I recently started listening to classical music again. I made it a goal to acquaint myself with all the great composers. I fell in love with Beethoven's 7th Symphony because of its intelligence. I pondered the meaning and mystery behind Mozart's Requiem. However, it was only until I started listening to Vivaldi's famous "Four Seasons" piece when I came to appreciate this man I knew very little about.

    Vivaldi was born during an earthquake. If that doesn't spell "symbolism" then I don't know what does. In his early childhood he learned how to play violin. I suppose saying "he learned how to play the violin" doesn't do him justice. The young Vivaldi mastered the instrument. If that wasn't enough, he was ordained a priest at the age of 25. Unfortunately (or fortunately) he became ill and had to abandon the priest life, which caused him to focus more on his music.

     After becoming well known, and much later in his life, Vivaldi began composing one of the most famous pieces ever known, the Four Seasons. This brilliant piece depicts each season by emphasizing certain characteristics such as rain, thunder, and ice. If you haven't listened to this piece then you truly haven't lived. In fact, I once heard a pastor who jokingly made an argument for God's existence based on Vivaldi's Four Seasons. He put it simply:

1. Vivaldi composed the Four Seasons.

2. Therefore, God exists.

     I don't think this argument is to be understood as a valid argument, but it brings up an interesting point. There are just some things that are "beautiful." No amount of scientific language can ever give you that simple word. Only the human element, whether philosophy or theology, can adequately describe such works of art. I think that most people, whether scientifically minded or existentially minded, view Vivaldi's piece without using emotional words.

It is for this reason that I salute Vivaldi as one of my favorite Italians!

 

   I did some minor research about Pirandello and his beliefs and I was shocked to find how post-modern he was. Whenever he is asked a question it seems like his answers are very unclear and sometimes contradictory. For example, when asked what his political views were, he said,"I'm apolitical, I'm only a man in the world." This answer doesn't reveal what he believes in at all. He is simply stating his lack of belief (his agnosticism) about a particular viewpoint. Supposedly he admitted being a fascist when he said, "I am a Fascist because I am Italian." It's not too hard to see that he has given another fallacious answer. I suppose he is making the claim that "true Italians are fascists", but that can't be THE reason why he is a fascist.

   I suppose I'm just venting my fustrations with such people. Sure, I admire the novelist in Pirandello, but I certainly stand against his way of thinking. If reality is both true and false, as many of his writings suggest, then life is full of contradictions. Think about the ethical implications of this way of thinking. The truth is, he is yet another "thinker" on our syllabus who preaches one thing, but lives a completely different way. Consistency is vital to any philosophy of life.

 

In his bestselling book What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness, Stanley Bing uses Machiavelli's insight to advise up-and-coming business leaders. One reviewer called it the "ultimate guide to corporate backstabbing." Bing's chapter headings reflect how Machiavelli would move up the corporate ladder.

• He would fire his own mother if necessary.
• He would be proud of his cruelty and see it as a strength.
• He would permanently cripple those who dissapoint him.
• He would make you fear for your life.
• He would feast on other people's discord.

Machiavelli's view of lying is particularly helpful in writing your resume. Bing elaborates: "The list of accomplished liars is long and impressive. it doesn't pay to name them all. It would, in fact, be easier to name those who did not lie when it became necessary, although that might be impossible. Those who do not lie do not succeed, and therefore remain unkown." Machiavelli's advice concerning your resume is clear: lie, lie, lie!

It troubles me when people treat the word "Christian" the same as "Christianity." Too often people make generalizations and assume that person X is equal to worldview Y. The simple logic behind it should be enough for people to know that this is a false way to discover the truth in things. As for Galileo's "heretical" doctrine of heliocentricity, all I can say is that people have made the same mistake. Before I can offer my humble case, I must first answer a question: was it the Church vs Galileo, or Christianity vs Galileo?

A worldview teaches XYZ and a person (in order to stay consistent) tries their best to follow XYZ. Christianity, like all religions, is a worldview since it makes a certain claim as to how things are. A Christian, likewise, tries their best to follow the teaches of Christ (Christianity). Christians can fail to follow their religion, but that doesn't mean the religion itself is false. A perfect example of this is the Westburrow Baptist church, who, to be fair, are far from exemplifying what Christianity teaches. We are not called to make fun of homosexuals or protest at the funerals of dead soldiers. Period.

