Lecture 22 PDF

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Philosophical ethics lecture on David Foster Wallace's "Kenyon Address" taught by Professor Diana Heney. ...

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Lecture 22

12/08/2015

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David Foster Wallace

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Kenyon Address (2005) “what the hell is water”  background stuff that we don't notice in our daily life “learning how to think”  means learning to exercise control in your cognitive activity. Being able to chose what you pay attention to and how you create the

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Value of your education?  What is the real value of your college education? o Learn to go through your adult life DEAD, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely completely imperially alone

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Boredom, routine, and pretty frustration  We have no idea what day in and day out means  Adult life involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration

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The supermarket  We have to chose how to think in the supermarket

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Choosing How to think  This is where the work of choosing comes in  Default setting is that this is all about me and everyone is in my way

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Difficulty of Empathy  If your automatically sure if you know what reality is then you will not

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But what should we worship?  Doesn't believe in an atheist o Everybody worships SOMETHING  If you worship money and things o You will never have enough

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Against Individualism

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Against American individualism? The desire to believe in something bigger than the self Something beyond the self absorbed concerns of the individual

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The solipsistic pursuit of individual happiness only leads to a lonely and elusive conception of happiness

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Read Freedom  Really important kind of freedom involved attention awareness discipline and effort and being able to truly care about other people and sacrifice for them over and over in a myriad of reasons

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Water  Stuff in life that we swim through in daily basis that we don't realize that is important

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