Wednesday 12 January 2011

Kojeve Reading Group

This term Fred Aspbury will be leading a staff-student reading group.

We will be reading Alexandre Kojeve's seminal text 'An Introduction to the Reading of Hegel'.

This is a very important text in the history of 20th century western philosophy - Satre, Merleua-Ponty and Lacan - amongst others - all being significantly influenced by it. It was also used in the latter part of the last century to justify the western triumphalism the followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

These sesssions should appeal to all those who are thinking of continuing with philosophy in some form after graduation.

The first session will take place on Weds Feb 16th, 1-2.30 pm, in 215.

Hopefully we will see quite a few of your there.

Neil

Monday 10 January 2011

Hair Today?

I have been thinking about the political significance of the rise of image culture and its effects on politics.

And it struck me, is a politician disadvantaged for being 'bald'? There is a famous anecdote about the British politican Micheal Heseltine that claims that a 'signifcant percentage' of his constituents voted for him because he had 'a great head of hair'!!

Add this to the fact that Blair, with a full head of hair, beat three bald Tory leaders and you can see that Cameron might be in trouble. At the moment Cameron is as visually strong as Miliband (and sounds much better, as he is intonationally and rhetorically superior to Miliband). But he may be in trouble on the hair front - and here Miliband clearly has the advantage.

Might baldness decide the next election?

Neil