"What Is College For?"

It's for "opening up to new dimensions," both in and out of the classroom.

Students readily accept the alleged wisdom that their most important learning at college takes place outside the classroom.  Many faculty members — thinking of their labs, libraries or studies — would agree.  But the truth is that, for both students and faculty members, the classroom is precisely where the most important learning occurs.

Gary Gutting, "The Stone"

And if you missed it: Simon Blackburn, "Of Hume and Bondage"

On Reverie

In his Gallic way, Raphael Enthoven's "Stone" essay echoes Julian Treasure: pay attention, listen up. "The world before concepts... Reverie is how one arrives at immediacy." Or is it the other way around?


The Baudelaire quote is terrific.

In the trembling of a leaf, in the color of a blade of grass, in the shape of clover, in the buzzing of a bee, in the sparkle of a drop of dew, in the sighing wind, in the vague fragrance coming out of the woods, an entire world of inspirations is produced, a magnificent and colorful parade of disorganized and rhapsodic thoughts.

Glad to see a French philosopher embracing perceptual immediacy as a counterweight to too much cerebral intellectualism. That was the spirit of Henri Bergson, so much applauded by William James.
On Reverie - NYTimes.com