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MIDTERM

MIDTERM. Midterm will be in class for one hour. Bring bluebooks. Exam is closed book (and closed computer); no notes. A copy of this has been mailed to you. Two questions: I: This will be a brief question on an aspect of either Rawls or Sen.

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MIDTERM

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  1. MIDTERM • Midterm will be in class for one hour. Bring bluebooks. Exam is closed book (and closed computer); no notes. A copy of this has been mailed to you. • Two questions: • I: This will be a brief question on an aspect of either Rawls or Sen. • II. Reread the Weber vocation essays and the material on technology from Heidegger and Benjamin. You will be asked a “compare and contrast” question between some aspect of the Weber and either Heidegger or Benjamin.

  2. Plato • The argument of the Republic on democracy and the democratic soul

  3. George Kateb

  4. Kateb Who • Whitman Who • Leaves of Grass – if the point of CD and Walden is that most people live lives of quite desperation, not knowing where they live and for what, what can we do about it • Cf echoes here of Apology • what does it mean to describe oneself democratically? • The particularities of a democratic culture: we have to understand how people are connected to each other and to themselves democratically • We have seen in passing other ways • Contract • Natural hierarchy • Meritocratic • Racial • Friend enemy • Leadership of various kinds • Might add: covenant

  5. Democratic means • :what I assume you shall assume / For every atom as belonging to me as good belongs to you (211) • means?: as atoms our souls as infinitely potential • however we encounter certain limited manifestations (personalities( • WW wants us to reach for the potentiality • This means”: • All the personalities that I encounter , I already am, that is I could have become something like what anyone else is • Thus all of us are infinitely ore than we actually have (at this point) become • I have every impulse that anyone else has SO • When WW writes a Song of Myself • It is not a portrait of what he has done • Not a portrait of what is important about him • But a portrait of himself as a being who is like everyone else • Footnote here: Tocqueville

  6. This means two things: • All personalities I encounter I am already (214) • Rejection of any other human being for one reason or another for apparently good reasons as well as bad is a rejection of oneself. • Thus democratic individuals are composite and unknowable (I contain multitudes) 215 • Transformation (??IS IT?) of the know thyself as important: • It means knowing there is nothing to know (218) • This opens us up to kinship with others (219) • many perspectives within a frame (compare to Picasso; Sen)

  7. Duchamp – Nude descending a staircase

  8. this “poetizes everything” (219– cf Heidegger) • Requires courage • Give up the disposition to think that one is ones personality (Weber) • And That it is alright to live ones life dedicated to ones role • And That it all right to live a live dedicated to cultivating the manner in which one is different (cf Mill on eccentricity) • Not To close oneself off to experience by designating it horrible, absurd, condemnable • Two manifestations: • Youth culture • Bettelheim on camps (GK 225) • Note that WW identifies with the wife on the wedding night (224); when encountering a slave he says “My hurts” • If this is what a democratic culture requires, is it too much • GK has only questions • The point of having only questions as a democratic culture

  9. Compare to PLato

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