Unfortunately, some churches can interpret the Bible in unorthodox ways. The Catholic Church, during Galileo's time, interpreted the Bible in such a way that made the Earth the center of the universe. They had no reason to interpret it any other way. However, we cannot blame the Church for holding to that belief. For their time, and avaible evidence, it was a reasonable thing to conclude. This is no different than the view that the world was flat. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption for the time, even though it was proven false.

I'm not justifying the Church's ignorant response to Galileo's findings. You have to keep in mind that science was still at its infant stages and was not something that was worthy enough to challenge the authority of the church. Would the same abuse have taken place in protestant Germany? Who knows. All I can say is that Christians aren't perfect; afterall, we weren't meant to be perfect. We can take a look a these unfortunate times and either, (1) make silly generalizations about Christianity, or (2) learn from the past and use it to adapt to the future.

I want to end by saying that things are very different today. Science, philosophy, and theology are often depicted as being sworn enemies of each other. However, just by reading a book on the history of science, you will see that the opposite was true. Some of the brightest minds in history have been Christian. I hope this belief that in order to be a good scientist you must first be an atheist gets abolished. So I hope that all of you make the distinction between a person and a worldview. Never judge a philosophy by its abuse.

     Catholic churches are famous for their elaborate architecture, sculptures, paintings, and mosaics. In Renaissance Italy, the Catholic Church funded the arts by hiring the best painters, sculptors, and architects to exemplify the beauty ,the power, and the unity found within it. I'm sure this made some sort of 'alliance' between artists and the church.

     Art also played a role in the education and comprehension of Christian (Catholic) theology. During this time in history, the Mass was said in Latin. Common people would have found it very hard to understand what was going on audibly, so the use of the 'visual' (i.e. paintings, sculpture,etc) would have helped them grasp a certain concept. If you had a hard time comprehending what hell was, then all you had to do was go to your local church and see a horrific depiction of people being cast into hell fire. This got people thinking about their salvation.

   I bring this up because the Church is so deeply woven into Italian culture. I'm fascinated with  the Christian worldview and its developments throughout history. I hope this blog shed some useful light on the subject.

  

   Humanism means something very different today than it did a few centuries ago. It had some positive aspects for its time, but it also has a few negatives associated with it as well. I hope to briefly discuss both the positive and negative aspects of humanism and show how it shaped our mondern culture. First, let's talk about what humanism means today.

   Today, Humanism is regarded as an atheistic philosophy. It stresses the importance of human autonomy, especially over God. It's often associated with naturalism and materialism. Humanism is a growing philosophy that is taking hold of secular societies. When science becomes "scientism" then humanism closely follows. It attempts to explain the ethical without a transcendent anchor, such as God,

   However, it wasn't always associated with atheistic philosophies. Humanism flourished along side of Christianity all the way up to the Enlightenment. It stressed the importance of the individual in a society. God was still seen as important, but it was the Church that was affected. It's no suprise that the Reformation happened during this time. Also, the "Cast System" was eventually replaced with a more positive way of governing. In the Dark Ages, a peasant stayed a peasant; he couldn't move himself up the latter. Humanism broke some of those barriers and made it possible for people to become succesfull, or at least better off than they were.

   It was only until the Enlightenment when humanism started to change its direction. When 'reason' was seen to surpass 'faith' then many of the Intellectia started to abandon faith in the supernatural and adopt disciplines such as science and skepticism. Only what was empirically revealed to us by science was considered true. The thinking was that God could not be tested, so therefore he didn't exist. Although I find this line of reasoning completely fallacious, it still was appealing to many of the intellectuals of that day.

   We now find ourselves in a postmodern culture where humanism has the capacity to be a dominate force. Atheistic writers such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have made millions with their anti-religion writings. I suppose we are witnessing the fruits of a humanism gone unchecked and unchallenged. I think it will be frightening when religion is seen as an "evil" that should be removed from society.

