A PHILOSOPHY MARATHON IN NYC:
(ALMOST EQUIVALENT TO A PHD?)
if you live in Gotham
you might just stand in line for wisdom,
and then, with enough sitzfleisch* powers
to absorb it all for 12 hours
after entering speaking "dems" and "dese",
you may finally exit a Socrates.
However, it could be an entirely different matter
if it's strong the mind, but weak the bladder.
hzl
4/27/15
(excerpt below)
The mental marathon billed as “A Night of Philosophy” began in an analytic frenzy at 7 p.m. on Friday as three speakers held forth simultaneously in separate lecture rooms: Monique Canto-Sperber, of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, dissected the notion of free speech in a liberal society. Chiara Bottici, of the New School for Social Research, discussed Machiavelli’s ideas about fortune. And Pascal Engel, of the University of Geneva, issued a ringing call for deep thought in a talk titled “Must Intellectual Life Be Boring?”
Boring no. Strenuous yes. For the next 12 hours, 59 other philosophers held forth in 20-minute bursts at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy on the Upper East Side and its next-door neighbor, the Ukrainian Institute of America. Their subjects ranged from Pascal’s wager to the perils of moral relativism to alien intelligence, and were delivered amid a swirl of artistic performances, D.J. sets, a five-hour reading of the Marquis de Sade’s “Philosophy in the Boudoir” and eerie sounds emanating from a wooden space capsule with an astronaut D.J. inside.
Logic suggests a limited audience for an event of this sort. But, as the philosopher J. C. Beall pointed out in his talk, logic is weak. The line outside the embassy extended several blocks along Fifth Avenue. On 79th Street, leading to the entrance of the Ukrainian Institute, the hopeful crowded the sidewalk from Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue and beyond.
The dominant school of thought was stoicism, as a chill wind whipped the crowd and the wait approached three hours. Undeterred, an audience of about 5,000 went through the doors over the course of the evening, with lines persisting until 5 a.m.
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