Free Thinking Festival 2011
Nov. 19th, 2011 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaI've got a lot going on this morning, but because I have so many chores that need to be accomplished within a specific time frame I'm not free to sit and write. Instead, I'm offering link to two provocative lectures I listened to this week:
Germaine Greer at the Free Thinking Festival 2011 offers a provocative (and somewhat libertarian) interpretation of Freedom especially as relates to whether we will be able to live with the potential outcome of Arab Spring. I recognize the controversial nature of the lecture and the woman who gives it, and offer the disclaimer that I do no claim her or her philosophy for my own, but I thought it was worth a listen. Weirdly, I will be sending it to my mother in defense of the veil:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016vq4v
One of the interesting stances she takes issue with is Rousseau's notion that "Man was born free..." She does not include the second half of the quotation, "...and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they," but does address the problem in her lecture.
Also, from the same Festival, this lovely lecture on "the crisis of commitment" from the Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser, formerly the Canon Chancellor at St. Paul's Cathedral charged with contemporary ethics and engagement with the City of London. He resigned in October due to his stance that anti-capitalist protestors on the steps of the Cathedral should not be removed by force. This lecture --- which uses The Magnificent Seven as its primary illustration on the difference between being "a gunslinger" or "a farmer" and the different types of commitment these stances entail --- is very Xtian in tone, but does offer some really lovely glimpses into the possibility of a Xtian ethics as separate from the faith. It also defines in many ways the struggle I have found myself a part of in engaging with an adult life:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016yrsm
I particularly like his defense of the specific or the local.
Both address the topic of freedom as "the condition of moral action," something very close to my heart. Though the BP would no doubt take issue with the idea of "choice" in this context, instead focusing on the "intimacy of coexistence." He describes compassion as a kind of compulsion in which we are forced to act out of intimacy with other objects, not because it is right, not because it is ethical, but because we are all in this sh*t together. (Against the Grain @ 33:00-38:20) (Enter the Non-Human 44:00, "Viscosity is what compels us, what puts us in the zone of 'the imperative.' (Alphonso Lingis) In this zone choice is not the theatre of moral action....")
Germaine Greer at the Free Thinking Festival 2011 offers a provocative (and somewhat libertarian) interpretation of Freedom especially as relates to whether we will be able to live with the potential outcome of Arab Spring. I recognize the controversial nature of the lecture and the woman who gives it, and offer the disclaimer that I do no claim her or her philosophy for my own, but I thought it was worth a listen. Weirdly, I will be sending it to my mother in defense of the veil:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016vq4v
One of the interesting stances she takes issue with is Rousseau's notion that "Man was born free..." She does not include the second half of the quotation, "...and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they," but does address the problem in her lecture.
Also, from the same Festival, this lovely lecture on "the crisis of commitment" from the Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser, formerly the Canon Chancellor at St. Paul's Cathedral charged with contemporary ethics and engagement with the City of London. He resigned in October due to his stance that anti-capitalist protestors on the steps of the Cathedral should not be removed by force. This lecture --- which uses The Magnificent Seven as its primary illustration on the difference between being "a gunslinger" or "a farmer" and the different types of commitment these stances entail --- is very Xtian in tone, but does offer some really lovely glimpses into the possibility of a Xtian ethics as separate from the faith. It also defines in many ways the struggle I have found myself a part of in engaging with an adult life:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016yrsm
I particularly like his defense of the specific or the local.
Both address the topic of freedom as "the condition of moral action," something very close to my heart. Though the BP would no doubt take issue with the idea of "choice" in this context, instead focusing on the "intimacy of coexistence." He describes compassion as a kind of compulsion in which we are forced to act out of intimacy with other objects, not because it is right, not because it is ethical, but because we are all in this sh*t together. (Against the Grain @ 33:00-38:20) (Enter the Non-Human 44:00, "Viscosity is what compels us, what puts us in the zone of 'the imperative.' (Alphonso Lingis) In this zone choice is not the theatre of moral action....")
