Class Summary, March 28

Monday's class began with a wrap-up on Marx and the Manifesto. Dr. Layne brought up the way capital was valued above all else in the world. She used our own families as a collective example. Each of us has family members who wish for our major in college to be practical, i.e. profitable, rather than what we really want.

This talk about majors segues nicely for the main topic of class, Kierkegaard. Like many college students, Kierkegaard couldn't find a major in school. Even the abstract nature of philosophy turned him off. The writer from Copenhagen prioritized living over abstract thinking, and based much of his work on the importance of the decision (Miami Heat Bandwagoner). Kierkegaard used many pseudonyms in his work, and the pseudonyms spoke from the first person perspective. In his work Either/Or Kierkegaard uses five different pseudonyms as personae. He sought to leave the reader alone with the work, implying that the intention of the author is not the meaning of the text. These works focused on living and decisiveness earned Kierkegaard the title of "Father of Existentialism."

In existentialism, existence comes first. Kierkegaard stressed the importance of giving life meaning and living an authentic life. He focused on emotions such as anxiety and despair, which were genuinely human feelings that pushed us to make decisions. Kierkegaard cared not for universal truths, but for subjective truths. That is a truth that a person lives by and bases his or her life on. We learned that Dr. Layne loves Tyler and wants to maaarrrryyy him. (And did)

Dr. Layne then explained Kierkegaard's Three Stages on Life's Way, which are the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. We all fall into one of these three categories. A move from one sphere to another is a movement of the will, simplified by Kierkegaard as a "leap." Human reason cannot explain or support these leaps. The litmus test for each level is a person's answer to the question, "What is the good life?"

For the aesthete, life is focused on the present. An aesthete is essentially a detached on-looker in life. He/she focuses on the immediate and worries not of reflective thought. Also, everything is amoral in this worldview. The aesthete does not see past or present, and only views life as a series of disconnected "nows." Kierkegaard, who was once an aesthete, criticizes this worldview for its lack of authenticity. He says that aesthetes have no authentic selves and do not know who they are. He says they will feel the despair or the "unwillingness to be oneself." In this, they would be guilty of double ignorance in refusing to pursue the ethical life when they know it is better.

Then class ended because it was 1:22.

Class Summary, February 28

In class on Monday, we watched an episode of House with the instructions of a Descartes-ian reading of the show. In the episode, a disgruntled former patient enters House's office and shoots him. He awakes to find himself in ICU with his assailant, Moriarty, as his roommate. House attempts to treat a patient who has a swollen tongue and high temperature, but to no avail. Every diagnosis falls through, as every test fails to find the root of the problem.

A professional conundrum is hard enough, but House also faces a personal one: during surgery for his shooting, the hospital put him into a ketamine-induced coma as a radical method of "restarting" his brain to heal his hurt leg. House is having hallucinations and struggles to discern what is real and what isn't. This conflict is where we get the heaviest Descartes presence, surprisingly pointed out by House's shooter. Moriarty points out that House's anger over his hallucinations reveals House's personal philosophy: the body and mind are entirely separate entities. House cares not of his bodily healing from the treatment, and expresses only contempt for his mental state. Moriarty asserts that the body and mind are one, while House identifies only with the intellectual aspect of life.

House continues to fail to diagnose his patient as he starts to doubt everything. He cannot grasp what is real or fake, and nothing makes sense. Instead of questioning the results, he questions the assumptions he and his staff have made. He cannot find the reason for his patient's condition, and ultimately realize nothing makes sense. With this epiphany, House rushes to take control of the surgery robot that is about to operate on his patient. House wants to grasp what is real, and pushes things too far: he eviscerates the patient's torso, killing him. With this extreme resolution, House wakes up from what was entirely a hallucination. He is being carted to an operating room to be treated for his gunshot wounds, and he requests that the ketamine be used.

The episode ended and we had a discussion of how this relates to Descartes. As mentioned above, the closest connection was House's separation of mental and physical. This is a nod to Descartes' mind/body dualism, in which the body acts as a machine while the soul is embodied (no pun intended) in the intellect. House saw it that if one messed with his mind, they are messing with the essence of House. Another connection is in their doubt. Descartes doubted everything, much as House does. House steadfastly believes people lie, and seeks to find out any information he can to figure out a medical mystery. House's doubt is furthered by his hallucinations within the hallucinations. He doubts whether anything is real, much like Descartes. House also stated that if his perceptions are warped, then his judgments too will be warped. He ends up questioning his basic assumptions as logical sense continues to evaporate. Dr. Layne also noted the parallels between the "evil geniuses" in the two texts. In Meditations, the evil genius is God and what he does in the world. In the show, the evil genius is House, who is deceiving himself about using ketamine in real life. House's acceptance of the ketamine in real life shows that he has acknowledged that mind and body are connected, and he seeks to improve himself by improving the corporeal House.