1.
Jacques Derrida
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Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in Algeria. Derrida is best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous texts and he is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. During his career Derrida published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and he also influenced architecture, music, art, and art criticism. Particularly in his writings, Derrida addressed ethical and political themes in his work. Some critics consider Speech and Phenomena to be his most important work, others cite Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Margins of Philosophy. These writings influenced various activists and political movements and he became a well-known and influential public figure, while his approach to philosophy and the notorious difficulty of his work made him controversial. Derrida was the third of five children and his elder brother Paul Moïse died at less than three months old, the year before Derrida was born, leading him to suspect throughout his life his role as a replacement for his deceased brother. Derrida spent his youth in Algiers and in El-Biar, on the first day of the school year in 1942, French administrators in Algeria — implementing anti-Semitic quotas set by the Vichy government — expelled Derrida from his lycée. He secretly skipped school for a rather than attend the Jewish lycée formed by displaced teachers and students. In this adolescent period, Derrida found in the works of philosophers and writers an instrument of revolt against family and his reading also included Camus and Sartre. In the late 1940s, he attended the Lycée Bugeaud and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, on his first day at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1952, Derrida met Louis Althusser, with whom he became friends. After visiting the Husserl Archive in Leuven, Belgium, he completed his masters degree in philosophy on Edmund Husserl and he then passed the highly competitive agrégation exam in 1956. Derrida received a grant for studies at Harvard University, and he spent the 1956–57 academic year reading Joyces Ulysses at the Widener Library, in June 1957, he married the psychoanalyst Marguerite Aucouturier in Boston. During the Algerian War of Independence of 1954–1962, Derrida asked to teach children in lieu of military service, teaching French. Following the war, from 1960 to 1964, Derrida taught philosophy at the Sorbonne and his wife, Marguerite, gave birth to their first child, Pierre, in 1963. In 1964, on the recommendation of Louis Althusser and Jean Hyppolite, Derrida got a permanent teaching position at the ENS, in 1965 Derrida began an association with the Tel Quel group of literary and philosophical theorists, which lasted for seven years. Derridas subsequent distance from the Tel Quel group, after 1971, has attributed to his reservations about their embrace of Maoism. At the same colloquium Derrida would meet Jacques Lacan and Paul de Man, a second son, Jean, was born in 1967
2.
John Searle
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John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and social philosophy and he received the Jean Nicod Prize in 2000, the National Humanities Medal in 2004, and the Mind & Brain Prize in 2006. Among his notable concepts is the Chinese room argument against strong artificial intelligence, Searles father, G. W. Searle, an electrical engineer, was employed by AT&T Corporation, while his mother, Hester Beck Searle, was a physician. A. His first two faculty jobs were in Oxford as Research Lecturer and Lecturer and Tutor at Christ Church and he has five honorary doctorate degrees from four different countries and is an honorary visiting professor at Tsing Hua University and East China Normal University. While an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, Searle was the secretary of Students against Joseph McCarthy, McCarthy was then the junior senator from Wisconsin. In 1959, Searle began to teach at Berkeley and was the first tenured professor to join the 1964–5 Free Speech Movement, in The Campus War, A Sympathetic Look at the University in Agony, Searle investigates the causes behind the campus protests of the era. In it he declares that, I have been attacked by both the House Un-American Activities Committee and, stylistically, the attacks are interestingly similar. Both rely heavily on insinuation and innuendo, and both display a hatred – one might almost say terror – of close analysis and dissection of argument and he asserts that My wife was threatened that I would be assassinated or violently attacked. In the late 1980s, Searle, along with other landlords, the rental board refused to consider Searles petition and Searle filed suit, charging a violation of due process. The court described the debate as a morass of political invective, ad hominem attack and he called for the realization that the US is in a more-or-less permanent state of war with these forces. Moreover, a course of action would be to deny terrorists the use of foreign territory from which to stage their attacks. Finally, he alluded to the nature of the conflict. In March 2017, Searle was the subject of sexual assault allegations, Berkeleys alleged protection of Searle was seen in some quarters as a recurrence of earlier problems in dealing with similar accusations against other staff. The suit, filed in a California court on March 21,2017 and it was reported that n early March, Searle’s students learned he would no longer be teaching his undergraduate Philosophy of Mind course. Beyond citing personal reasons, university officials provided no explanation for Searle’s departure, Searles early work, which did a great deal to establish his reputation, was on speech acts. He attempted to synthesize ideas from many colleagues – including J. L. Austin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, midgley – with his own thesis that such acts are constituted by the rules of language. He also drew on the work of H. Paul Grice, Hare and Stenius, strawson, John Rawls and William P. In his 1969 book Speech Acts, Searle sets out to all these elements to give his account of illocutionary acts
3.
