Late night visitor (black bear)

Message from Iain Hamilton Grant: Attempt to Close UWE Philosophy

Dear Friends of the North American Schelling Society,

Please see the following email from Dr. Iain Grant, no doubt well known to you all. We would be appreciative if members of the NASS community could voice their support for the continuation of philosophy at UWE by emailing the contacts below. Dr. Grant and UWE have been integral to the growth in Schelling studies in English, and the closure of philosophy at UWE would be devastating to us all.

Thank-you,

The NASS Executive

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The Philosophy team at UWE, Bristol were recently called to a meeting at which it was announced that the university is initiating a process to close the Philosophy BA and BA with Foundation Year. The intention is that there will be an intake this year (2020) onto level 1, but that no students will be admitted to the programme after that, and no foundation students will be admitted in 2020. We are shocked and saddened that the university is moving towards the closure of philosophy.



We believe we offer a distinctive and innovative philosophy programme, with excellent research led teaching. This is reflected in how much our students value the course, which our outstanding National Student Survey scores testify to. The closure of UWE philosophy would be a great loss to prospective students, to the university, and to the wider intellectual community in which philosophy plays such an important role. We are therefore challenging the planned closure and urging the Vice Chancellor to stop the closure process and to maintain the Philosophy programme at UWE, Bristol. We are hopeful that we can successfully challenge the closure of philosophy and want to send a positive message which highlights to the Vice Chancellor the value, distinctiveness and quality of our course.



We would be very grateful if you could voice your support for the continuation of UWE Philosophy as a programme by emailing:



Professor Steve West, Vice Chancellor of UWE, vicechancellor@uwe.ac.uk

Dr Marc Griffith, Pro-Vice Chancellor ＆ Executive Dean Marc.Griffiths@uwe.ac.uk

Professor Amanda Coffey, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Amanda.Coffey@uwe.ac.uk



We would also be grateful if you could forward this email to all your colleagues and relevant contacts who can input on the importance of philosophy and may wish to share their support for us.



Some key points you may choose to include in your message are listed below. We welcome additional points and perspectives making a positive case for the role of philosophy.



And if you want to know more about what we do you might find our staff run website interesting http://www.uwephilosophy.org.uk.



Thank you for your time and your help,

Best wishes,



Iain



Key Points

The value of philosophy to wider culture and addressing contemporary, urgent problems - we need philosophy more than ever now
The value of philosophy to our students, in their personal development and in developing their potential to contribute to the community and succeed in the world of employment
UWE philosophy is innovative and treats as a priority preparing students from diverse backgrounds to succeed on graduation, building their confidence through placements, skills workshops, and varied assessments whilst maintaining high academic standards and developing subject specific skills
UWE philosophy is highly valued by its students, reflected in the National Student Survey Scores (100% student satisfaction in 2019, and consistently above 90% for student satisfaction and teaching)
UWE philosophy is an excellent programme reflected in its Guardian league table scores (7th, 4th and 6th for philosophy in the last 3 years)
UWE philosophy is a distinctive course - in particular it covers a wide range of European philosophy (staff research expertise is reflected in our course content and includes Schelling, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Kant, Foucault, Frankfurt School, and Patočka), as well as having a focus on topics in social and political philosophy, such as solidarity and feminist philosophy, and a specialist module joint with UWE robotics on the ethics of technology
UWE philosophy is engaged proactively in a process of decolonizing the curriculum, and committed to continuing this process in a self-reflective way, and encourages critical reflection on the environment, gender, economic and race-based oppression, through both our curriculum and our teaching practices
UWE philosophy as a team is extremely proactive in organising local public engagement events - bringing our research to a non specialist audience and engaging in dialogue with the public. Recent events include Thought in Action - a partnership between Watershed and UWE Philosophy that since October 2018 has engaged 1079 people (of which 278 are UWE students). We also have an annual international feminist conference which is open to the general public.

View from my kayak

A photo of some of the best from my pencil collection

Schelling: The Essential Texts - these I’ve had for awhile, but they are always treasure troves of wisdom found when deep mining

Two new exciting and rare Schelling texts

quote of the day

"The dissatisfaction of the spiritual man is even more dangerous than that of the starveling."

