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Post by ralfy on Oct 26, 2023 23:51:12 GMT
Needed to make the material easier to teach, especially in survey courses, e.g., the Classical Age until around 400, the Middle Ages until around 1300, the Renaissance until the mid-1700s, the Age of Enlightenment until Wordsworth, the Age of Romanticism from Wordsworth until that's shattered by modern civil wars starting in the mid-1800s prompting Modernism, and then the dominance of globalization prompting Post-Modernism from the end of WW2 onward.
For a two-term set with 16 weeks per term (the first week for an overview and the last week for finals), you can have a month for each period, with the Renaissance using two months. Thus, Western Lit 1, from the Classical Age to the Renaissance, and then Western Lit 2, from the Age of Enlightenment to the Present.
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Post by theguvnor on Oct 27, 2023 9:58:18 GMT
Yes, I'd agree with that. It provides for easy frames of reference when teaching. Of course, the more you learn about literature the more you realize the divisions are arbitrary. Bear has by instinct ended up where many people do after years of study. You have all sorts of endless debates on this stuff nowadays with people arguing in ever-decreasing circles. At times I am reminded of the wizards in Unseen University in Discworld.
As a PhD student I've noticed even though people go on about dethroning canons and so forth we are still dealing very much with a middle-class and largely Western European group of students in the cohort of students with me. I can play the part of being middle-class quite well but I do like to annoyingly suggest at times that academics writing critical studies are all referencing each other which creates a sterile atmosphere. The literary figures who they are writing about often were not academics and I suspect some of them would have been withering in their observations of coteries of people talking about literature.
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Post by theguvnor on Oct 27, 2023 15:52:05 GMT
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bluekumul
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Post by bluekumul on Dec 2, 2023 16:09:55 GMT
As far as I am concerned: Modernism is scientism, belief in progress and rational self-interest. Both capitalism and Marxist socialism are based on modernist reasoning. Postmodernism is relativism and multiculturalism. It arose after WW2 when intellectuals started to doubt the idea of progress. It is in a way a reversal of fascist dogmatism and totalitarianism. However, for most people in real life modernism remains the dominant paradigm of thinking.
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Post by ralfy on Dec 3, 2023 3:23:59 GMT
The point isn't that the divisions are arbitrary. Rather, there are divisions, and more important a shift in thinking.
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bluekumul
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Post by bluekumul on Dec 4, 2023 18:34:11 GMT
The point isn't that the divisions are arbitrary. Rather, there are divisions, and more important a shift in thinking. Modernist mindset is flawed. I like the emphasis on democracy, cosmopolitanism and rational thinking, but I think it lacks selfless love and transcendent perspective. Postmodernism is pure rubbish.
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Post by homeschooldad on Dec 4, 2023 19:15:27 GMT
The point isn't that the divisions are arbitrary. Rather, there are divisions, and more important a shift in thinking. Modernist mindset is flawed. I like the emphasis on democracy, cosmopolitanism and rational thinking, but I think it lacks selfless love and transcendent perspective. Postmodernism is pure rubbish. I've been staying out of this discussion, but I would just like to note that all times have been "modern" to those living in them at that time. As a kind of side note, those of a certain age will remember the cartoon show The Jetsons. If you will stop and think about it, a lot of the things in that show have actually come true. When I want classical music, I just ask Alexa to cue up my favorite station (usually WETA or KUSC). We all carry around these little devices that can download any bit of information imaginable in a flash. We have what are basically robots doing things like cutting grass and vacuuming (I don't, but the gadgets exist). You want to see a movie or a TV show, you just let Roku know what you want. I'm also reminded of Mr Peabody's "Wayback Machine".
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Post by ralfy on Dec 4, 2023 22:58:13 GMT
The point isn't that the divisions are arbitrary. Rather, there are divisions, and more important a shift in thinking. Modernist mindset is flawed. I like the emphasis on democracy, cosmopolitanism and rational thinking, but I think it lacks selfless love and transcendent perspective. Postmodernism is pure rubbish.
I think a desire to return to "selfless love and transcendent perspective" is part of postmodernism, similar to the 1970s fascination for yoga and New Age spirituality in industrialized countries.
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Post by ralfy on Dec 4, 2023 23:02:57 GMT
Modernist mindset is flawed. I like the emphasis on democracy, cosmopolitanism and rational thinking, but I think it lacks selfless love and transcendent perspective. Postmodernism is pure rubbish. I've been staying out of this discussion, but I would just like to note that all times have been "modern" to those living in them at that time. As a kind of side note, those of a certain age will remember the cartoon show The Jetsons. If you will stop and think about it, a lot of the things in that show have actually come true. When I want classical music, I just ask Alexa to cue up my favorite station (usually WETA or KUSC). We all carry around these little devices that can download any bit of information imaginable in a flash. We have what are basically robots doing things like cutting grass and vacuuming (I don't, but the gadgets exist). You want to see a movie or a TV show, you just let Roku know what you want. I'm also reminded of Mr Peabody's "Wayback Machine".
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bluekumul
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Post by bluekumul on Dec 5, 2023 14:50:44 GMT
I think a desire to return to "selfless love and transcendent perspective" is part of postmodernism, similar to the 1970s fascination for yoga and New Age spirituality in industrialized countries. I prefer to see yoga and New Age as counterculture, not postmodernism. Both were born from the same postwar mood though.
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bluekumul
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Post by bluekumul on Dec 5, 2023 15:41:52 GMT
Back to the original question:
"When consciousness has gone, never to return" would indeed be a good answer if only we could measure that. Probably only God can know this with absolute certainty.
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Post by homeschooldad on Dec 5, 2023 17:23:10 GMT
Back to the original question: "When consciousness has gone, never to return" would indeed be a good answer if only we could measure that. Probably only God can know this with absolute certainty. But wouldn't permanent cessation of brain activity indicate that? I'm not seeing what is so complicated about all of this. Brain activity or no brain activity, when you cannot breathe without constant medical intervention ( ergo extraordinary), and when your heart cannot beat without being constantly stimulated (ditto), then death will come within a matter of minutes. So far as I am aware, there is no way to put the brain on "life support". When your heart stops beating, you will quit breathing more or less simultaneously. Ditto the other way around. Sadly, I know whereof I speak, from the experience of recent days. My mother was on respiratory support and has long left instructions that she does not want to be kept alive by extraordinary artificial means. The doctors removed her respirator Friday night, after the priest had come to administer Extreme Unction. Deo gratias, she was able to breathe without help and is now back to normal in that respect, she doesn't even need oxygen (which is probably not an extraordinary means). But if it had gone the other way, Friday would have been the last day of her earthly life. We all knew that, and she was okay with it.
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Post by ralfy on Dec 6, 2023 1:16:31 GMT
I think a desire to return to "selfless love and transcendent perspective" is part of postmodernism, similar to the 1970s fascination for yoga and New Age spirituality in industrialized countries. I prefer to see yoga and New Age as counterculture, not postmodernism. Both were born from the same postwar mood though.
Counterculture itself is part of postmodernism, i.e., "an intellectual stance or mode of discourse[1][2] characterized by skepticism toward the "grand narratives" of modernism; rejection of epistemic (scientific) certainty or the stability of meaning; and sensitivity to the role of ideology in maintaining political power.[3][4]"
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Post by ralfy on Dec 6, 2023 1:23:37 GMT
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