Northwestern University
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Composed of twelve schools and colleges, Northwestern offers 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees. Northwestern was founded in 1851 by John Evans, for whom the City of Evanston is named and its founding purpose was to serve the Northwest Territory, an area that today includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. Instruction began in 1855, women were admitted in 1869, today, the main campus is a 240-acre parcel in Evanston, along the shores of Lake Michigan 12 miles north of downtown Chicago. The universitys law, medical, and professional schools are located on a 25-acre campus in Chicagos Streeterville neighborhood, in 2008, the university opened a campus in Education City, Doha, Qatar with programs in journalism and communication. In 2016, Northwestern opened its San Francisco space at 44 Montgomery St. which hosts journalism, engineering, Northwestern is a large research university with a comprehensive doctoral program and it attracts over $650 million in sponsored research each year. Northwestern has the tenth largest university endowment in the United States, in 2017, the university accepted 9. 0% of undergraduate applicants from a pool of 37,255. Northwestern is a member of the Big Ten Conference and remains the only private university in the conference. The Northwestern Wildcats compete in 19 intercollegiate sports in the NCAAs Division I Big Ten Conference, on January 28,1851, the Illinois General Assembly granted a charter to the Trustees of the North-Western University, making it the first chartered university in Illinois. The schools nine founders, all of whom were Methodists, knelt in prayer, John Evans, for whom Evanston is named, bought 379 acres of land along Lake Michigan in 1853, and Philo Judson developed plans for what would become the city of Evanston, Illinois. The first building, Old College, opened on November 5,1855, to raise funds for its construction, Northwestern sold $100 perpetual scholarships entitling the purchaser and his heirs to free tuition. Willard Residential College is named in her honor, Northwestern admitted its first women students in 1869, and the first woman was graduated in 1874. Northwestern fielded its first intercollegiate football team in 1882, later becoming a member of the Big Ten Conference. In the 1870s and 1880s, Northwestern affiliated itself with already existing schools of law, medicine, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law is the oldest law school in Chicago. The Association of American Universities invited Northwestern to become a member in 1917, in 1933, a proposal to merge Northwestern with the University of Chicago was considered but rejected. Northwestern was also one of the first six universities in the country to establish a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps in the 1920s, after the golden years of the 1920s, the Great Depression in the United States hit Northwestern hard. Its annual income dropped 25 percent from $4.8 million in 1930-31 to $3.6 million in 1933-34. Investment income shrank, fewer parents could pay full tuition, and annual giving from alumni, the university responded with two salary cuts of 10 percent each for all employees. It imposed a freeze, a building freeze, and slashed appropriations for maintenance, books
4.
