MIDTERM

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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.

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Plato

• The argument of the Republic on democracy and the
  democratic soul

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George Kateb
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• 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

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• 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

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• 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)

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Duchamp Nude descending a staircase
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• 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

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• Compare to PLato