The Blog : Cogito Ergo Blogo

Many of us have been in love, and there have been countless great poems and popular songs written about it. So you’d think we’d all know what it is. Yet a lot of what has been written points to a deep mystery. So—as Cole Porter famously asked—what is this thing called love?

This week we’re asking the question: What Are Leaders Made of?

That depends on what you’re the leader of. After all, what do Girl Scout leaders, Army generals, corporate honchos, and Philosophy Department heads all have in common? Not much, I’d say. For example: whether you’re talking Girl Scout troops or Army troops -- an effective leader still has to have the ability to communicate and motivate. But motivating a troop of pre-teen girls to work hard and earn their badges is a lot different from motivating a troop of soldiers in the face of battle. It's easy to see how someone could be really good at the one, and bad at the other.

Before people think we’ve gone off the deep end, we should explain that by Mind Reading, we don’t mean anything having to do with the paranormal or the occult. We’re talking about the way human beings can be really good at understanding each other, the way we figure out what other people believe, desire, or intend. It’s this perfectly ordinary skill -- the basis and significance of which we want to explore today.

If the title of this week’s show sounds strange, it may be because we don’t normally think of poetry as being in the business of producing knowledge. Poetry, we might think, is about capturing impressions and expressing feelings. The goal of poetry is not to describe the world. That’s, after all, what we have science for.

This week’s conversation is about Epicurus and the Good Life. Now in common parlance an epicurean is one who is “fond of or adapted to luxury or indulgence in sensual pleasures; having luxurious tastes or habits, especially in eating and drinking.” But the ancient Greek Philosopher, Epicurus was decidedly not an epicurean in that sense of the word. His philosophy is actually pretty far removed from epicureanism as ordinarily understood.

Pantheism is the view that the world is either identical to God, or an expression of God’s nature. It comes from ‘pan’ meaning all, and ‘theism,’ which means belief in God. So according to pantheism, “God is everything and everything is God.”

This we’re going to discuss what it is to be “normal”. It seems simple enough. What’s normal is what most people do. Or perhaps what most people do, or what typical people do, or what most typical people do. It’s definitely what normal people do --- but that’s circular.

This week it's our annual Dionysus Awards show. The Dionysus Awards are presented to the most philosophically interesting movies of the year. And sometimes, when we feel like it, we also honor philosophically notable movies from the past. Unlike your average awards show, we accept nominations from the floor. So we’ll be talking to some of our listeners who wrote in with their suggestions, and to some special guests as well.

February is Black History Month. So we thought it might be a good time to do an episode on Black Solidarity. Now I admit that this topic may seem to be a bit, shall we say, 20th century. When this country still suffered from rampant racism, it made perfect sense for black people to band together on the basis of their shared history and experience to fight it. But now, in the 21st century? in the age of Obama? Why should we bother with matters racial anymore?

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Past Blogs

  • May 13, 2012 : Freedom, Blame, and Resentment
    posted by KT Our topic this week is a threesome.  We’re going to talk about freedom, blame,...
  • April 22, 2012 : What Is (This Thing Called) Love?
    Many of us have been in love, and there have been countless great poems and popular songs written...
  • April 13, 2012 : What Are Leaders Made of?
      This week we’re asking the question: What Are Leaders Made of? That depends on what you’re...
  • April 08, 2012 : Mind Reading
    Before people think we’ve gone off the deep end, we should explain that by Mind Reading, we don’t...
  • March 31, 2012 : Poetry As a Way of Knowing
    If the title of this week’s show sounds strange, it may be because we don’t normally think of...

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