The New York Review of Books
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The New York Review of Books is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is a literary activity. Esquire called it the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language, in 1970 writer Tom Wolfe described it as the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic. The Review publishes long-form reviews and essays, often by well-known writers, original poetry, in 1979 the magazine founded the London Review of Books, which soon became independent. In 1990 it founded an Italian edition, la Rivista dei Libri, Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein edited the paper together from its founding in 1963, until her death in 2006. From then until his death in 2017, Silvers was the sole editor, the Review has a book publishing division, established in 1999, called New York Review Books, which publishes classics, collections and childrens books. Since 2010, the journal has hosted a blog written by its contributors. The Review celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013, and a Martin Scorsese film called The 50 Year Argument documents the history, the New York Review was founded by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein, together with publisher A. Whitney Ellsworth and writer Elizabeth Hardwick. They were backed and encouraged by Epsteins husband, Jason Epstein, a president at Random House and editor of Vintage Books. In 1959 Hardwick had published an essay, The Decline of Book Reviewing, in Harpers, Jason Epstein knew that book publishers would advertise their books in the new publication, since they had no other outlet for promoting new books. The group turned to the Epsteins friend Silvers, who had been an editor at The Paris Review and was still at Harpers, to edit the publication, and Silvers asked Barbara Epstein to co-edit with him. She was known as the editor at Doubleday of Anne Franks Diary of a Young Girl, among other books, Silvers and Epstein sent books to the writers we knew and admired most. We asked for three words in three weeks in order to show what a book review should be, and practically everyone came through. The first issue of the Review was published on February 1,1963 and it prompted nearly 1,000 letters to the editors asking for the Review to continue. The New Yorker called it surely the best first issue of any magazine ever, after the success of the first issue, the editors assembled a second issue to demonstrate that the Review was not a one-shot affair. The founders then collected investments from a circle of friends and acquaintances, the Review began regular biweekly publication in November 1963. Silvers said of the philosophy, that there was no subject we couldnt deal with. And if there was no book, we would deal with it anyway and we tried hard to avoid books that were simply competent rehearsals of familiar subjects, and we hoped to find books that would establish something fresh, something original
5.
Michel Foucault
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Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic. His theories addressed the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels and his thought has been highly influential both for academic and for activist groups, especially those working within contemporary sociology, cultural studies, and critical theory. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book and these first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called archaeology. In 1970 he was admitted to the Collège de France, membership of which he retained until his death and he also became active in a number of left-wing groups involved in anti-racist campaigns, anti-human rights abuses movements, and the struggle for penal reform. He went on to publish The Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, in these books he developed archaeological and genealogical methods which emphasized the role which power plays in the evolution of discourse in society. Paul-Michel Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in the city of Poitiers, west-central France and he had been named after his father, Dr. His father was a local surgeon, having been born in Fontainebleau before moving to Poitiers. She was the daughter of prosperous surgeon Dr. Prosper Malapert, Paul Foucault eventually took over his father-in-laws medical practice, while his wife took charge of their large mid-19th-century house, Le Piroir, in the village of Vendeuvre-du-Poitou. Together the couple had three children, a girl named Francine and two boys, Paul-Michel and Denys, all of whom shared the same hair and bright blue eyes. The children were raised to be nominal Roman Catholics, attending mass at the Church of Saint-Porchair, in later life, Foucault would reveal very little about his childhood. Describing himself as a delinquent, he claimed his father was a bully who would sternly punish him. In 1930, Foucault began his two years early at the local Lycée Henry-IV. Here he undertook two years of education before entering the main lycée, where he stayed until 1936. He then undertook his first four years of education at the same establishment, excelling in French, Greek, Latin and history but doing poorly at arithmetic. In 1939, the Second World War broke out and France was occupied by Nazi Germany until 1945, his parents opposed the occupation and the Vichy regime, in 1940, Foucaults mother enrolled him in the Collège Saint-Stanislas, a strict Roman Catholic institution run by the Jesuits. Lonely, he described his years there as the ordeal, but excelled academically, particularly in philosophy, history, in 1942, he entered his final year, the terminale, where he focused on the study of philosophy, earning his baccalauréat in 1943. Returning to the local Lycée Henry-IV, he studied history and philosophy for a year, aided by a personal tutor and these ideas influenced Foucault, who adopted Hyppolites conviction that philosophy must be developed through a study of history
6.
