- that I'm actually going to Oxford after looking forward to it for something like four years now, and a strange sort of detachment, a part of my mind lying to me that this night is like every other night, instead of really the last night (it looks like) that I really live at home and am not just visiting my parents' house.

Going back to Jewell for a few days helped me cement some of the reality of the Oxford trip, though it also felt like I was just about to start school at Jewell again, so I'm not actually sure what the net impact was.

On the plus side, I'm listening to Muse's album "Absolution," which, I'm sorry to admit, I only discovered a few days ago, despite falling in love with "Black Holes and Revelations" about six months ago. Whatever. I'm busy. I particularly like "Sing for Absolution," "Hysteria," and "Apocalypse Please." I think they're very good songs.

But that's irrelevant. On the off-chance that you're actually reading this, the odds are that you care about my English adventures much more than my music at present. Does it help that Muse is an English band?

Anyway... so, not much to report yet. I'm just waiting... waiting... waiting... interminably waiting...

--Bill

So...

2008-09-14T08:32:00.000+01:00

Here's the general idea: I'm going to Oxford to study Philosophy for a year. Hopefully I will get to explore England and much of the rest of Europe while I'm doing this. On the off-chance that anyone is interested in my exploits, I felt I would write about them here. If you are interested, read about them. If you're not, don't.

The rest... is UP TO YOU.

--Bill