This is an Online Debate forum to go with the Specialized Group, Sandel on The Tyranny of Merit. Feel free to ask a question, share your thoughts, respond to others, etc.

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This is an Online Debate forum to go with the Specialized Group, Themes from Aristotle. Feel free to ask a question, share your thoughts, respond to others, etc.

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This is an Online Debate to go with the Specialized Group, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

INSTRUCTIONS:
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In 2018, the Ramsay Center approached various universities with a proposal to lavishly fund a new specialist BA degree in Western Civilization, the underlying philosophy of which was enunciated in Robert Hutchins' 1952 essay The Great Conversation [abridged text below, but see here for the full text, and here for the University of Wollongong's degree]. For many, such a proposal is way past its use-by date in university humanities departments [here, but see also here]. They objected that its narrow focus is at odds with diversity and inclusion, that it implies some civilizations are superior to others, and, according to some, that it is European supremacism writ large—So, should universities be teaching western civilization?

Science gives us many useful things, but useful things are only ever for the sake of other, higher, things. By contrast, the arts give us culture, and religion gives us meaning. Richard Feynman [reading below] thinks that science allows the joyful imagination of things more marvelous than poetry, and seems to want to replace God by Nature as the object of our awe. But science can be used for harm, the joy is reserved only for specialists like Feynman, and are fuzzy images of black holes really a replacement for God? Damian Broderick [reading below] is aware of these sorts of problems, and thinks we need an erotics of science. So, can science give us more than just gadgets?—What value does science have for the spirit?