Gossip
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Gossip is idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others, the act of is also known as dishing or tattling. Gossip has been researched in terms of its evolutionary psychology origins and this has found gossip to be an important means by which people can monitor cooperative reputations and so maintain widespread indirect reciprocity. Indirect reciprocity is an interaction in which one actor helps another and is then benefited by a third party. Gossip has also identified by Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary biologist. Social media has also provided a faster way to share gossip. In only a matter of minutes, harmful gossip and rumors can spread online from one place in the world to another, the term is sometimes used to specifically refer to the spreading of dirt and misinformation, as through excited discussion of scandals. Some newspapers carry gossip columns which detail the social and personal lives of celebrities or of élite members of certain communities. The word is from Old English godsibb, from god and sibb, in the 16th century, the word assumed the meaning of a person, mostly a woman, one who delights in idle talk, a newsmonger, a tattler. In the early 19th century, the term was extended from the talker to the conversation of such persons, the verb to gossip, meaning to be a gossip, first appears in Shakespeare. The term originates from the bedroom at the time of childbirth, giving birth used to be a social, ladies only, event, in which a pregnant womans female relatives and neighbours would gather. As with any social gathering there was chattering and this is where the term came to mean talk of others. Peter Vajda identifies gossip as a form of violence, noting that it is essentially a form of attack. Gossip is thought by many to one person while disempowering another. Accordingly, many companies have policies in their employee handbooks against gossip. TLK Healthcare cites as examples of gossip, tattletailing to the boss without intention of furthering a solution or speaking to co-workers about something else has done to upset us. Low self-esteem and a desire to fit in are frequently cited as motivations for workplace gossip, breaks existing bonds by ostracizing individuals within an organization. Enhances ones social status/power/prestige within the organization, inform individuals as to what is considered socially acceptable behavior within the organization. This causes the gossipers coercive power to increase, reward, when a gossiper tells positive information about a person, their recipient might believe that the gossiper will also spread positive information about them
7.
Obscurantism
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Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts of some subject matter from becoming known. Therefore, an obscurantist is someone who actively opposes enlightenment and the consequent social reform, in the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers applied the term obscurantist to any enemy of intellectual enlightenment and the liberal diffusion of knowledge. Moreover, in the realm of organized religion, obscurantism is a strain of thought independent of theologic allegiance. The distinction is that fundamentalism presupposes sincere religious belief, whereas obscurantism is based upon minority manipulation of the faith as political praxis. Thus, in the New Yorker magazine article Selective Intelligence, Seymour Hersh observes that Strauss endorsed the Noble Lie concept, the myths politicians use in maintaining a cohesive society. Prof. Shadia Drury criticized Strausss acceptance of dissembling and deception of the populace as the justice of the wise. In criticizing Natural Right and History, she said that Strauss thinks that the superiority of the philosophers is an intellectual superiority. Is the only interpreter who gives a reading to Plato. Leo Strauss also was criticized for proposing the notion of esoteric meanings to ancient texts, rather than explicitly presenting his thoughts, the philosophers esoteric writing compels the reader to think independently of the text, and so learn. In the Phædrus, Socrates notes that writing does not reply to questions, Strauss noted that one of writings political dangers is students too-readily accepting dangerous ideas—as in the trial of Socrates, wherein the relationship with Alcibiades was used to prosecute him. In observing and maintaining the exoteric – esoteric dichotomy, Strauss was accused of obscurantism and we can, as they did, create insurmountable problems in almost no time flat. We must do more thinking up front if we are not to be surprised and shocked by the consequences of our inventions. Joys proposal for limiting the dissemination of knowledge, in behalf of preserving society, was quickly likened to obscurantism. The second sense of obscurantism denotes making knowledge abstruse, that is, in the 19th and 20th centuries obscurantism became a polemical term for accusing an author of deliberately writing obscurely, in order to hide his or her intellectual vacuousness. Philosophers who are neither empiricists nor positivists often are considered obscurantists when describing the concepts of their disciplines. For philosophic reasons, such authors might modify or reject verifiability, falsifiability, immanuel Kant employed technical terms that were not commonly understood, by the layman. Because of his style which was obscure, Kant was properly understood by exceedingly few, and it is as if all the philosophical writers, who since Kant had had some success, had devoted themselves to writing still more unintelligibly than Kant. G. W. F. Hegels philosophy, and the philosophies of those he influenced, analytic and positivistic philosophers, such as A. J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, and the critical-rationalist Karl Popper, accused Hegel and Hegelianism of being obscure
