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Monthly Archives: April 2008

Reading

Monday, April 28, 2008

Notwithstanding his many “dinner parties” (I’m a bad white person because I’m not sure what they entail), Stephen Joel Trachtenberg (now that’s a name) has made an interesting (and a less interesting) point about students in the contemporary university: they want more. In his first post on students-wanting-more he points to a contradiction between complaints [...]

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Animals – Human and Non-Human

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Much scholarship in “animal studies” distinguishes between the “human animal” and the “non-human animal.” The point, I suppose, is to indicate that the human also includes the animal. However, what is the purpose, then, in calling an animal – say, a groundhog – a non-human animal? If the “human” is something “added” to the “animal,” [...]

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Philosophy of the Fart?

Saturday, April 26, 2008

From Chapter VIII, paragraph 2, “Of the Pleasure of the Sense,” of Hobbes’ Elements of Law, Natural and Politic:
And first for the pleasures of the body which affect the sense of touch and taste, as far forth as they be organical, their conception is sense; so also is the pleasure of all exonerations of nature; [...]

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New Course

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

I’m teaching a “first year seminar” during the Fall 2008 and Winter 2009 semesters. It is technically “Special Topics in Legal Studies” and the topic I have chosen is “The State, Law and Violence in History.” The second semester will likely look at various particular cases – bread riots in 18th century England, piracy, criminal [...]

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Brainstormed

Monday, April 21, 2008

Is it just me, or have Mark Bauerlein’s posts at Brainstorm in recent weeks pushed him from his adopted position as the “reasonable conservative in the radical academy” to just plain nutbar? Don’t get me wrong: Crash was a terrible movie – I agree with him there. But just because a movie is a sanctimonious [...]

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