"I'll be hanging in a classroom one day"

In honor of today's topic in CoPhi, Stanley Cavell and philosophy in the movies...

You are so self-righteous. I mean, we're just people. We're just human beings. You think you're God!
-I gotta model myself after someone.
You just can't live the way you do. It's all so perfect.
-Jesus, what are future generations gonna say about us? My God! You know, someday we're gonna be like him. And he was probably one of the beautiful people, dancing and playing tennis. And now look. This is what happens to us. You know, it's important to have some kind of personal integrity. I'll be hanging in a classroom one day and I wanna make sure when I thin out that I'm... well thought of. Manhattan (1979) 

Postscript-

My new officemate, reminding me to memento mori, carpe diem, & have some integrity before I thin out. pic.twitter.com/pToJk5wf6i

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To live is an act of courage

Jennifer Michael Hecht on the suicide epidemic in today's military.

Throughout history, artists and writers have depicted “the sorrowful Ajax” because the story is so heartbreaking and so very human. At times, we are all—every one of us—our own worst enemy...

The American Scholar 

Remembering to seek peace

It's an unplanned but pleasing coincidence that the twelfth anniversary of 9.11.01 falls on the same day we'll be entertaining a visitor from the Peace Corps, in CoPhi... and the day after the President announced his intention to give diplomacy and peace a chance in Syria. We must push and celebrate progress where we can.

The scene on the Vandy library lawn this morning:

Coming to MTSU in January

Spring Semester-

Atheism & Philosophy: 

PHIL 3310 – Atheism and Philosophy. This course examines various perspectives on atheism, understood as the belief that no transcendent creator deity exists, and that there are no supernatural causes of natural events. The course compares this belief with familiar alternatives (including theism, agnosticism, and humanism), considers the spiritual significance of atheism, and explores implications for ethics and religion.

Our central theme this semester: the meaning of Atheism

What's the meaning of a godless existence? What gets atheists, humanists, naturalists and other godless folk out of bed in the morning? What reconciles them to belief in life non-eternal? How do they deal with their mortality? What  are their sacred texts, if not the Christian Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Book of Mormon, the collected works of L.Ron, ...? What are the possible "meanings of life" regarded strictly in its finitude?

Classes will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:40-4:05 pm in James Union Building (JUB) 202 beginning January 16, 2014.

Possible texts include

• Julian Baggini, Atheism ("it is certainly not the case that only endless activities can be meaningful")
• A.C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible ("there is experience also, which is what makes good and its opposite, In both of which humankind seeks to grasp the meaning of things")
• Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non=believers Guide to the Uses of Religion ("culture might be no less effective than religion in its ability to guide, humanize, and console. One would be able to have meaning unburdened by superstition"
• Christopher Hitchens, Mortality (“To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?”)
• Hitch, ed., The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer ("the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning”-Einstein)

For more info, contact Dr. Phil Oliver, phil.oliver@mtsu.edu.