Classes start in one week!
Sep. 21st, 2008 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeI have three options for fall quarter: this class on Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt, this class on Konzi and Mengzi (Confucius and Mencius), and just registering for the standard minimum research credit and plugging away at my actual work.
My thoughts.
It would be cool to be really conversant with Hannah Arendt's work, and probably somewhat useful to understand Carl Schmitt better. (In case you're not familiar with them, Arendt wrote a lot about totalitarianism and coined the phrase "the banality of evil," and Schmitt is often referred to as the political theorist of the Third Reich). On the other hand, taking a class would take at least 100 hours of my time in the next several months, which is at least three times more than I'd like to give those particular thinkers at this point. The specific readings for the class for Arendt don't focus on my interests in her work, either, and I don't think I could use the resulting paper for much.
Likewise, it would be worthwhile to be more familiar with the classics of Chinese philosophy, and I got pretty excited when reading an intro to the Analects because it was talking about how the Chinese language predisposes them to think more in terms of processes than essences, and I'd be really interested to see how much this is like Whitehead's philosophy. Yet actually trying to read the Analects didn't generate much enthusiasm, and my policy is to always follow my enthusiasm.
And as usual, I've got at least a dozen projects demanding attention, so it would probably make much more sense to spend the time on them instead.
So I'm leaning pretty strongly towards not taking either class. However, I'm open to advice. If you like, please make a comment to sell me on one or the other.
My thoughts.
It would be cool to be really conversant with Hannah Arendt's work, and probably somewhat useful to understand Carl Schmitt better. (In case you're not familiar with them, Arendt wrote a lot about totalitarianism and coined the phrase "the banality of evil," and Schmitt is often referred to as the political theorist of the Third Reich). On the other hand, taking a class would take at least 100 hours of my time in the next several months, which is at least three times more than I'd like to give those particular thinkers at this point. The specific readings for the class for Arendt don't focus on my interests in her work, either, and I don't think I could use the resulting paper for much.
Likewise, it would be worthwhile to be more familiar with the classics of Chinese philosophy, and I got pretty excited when reading an intro to the Analects because it was talking about how the Chinese language predisposes them to think more in terms of processes than essences, and I'd be really interested to see how much this is like Whitehead's philosophy. Yet actually trying to read the Analects didn't generate much enthusiasm, and my policy is to always follow my enthusiasm.
And as usual, I've got at least a dozen projects demanding attention, so it would probably make much more sense to spend the time on them instead.
So I'm leaning pretty strongly towards not taking either class. However, I'm open to advice. If you like, please make a comment to sell me on one or the other.