Some of my favourite comments from this year's #StudentEvaluations:
—I don't lecture enough: "students talk more than the professor because participation is required"
—I am a good substitute for coffeine: "The professor was always enthusiastic in presenting the material 1/
regardless of the 9am lecture. It helps the student wake up"
—I make them tolerate religion: "As someone who knew nothing abt religion she was able to not only make me understand but to enable me to be able to make good Q on the philosophical aspects of it. The prof was one 2/
of the best I've had in university and she allowed me to thoroughly enjoy a class I thought I would end up hating".
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—I can conceal my weaknesses: "Elisa can always give me an answer when I have any questions about Sanskrit ideas." (unlike the former ones, the latter comment comes from a class on Sanskrit philosophy) 4/
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Short thread on "Introduction to Philosophy".
My ideal curriculum is the one implemented by Jay Garfield and others and taught by @sutrasandstuff and others, namely a completely non-Eurocentric introductory class.
But, what to do until we get there? 1/
Intro classes are (in the universities I know of) meant both for outsiders who only take 1 class of philosophy & students who will chose philosophy as their major. Thus, the Intro class has at least also the purpose to put students in the position to follow their next classes 2/
Thus, in this sense a completely unconventional Intro class might be risky bc students and professors might resent the fact that by the time they enrolled for, say, "Medieval philosophy" or "Philosophy of language" they did not know about basic names and theories. 3/
Ongoing thread on #HansVermeer's 1984 (Skopos Theory explained), on #Translation. Let me start with some of my favourite quotes:
"Language is a system" (p. 19)—>Hence, discussing about how to translate a single word is a misunderstanding of the way language works. 1/
In HV's words: "Simple signs can be combined to form complex signs, e.g. words form sentences, and sentences form texts. A sequence of simple signs is not just a collection of signs but a new sign of higher rank […] The formation of super-signs is language-specific. 2/
A word in one language can correspond to a phrase in another" (p.19).
"Signs delimit, determine, condition and define each other's meanings. Signs form language- and culture-specific fields"(p. 20) 3/
1. In order to write a PhD thesis on #SanskritPhilosophy, you need to know #Sanskrit 2. Sanskrit is hard: You need a strong motivation to learn it, the kind of motivation undergrads rarely have!
How do we lose this catch-22 problem, assuming that grad school is ≤6 ys? 1/5
A. Only admit to PhD programs in #SanskritPhilosophy students who know Sanskrit already (e.g., young Indian students who learnt it at school or very motivated undergrads) 2/5
B. Admit group A and very motivated and talented people who will start learning Skt full time in the first 2 years of grad school and continue half time throughout grad school and reach a decent level by the end. 3/5
Typical situation outside India: One completes a Sanskrit class (in 2--4 terms) and does not know how to bridge the gap between one's knowledge and what is needed to read philosophical texts autonomously. What can one do? Typically a combination of the following ones: 1/3
1. One reads a lot on one's own (e.g., one picks up a text like the Nyāyabhāṣya and reads it side-by-side with a translation like Matthew Dasti's translation of the Nyāyasūtra and Bhāṣya) 2. One sits in as many classes as possible with teachers reading texts 2/3
(like in the Sanskrit Reading Room) 3. One reads with colleagues (like in 1, but possibly more fun) 4. Do 1--3 plus add secondary literature, such as Tubb and Boose's "Scholastic Sanskrit"
So, basically, try to read as much as possible. For me, 1 alone would not have worked. 3/3
Friendly invitation to a truth-oriented debate (#vāda), for which we will be allowed to use only rational arguments and not our personal dislikes or likes unless we can give reasons for them:
Suppose that some members of religion X (say, Zen Buddhism) misbehave,
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e.g., because of sexual assaults to people who trusted them in a religious way. We would surely condemn them. And we would be right. But we would be wrong if we did not condemn the same behaviour in our religion (say, Greek Christian orthodoxy), correct? #TheologicalDebates
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Please note that we are talking of behaviours that are *not* part of what the religion in question teaches (I will discuss later the case of behaviours prescribed by the religion itself).
Assuming that we agree about the above, let us move on.
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