   So those are some of my thoughts on humanism.  I think that it's a good thing, but that it must be kept in balance with other philosophies. I'm not sure if it has done more harm than good, but I'm more inclined to say that it is an overall "good thing", despite the evident problems we see today. I would like to hear your overall thoughts.

As I reflect on Dante's life, I recall another figure in history who also stressed the importance of writing in the common language of the people. Martin Luther was a German monk who lived 170 or so years after Dante. Luther was largely responsible for the Reformation of the Church. A key tactic that Luther and Dante used was to write most of their material in the language of the people. This blog will attempt to explain why this practice was particularly effective and briefly show the parallels between Luther and Dante.

During the period in which Dante lived, all Church masses were spoken in Latin. Moreover, all books were written in Latin as well. The intended or unintended result of this was a seperation between the 'educated' and 'uneducated'. Back then it would have been almost impossible for a peasant to learn how to read, let alone learn how to read Latin. There was no need for a peasant to read because his line of work didn't require such skills. I can see how this concept would lock an individual into a certain "class" that he wouldn't be able to get out of.

Although Dante and Luther lived in different time periods, they believed in the same concept. The concept was simple: Write in the language of the people and your ideas can be adopted by the masses, not just the select few. Luther had the miracle of the printing press available to him, while Dante would have to write his own books and have scribes reproduce them book by book. Books contain ideas, and ideas contain innovations to both an individual and a society. An idea can spread like a wild fire. 

When people started to read Dante's Divine Comendy, they were showered with the various concepts and ideas that were in those books. Since people had very little access to the Bible, books like these helped people understand some core Christian theology. Although Dante wasn't a theologian or philosopher, he still had enough knowledge to apply these disciplines in his writings. 

I want to be fair and say that probably less than 1% of the working class was actually able to read, let alone have access to Dante's literature. It wasn't as if a peasant could walk into "Ye Old Book Shop" and pick up a copy of the Divine Comedy. This was probably the case because only a handful of copies were availabe. I can imagine some well read individual absorbing the material from the book and then verbally communicating the story and concepts to the lower class. I can imagine that poetry was easier absorbed than some dry philosophical text.

Another implication of publishing books in the common language is that it strengthens the language in which it was written. The Italian language was forever changed as a result of Dante's work. Luther,too, greatly impacted the German language as he translated the Latin Bible into German. The traditional thought was that Latin better expressed wisdom, while dirty languages such as Italian and German couldn't effectively express concepts. However, if the common language could be evolved or enhanced then it could just as easily express concepts that were believed to be restricted to Latin. Although this didn't catch on until a lot later, you can imagine the path this paved for future generations, especially for the birth of humanism (not to be confused with the Atheistic philosophy of today) and the Renaissance.

I hope you learned the importance of the concept of writing in the language of the people. I believe the work of Dante set the stage for the advancement of future generations. It might be hard to grasp how important this was for the advancement of modern civilization, because afterall, English is used on all levels of education today. Today, we have no  "intelligent language", we simply have English. Finally, I understand that most of the facts in this blog aren't 100% factual, but I always welcome corrections. Most of the information I received was either from classes or books I read on the subject in the past. It wasn't my goal to write a scholarly article on the subject! Either way, I think my 'message' is at least factual. I hope you found this information useful as you (we) further expand our minds in this class. 

Thank you for reading this incredibly short blog! 

I'm having a very bad day! I spent 3 hours writing a blog for this class and just when I was going to submit it, the webpage refreshed! I lost everything! The replacement blog I wrote is only a shadow of what the former was actually like! Oh well.

I just needed to vent.

Hope you all have a good day.

P.S. Word of advice! Make sure to write your blog on Microsoft Word and then copy and paste it into the blog window once you're finished! I hope my blunder will prevent others from experiencing the same problem!

 

 

Dr. Stewart briefly addressed postmodernism in class today. I feel that this is an important topic to discuss because it can be seen as a huge obstacle in understanding and appreciating other cultures and religions. In this blog, I will define what postmodernism is, its implications, and whether or not it's tenable as a worldview. I hope this blog will be beneficial in helping you understand the importance of a consistent worldview.