- Ernst Junger (as the character "Manuel Venator in Eumeswil, 1977)

Na’s painting, and an update

A summer of aesthetics (Kant's third Critique) and a new online seminar I'm running, "The Philosophy of Technology and Organic Being." Deleuze, Ruyer, Simondon, and lots of Bernard Stiegler. The painting below was done by my talented wife. Her paintings are beautiful.

Bernard Stiegler, Nanjing Lectures

Amazing work by Stiegler in this; picked up his original trilogy which, so far, looks just as good.

Tales from the Loop TV Review (Amazon Prime Original TV Series)

No, just... no.

About five years ago I discovered and recommended a little gem of a show called Black Mirror (see HERE) which at that time I described as "smart" and "compelling," and  I stand by those words today.  I had found Black Mirror quite by accident on Netflix before it had wound up becoming the phenomenon that it is and am glad to have gotten in on the ground floor.  When I saw Amazon Prime release its own futuristic sci-fi series with a dystopian twist I certainly had to check it out thinking there might be a good possibility it would be up to the standards set by fellow Black Mirror. 

Don't. Waste. Your. Time.

I watched two episodes, but one, really, is all that it will take to show you that this has nothing on Black Mirror, and still further less with the '80s throw-back Stranger Things. In a nutshell the premise of the show is that there is a machine called "the loop" which is built "to unlock the secrets of the universe" (or something like that) and then episodes refer back to the machine or people who've dealt with it in some way.

Ok, so-far-so-good.

The first episode "Loop" pretentiously trudges through, quite literally, fifteen minutes of silence at a time attempting to appear deep and contemplative all the while giving you, well, zilch to be contemplative about.  The acting in this episode is probably the worst I've seen - like, ever - on streaming television, and the plot is flat-out stupid. The plot description reads, "A young girl living in a small town becomes curious about the mysterious work her mother conducts beneath ground at a facility known as the Loop." Whelp, that's about it. Like I said, it is hopelessly vague and at bottom just vapid. But, maybe that episode was just a ding. So I tried again.

Episode three, "Stasis" repeats a Twilight Zone plot from "A Kind of Stopwatch" and the more poignant "A Little Peace and Quiet." Unlike those episodes, though, the plot here may as well have been written by a sixteen year old who is discovering the difference between puppy-love and reality.  Leann Lei's performance (and I use the word "performance" loosely) is horrid, and I mean... horrid.  As "May" she has a crush on Ethan while tied up in a current relationship - and having found a machine that can stop time, rushes to use it in order to go on a date with him (which includes having sex in the middle of the street while time is stopped, by the way). In her words, "I've found a way for us to be together."  Not like breaking up with her current boyfriend would be a much easier thing to do - if we're to follow the sort of "empowered woman" logic that is thrust in our face on more than a few occasions in all of this and thus appears quite charlatan rather than sincere. No, she has to stop time to peruse her options.  Add that to the fact while in stopped-time she accidentally finds her mother naked and prone atop a man who is not her father and then doesn't even bother to tell her father (and what's with all of the sex-pose-on-top stuff anyway?) - and she ditches Ethan after calling him a "cripple" and decides that the fact that he was freaked out about a machine that could stop time and potentially keep them there forever, if the machine broke again, was just too much for their budding relationship.

Garbage. Two hours of my life I'll never get back. I am utterly speechless, amazed even, that Amazon would attach their name to this complete and utter trash. If it sounds like I have some sort of axe to grind against this show then trust me, I don't.  It's just that this was so terrible that I am actually offended.  It basically insulted my intelligence like no other program has before and most likely will insult your intelligence as well.

The reviews I've read concerning this program are luke-warm.  That's too warm for me.  Honesty is best policy: this is pretty terrible stuff. Go watch re-runs of Stranger Things or Black Mirror. You'll thank me for it.

Deleuze and New Materialism

In the world of contemporary philosophy there are those who comment on Deleuze and who "get it," and others not so much. Keith Ansell-Pearson "gets it" and obviously is a foremost scholar in Deleuze studies. His "Deleuze and New Materialism" paper -found in Sarah Ellenzweig and John H. Zammito, The New Politics of Materialism (Routledge, 2017) - is top rate. Link HERE.