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capri0mniThere are neural pathways in my brain that have long been disused. They now feel quite overgrown with weeds and criss-crossed with giant, sticky, spiders' webs.
(In what is, perhaps, my most unfortunate metaphor yet, I take out my machete, and work my way down those pathways once more.)
I'm enjoying Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. I really am -- but --
The book developed out of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.
The author is Martha C. Nussbaum; the copyright holders are the Preseident and Fellows of Harvard College. That should tell you something.
I have not read anything this densely and formally academic in eighteen years. Although I got my education at fairly competitive colleges, they were not Harvard. And although I know something of the Enlightenment from my education in English literature and the history that went with that, I did not focus on Political Philosophy from the seventeenth century to the present.
I also have this vague sense that, in order to read this book as the author intended, I should go through the pages with a neon yellow highlighter, and work up an outline, for each chapter and section, jotting down main points and questions in a dedicated notebook as I go, so I can be prepared to study for the midterm.
I had to pause for a good and vigorous giggle at reading the name "Samuel Pufendorf" (and, indeed, I am still giggling at it, even as I type this section of this entry). He sounds like a professor at Hogwart's or something. Or maybe a fat and haughty orange cat with long whiskers, owned by the elderly lady who runs a Spices-and-Knick-Knacks store, on the corner.
Still, it feels good to give the brain a hefty bit of exercise (and yes, it feels like exercise)
(In what is, perhaps, my most unfortunate metaphor yet, I take out my machete, and work my way down those pathways once more.)
I'm enjoying Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. I really am -- but --
The book developed out of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.
The author is Martha C. Nussbaum; the copyright holders are the Preseident and Fellows of Harvard College. That should tell you something.
I have not read anything this densely and formally academic in eighteen years. Although I got my education at fairly competitive colleges, they were not Harvard. And although I know something of the Enlightenment from my education in English literature and the history that went with that, I did not focus on Political Philosophy from the seventeenth century to the present.
I also have this vague sense that, in order to read this book as the author intended, I should go through the pages with a neon yellow highlighter, and work up an outline, for each chapter and section, jotting down main points and questions in a dedicated notebook as I go, so I can be prepared to study for the midterm.
Grotius' theory was enormously influential, as was the related natural law theory of Samuel Pufendorf. I shall not discuss Pufendorf's theory here, because the main features I want to bring out are already present in Grotius' theory, and it is Grotius' theory, closely derived from Roman Stoic models, that is a major source for my own thinking.
I had to pause for a good and vigorous giggle at reading the name "Samuel Pufendorf" (and, indeed, I am still giggling at it, even as I type this section of this entry). He sounds like a professor at Hogwart's or something. Or maybe a fat and haughty orange cat with long whiskers, owned by the elderly lady who runs a Spices-and-Knick-Knacks store, on the corner.
Still, it feels good to give the brain a hefty bit of exercise (and yes, it feels like exercise)
