Year: 2013

Members of the Philosophers’ Guild have spoken out this fall on the proposal to ban smoking on the Gustavus campus. In addition to publishing a letter to the editor in the October 11 WEEKLY voicing their opposition, members of the Guild recently appeared on GAC-TV to further explain their position. All members of the community…

The Philosophy Department again went all out to celebrate World Philosophy Day, a UNESCO-sponsored event that occurs each year on the third Thursday of November. Members of the Philosophers’ Guild did a masterful job of chalking quotations from philosophers famous and not-so-famous, and the department served cake at the Old Main Tea Trolley on Friday.…

Students in Josh Brown’s FTS have been spending the semester pondering the question “what makes the good life?” Today, the last day of classes, they are conducting some investigations in the field. Here is Josh, demoing the study.             Following their investigations, the student researchers repaired to the Courtyard Cafe…

President Barack Obama delivered a powerful eulogy for South African anti-apartheid leader, first democratically elected president and first Black president, Nelson Mandela. Among the things he said in praise of Mandela, this one stood out to the philosopher: Mandela taught us the power of action, but also ideas; the importance of reason and arguments; the…

  Hey! Get out there and examine your life! It’s World Philosophy Day, and even though UNESCO seems to have stepped away from its sponsorship of the day (perhaps they’re still exhausted from the crazy intensity of last year’s celebrations? Perhaps they decided that ten years was enough?) here at Gustavus, we’re still all about…

Check out how Alex Legeros, philosophy major and bassoonist, is using social media to raise the profile of A Musical Offering, the St. Paul-based music ensemble for which he works as assistant.

A recent NPR story, posted on the existentialist Camus’s birthday, offers a glimpse into the reasons that many people are lured by the siren song of boring jobs…only to realize that they’re, well, boring.  Give it a three minute listen.

Did you miss the talk about Deane Curtin’s year in India, and his work on a project commissioned by the Dalai Lama? You can check out the WEEKLY article here, but even better, you can see the whole talk right here.

Somehow, he doesn’t seem like the birthday-cake-with-a-hundred-candles type, but it IS the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the influential existentialist philosopher Camus. NPR ran an interesting story about him this morning, discussing the reception his work receives in his birth home, Algeria. Check it out here.