   So what is postmodernsim? I understand postmodernism to be the worldview that believes  truth is relative. Postmodernism is a very dominant worldview in our very secular culture. All of us have run into a postmodernist at some point, and some of us may actually be postmodernists without even knowing it. You can easily identify a postmodernist when you hear a person use the following phrases: "That's true for you, but not true for me.", "Well, that's just your opinion."

   Before I continue with this investigation, I think I should define what truth is. I define truth to be that which affirms propositionally the nature of reality as it is. A proposition is a statement that affirms something to be the case. For example, "All men are mortal" is a proposition that affirms the truth that all men are mortal. Truth must also be noncontradictory. For example, "Earth is round and not round" is a contradictory statement. Therefore, truth is exclusive by nature.

   With that said, what would be the implications of postmodernism? The most common fruit of this worldview is that of religious pluralism. Religious pluralism is the idea that all religions are equally true (or all are false).However, this view cannot be true because of the nature of religions. Religions make truth claims about reality as a whole. The law of noncontradiction prevents all religions from being true. For example, Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified and that God is not a unity of persons. On the contrary, Christians believe that Jesus was crucified and that God exists as a unity of three persons in one God-head (aka the Holy Trinity). Either Christianity is true and Islam false, Islam true and Christianity false, or both of them are false and some other religion is true. However, it cannot be the case the both are equally true since they both contradict each other. Postmodernism wants us to think otherwise.

   I bring up religion because it seems like it's highly influential in shaping worldviews. Religions try to answer the most important questions about life, and when that is compromised, so are the values that the culture upholds. America seems to be particularly influenced by postmodern thought because of how diverse we are as a nation. In order to avoid controversy, perhaps we a more inclined towards "agreeing" with our opposition in order to avoid "offending" others. Postmodern thought seems to think that disagreement is equal to intolerance. However, the word tolerance presupposes disagreement. Wouldn't it be silly to say that you tolerate someone you already agree with? I believe that you can disagree with someone while respecting them at the same time.

   As a result of this "worldview", I think that Americans are increasingly close minded and ignorant of other worldviews. That is why I feel classes such as IT130 are very important in bridging the gap between two or more cultures. Postmodernism does the opposite. It destroys civil discussions and eliminates the productivity of debates. When these two things are seen as "hostile" then the amount of exposure to other worldviews is drastically decreased. Most Americans know little to nothing about other cultures, and I find that very sad. Afterall, if truth is relative then why should people listen to others? Ironically, to be an advocate of postmodernism is to contradict yourself in the long run because you're basically saying, "It is true that truth is relative", which is a contradiciton.

   Anyway, I hope that this blog made everyone more aware of the dangers of postmodernism. I hope that you can all see the implications that this "mood" has on the acceptance of other worldviews.

Thanks for reading! God bless. 

 

 

There were a number of very strong final papers in this class, including a very interesting and important video project by Scott Kelly which will not be posted because it involved military officers reflecting on the nature of power in the Army hierarchy.  (I would invite him, however, to post to the blog or comment here about what insights he gained from his project).

I would like to highlight four papers here that focused on different facets of the question of authority, power and force.  These papers are made available to readers of the blog by permission of the authors.

In her paper, Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Paradox of Female Leadership in Sri Lanka, Ruth Canagarajah wrote about what happens to women who rule in traditional patriarchal societies by focusing on two important leaders in Sri Lanka, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the first female Prime Minister, and her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, the first woman elected President of Sri Lanka.

August Dombrow writes about the dichotomous mode of thinking that dominates the language of the US counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in the context of the Global War on Terror in his paper, Lock Away the Thunderbolts.

Andrea Leshak draws on ecofeminist theory to articulate a connection between the subordination of women and the degradation of the environment in her paper, How Dualism and the Patriarchal View of Women and Nature as the 'Other' Result in the Subordination of Women and the Degradation of the Environment.

Finally, Dan Huff writes about the inconsistencies between the US application of "hard" and "soft" power during the Cold War and the post-Cold War era in his paper, U.S. Applications of Hard and Soft Power.

Each of these papers and the other very excellent papers and projects produced for this course engaged the question of power, force and patriarchal authority in nuanced and substantive ways. They demonstrate the importance, complexity and wide-ranging relevance of these issues for the practice of politics.