Life as an Extreme Sport

Category: University of Washington

Classes taken while a student at the University of Washington, my alma mater.

add another class

Autumn 05

I decided I didn’t have enough on my plate for fall quarter, so I signed up for another class:

European Intellectual History: Nineteenth Century

Selected topics in intellectual history up to 1890. The philosophical consequences of the French Revolution, the development of idealism, conservatism, romanticism, and early socialist theory; positivism, the problems of historicism, new forms of Christian apologetics, utilitarianism in decline, liberalism as philosophy, the early Marx.

Class Description

The Course will examine the historical fate of the three major frameworks of thought (Scientism, Romanticism and Dialectical Theory) whose development and interaction shaped intellectual production in nineteenth century Europe. Of central concern will be the relation between secular historical consciousness and the desire to establish secure foundations for ethical values and cultural meaning. We will attempt to construct a viable historical genealogy for the course’s conclusion- Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “Death of God” and the “Death of Man”–extending back to the period of the French Revolution.

lecture/discussion

Recommended preparation

A course in modern European History, like HST 113 or HSTEU 303, or an introductory course in Western Intellectual history, like HST 207.

Class Assignments and Grading

Weekly response papers to the assigned Reading, collected at the mid-term and at end of course, an 8-10 page term paper, and participation in a small, unsupervised student discussion circle.

Required Reading

Texts by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Rene Chateaubriand, Gustave Flaubert and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as a number of shorter selections from other writers.

So that puts me at 18 credits, teaching 5 of them, and 5 of them research/thesis. And then there’s the working thing, and the arm thing, and… wheee!

Before you think I’m too crazy, chances are very good I will take the class S/NS – I just need to talk to John* about it first. But the class sounds fabu, I pay for 18 credits whether I take 13 or 18, and it’s a chance to learn more in an academic setting than I would otherwise. Why not take advantage of those extra five credits and DO something with them?

* John is the chair of the department, and will also be the professor for the class I will help teach. I’ve decided to stalk him this quarter, since Phillip was busy doing classes I’ve already taken. Which doesn’t mean I’m not stalking Phillip, I’m just going to stalk in new and interesting ways, and expand while doing so. But yes, stalking John, and figured I should talk to him about why I want to do S/NS and see what he says and go from there. Since John is, hopefully, writing a letter of recommendation (LOR) for me, I want to stay on his good side.

realization

Summer 05, Summer Institute

This has been nagging me for a bit, but I wasn’t able to formalize just what has been bothering me until now, and it is this: I’ve taken a wrong tact with the Summer Institute project, I’ve been projecting my issues outside when it needs to be internal. It’s not about him, what he did, but about me and how I’ve reacted, and how I’m cognicent of not liking how I’ve reacted.

This necessitates some change in approach, but the concept is still sound. And better, the concept lets me really tackle what Brian and I were talking about last week. You see, last year’s SI theme was tragedy, trauma, and they really saw how hard it was for the people involved. Brian wanted to do something different, he wanted to do hope. But hope was nixed as cheesy, so they dressed it up in something pretty and resold it. But at the core, this is supposed to be about hope.

No, I don’t trust easily or well, but that should be my focus, that and my desire to come out from beyond it. Hope, not trauma, not hurt. Hope.

consuming knowledge

Summer 05, Summer Institute

I was in lecture from noon to 1:30, group meetings on porject proposals from 1:30 thru a little after three, tea until fourish, then happy hour at Flowers until about 20 minutes ago. It’s a very good thing I adore the majority of the people I’m working with. In particular, I would love to open Brian Reed’s skull and consume his brain, and the knowledge contained within.

Academic

Summer 05, Summer Institute

“Grissom, do you ever worry about professional suicide?”
“Not while I’m committing it.”

Brian Reed and I had a lovely talk this afternoon, first at Aqua Verde and then on the bus ride home. Our conversation ranged from corpse flowers to constellations and our axis of perceptions, and of course my project. He’s intrigued, which is nice, and willing to work with me, which is excellent. What I most wanted to document, though, was talking about how I feel like such a fraud when I teach. I mean, who’m I to know enough to teach about any subject. Brian told me that this is the mark of a true academic – to be aware of those borders of knowledge, and to know when you’d come upon them. That it is those borders of knowing where our knowledge ends that allows us to teach to begin with. Then he reiterated thinking that I’m an academic – a true one, not one of those fakes wandering around. (I say this in jest. Mostly.)

It was also very nice to be reassured that I don’t talk too much in class; there are some that do, but I am not one of them.

Being at the level of having a relationship with a professor, one of interested equals talking instead of a power hierarchy of command, is very… I don’t want to say refreshing, because that implies I’ve not had that sort of relationship with Phillip. Rather, with Brian (and Ellen and Arianna, the other SI professors), it’s reaffirming. It’s not just Phillip, it is that I’ve reached a level in academia where I can have this cooperative exchange. It’s nice, validating, reassuring. This is the right place for me.

Concepts of Means

...and everything else, Summer 05, Summer Institute

The concept of means misses their reality. The taste for things, the appetite for reality, is not an agitation to compensate for inner lacks. The water we drink is not just a means to lubricate our inner organs; the thirty mouth drinks too much or too little, savoring the body and the bouquet of the wine, tasting the luminous mirth of the spring pouring out of the rocks. The foodstuffs obtained to refurbish depleted body protein and evaporated body liquids dissolve, for the taste that savors them, into terrestrial and celestial bounty. In the berries we gather as we walk through the meadow we relish the savor of summer. The substances that nourish us are not means for action that will seek for more means which are each time means for something further. After a good dinner, we turn to squander our energies on flowers planted in the garden in the glowing sunset, in kisses and caresses lost on an affectionate cockatoo, on the somnolent body of a lover. The colors and the shadows that contour the visible and lead the restless gaze in aimless circumnavigations through the environment fo not simply serve to locate what we need or want. Sigh is not an intentionality made of distress or desire. Vitalized, illuminated, and nourished by the substance of colored and translucent things, sight becomes high-spirited life. It caresses the colors, forms, contours and shadows, making them glow for themselves with their own lights.
-Alphonso Lingis, The Imperative, “Intimate and Alien Things”