“In writings of Obama, a philosophy is unearthed - Seattle Times” plus 2 more |
- In writings of Obama, a philosophy is unearthed - Seattle Times
- Notre Dame football adapting to injuries with 'Next Man In' philosophy - MLive.com
- The Brian Cashman Philosophy - The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog)
| In writings of Obama, a philosophy is unearthed - Seattle Times Posted: 28 Oct 2010 09:44 PM PDT When Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg decided to write about the influences that shaped President Barack Obama's view of the world, he interviewed the president's former professors and classmates, combed through his books, essays and speeches, and even read every article published during the three years Obama was involved with the Harvard Law Review ("a superb cure for insomnia," Kloppenberg said). What he did not do was speak to Obama. "He would have had to deny every word," Kloppenberg said with a smile. The reason, he explained, is his conclusion that Obama is a true intellectual — a word that is frequently considered an epithet among populists with a robust suspicion of Ivy League elites. In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography, "Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition," Kloppenberg explained that he sees Obama as a kind of philosopher president, a rare breed that can be found only a handful of times in U.S. history. "There's John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln and in the 20th century just Woodrow Wilson," he said. To Kloppenberg the philosophy that has guided Obama most consistently is pragmatism, a uniquely American system of thought developed at the end of the 19th century by William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce. It is a philosophy that grew up after Darwin published his theory of evolution and the Civil War reached its bloody end. More and more people were coming to believe that chance rather than providence guided human affairs, and that dogged certainty led to violence. Pragmatism maintains that people are constantly devising and updating ideas to navigate the world in which they live; it embraces open-minded experimentation and continuing debate. "It is a philosophy for skeptics, not true believers," Kloppenberg said. Those who heard Kloppenberg present his argument at a conference on intellectual history at the City University of New York's Graduate Center responded with prolonged applause. "The way he traced Obama's intellectual influences was fascinating for us, given that Obama's academic background seems so similar to ours," said Andrew Hartman, a historian at Illinois State University who helped organize the conference. Kloppenberg's interest in Obama's education began from a distance. He spent 2008, the election year, at the University of Cambridge in England and found himself in lecture halls and at dinner tables trying to explain who this man was. Race, temperament and family history are all crucial to understanding the White House's current occupant, but Kloppenberg said he chose to focus on one slice of the president's makeup: his ideas.
In the professor's analysis the president's worldview is the product of the country's long history of extending democracy to disenfranchised groups, as well as the specific ideological upheavals that struck campuses in the 1980s and 1990s. He mentions, for example, that Obama was at Harvard during "the greatest intellectual ferment in law schools in the 20th century," when competing theories about race, feminism, realism and constitutional original intent were all battling for ground. Obama was ultimately drawn to a cluster of ideas known as civic republicanism or deliberative democracy, Kloppenberg argues in the book, which Princeton University Press will publish Sunday. In this view the founding fathers cared as much about continuing a discussion over how to advance the common good as they did about ensuring freedom. Taking his cue from Madison, Obama writes in his 2006 book "The Audacity of Hope" that the constitutional framework is "designed to force us into a conversation," that it offers "a way by which we argue about our future." This notion of a living document is directly at odds with the conception of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who has spoken of "the good, old dead Constitution." Kloppenberg compiled a long list of people who he said helped shape Obama's thinking and writing, including Weber and Nietzsche, Thoreau and Emerson, Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. Contemporary scholars like historian Gordon Wood, philosophers John Rawls and Hilary Putnam, anthropologist Clifford Geertz and legal theorists Martha Minow and Cass Sunstein (who is now working at the White House) also have a place. Despite the detailed examination, Kloppenberg concedes that Obama remains something of a mystery. "To critics on the left he seems a tragic failure, a man with so much potential who has not fulfilled the promise of change that partisans predicted for his presidency," he said. "To the right he is a frightening success, a man who has transformed the federal government and ruined the economy." He finds both assessments flawed. Conservatives who argue that Obama is a socialist or an anti-colonialist (as Dinesh D'Souza does in his book "The Roots of Obama's Rage") are far off the mark, he said. "Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by," he told the audience in New York. "He has a profound love of America." And his opposition to inequality stems from Puritan preachers and the social gospel rather than socialism. As for liberal critics, Kloppenberg took pains to differentiate the president's philosophical pragmatism, which assumes that change emerges over decades, from the kind of "vulgar pragmatism" practiced by politicians looking only for expedient compromise. (He gave former President Bill Clinton's strategy of "triangulation" as an example.) Not all of the disappointed liberals who attended the lecture in New York were convinced that that distinction can be made so easily. T.J. Jackson Lears, a historian at Rutgers University, wrote in an e-mail that by "showing that Obama comes out of a tradition of philosophical pragmatism, he actually provided a basis for criticizing Obama's slide into vulgar pragmatism." And despite Kloppenberg's focus on the president's intellectual evolution, most listeners wanted to talk about his political record. "There seemed to be skepticism regarding whether Obama's intellectual background actually translated into policies that the mostly left-leaning audience could get behind," Hartman said. "Several audience members, myself included, probably view Obama the president as a centrist like Clinton rather than a progressive intellectual as painted by Kloppenberg." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Notre Dame football adapting to injuries with 'Next Man In' philosophy - MLive.com Posted: 20 Oct 2010 05:54 AM PDT [fivefilters.org: unable to retrieve full-text content] SOUTH BEND, Ind. — It's not the fact that Notre Dame is over .500 for the first time since Week 1 that has forced Fighting Irish fans to view this team in a whole new light. It's that ND is a whole new team compared to the one that opened the season ... |
| The Brian Cashman Philosophy - The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog) Posted: 30 Oct 2010 01:57 PM PDT Published: Saturday, October 30, 2010, 10:09 AM Updated: Saturday, October 30, 2010, 1:38 PMHere is a great quote of Brian Cashman's from Chad Jennings' blog at The Journal News-----
These are great words and a great philosophy. But during the next couple of years they will be severely tested--- (1) Derek Jeter, 36 years old- Up for a new contract this winter, Jeter has a lack of range going to his left, and he has performed well below average in two of his last three seasons. After 2010's All-Star break, Jeter barely looked like himself at all. He finished 2010 with an OPS+ of 90, the lowest of his career and his first time below 100. The Yankees plan on resigning Jeter, who deserves the accolades he receives. But how do you reconcile what Jeter will want in a long-term contract with the level of performance Jeter provided in 2010? (2) Jorge Posada, 39 years old- 2011 is his final year under contract. Jorge is starting to break down after a lot of years behind the plate. He is still dangerous in the lineup, however. That is, when he plays.(3) Mariano Rivera, 41 years old- Up for a new contract this winter. Mo throwing 91mph cutters still puts him among baseball's elite closers. But one of these days age will catch up to him, and it could happen at any time now. (4) Andy Pettitte, 38 years old- Pettitte had a great season in 2010, but was injured for a good part of it. Pettitte in some ways seems to be a better pitcher now than he ever was. But when will his body refuse to allow him the movement he needs in his legs and torso? Sad to say, it might already be happening. (5) Alex Rodriguez, 35 years old- The youngest of the group, A-Rod is still productive at the plate. However, the recently disclosed Texas Rangers' ALCS game plans tell of A-Rod's lack of mobility in the field (Jeter's too). He does not run the bases the way he used to, and his at-bats don't look the same. He appears to be swinging the bat with all 'upper body' now. Is he simply adjusting himself due to that hip problem, or is he already in decline, a decline possibly hastened by his admitted use of steroids? With 7 years remaining on that atrocious contract, A-Rod will eventually become Cashman's biggest test of his own words. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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