[lit-ideas] Re: On Names and Respect

  • From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:41:02 -0230

Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:

> 
> 
> --- On Sat, 4/11/09, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've asked around here in the Fortress, and here are the answers:
> 
> Dave prefers to be addressed by his students as "Mr. Hume." I was a tad
> hesitant
> to ask Dave whether he held a doctoral degree. After all, anybody as famous
> in
> the history of W. philosophy as he is - deservedly or not - doesn't really
> need
> a PhD, does he? Though the question remains whether Dave would actually be
> tenured in these gruelling contemporary times requiring satisfactory
> performance in teaching, reasearch and service. 
>  
> *It wasn't easy then, either.
> 
> 
> "After the publication of Essays Moral and Political in 1744, Hume applied
> for the Chair of Pneumatics (sic) and Moral Philosophy at the University of
> Edinburgh. However, the position was given to William Cleghorn, after
> Edinburgh ministers petitioned the town council not to appoint Hume due to
> his atheism.[17]"
>  
> "Hume was charged with heresy, but he was defended by his young clerical
> friends, who argued thatâ??as an atheistâ??he was outside the Church's
> jurisdiction. Despite his acquittalâ??and possibly due to the opposition of
> Thomas Reid of Aberdeen, who that year launched a Christian critique of his
> metaphysicsâ??Hume failed to gain the Chair of Philosophy at the University
> of Glasgow."
>  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume
> 
> 
>   

Dave never mentioned anything about these matters. Thanks for the biographic
details, Omar. My admiration and respect for the man is only increased by this
information. However, this data is inert in cancelling out his many egregious
errors in moral philosophy. 

I suppose the U o E had a Collective Agreement that included "piety" along with
teaching, research and service. (You may as well have a Section of your
University Act stipulating that the Search cttee's nomination for university
president must be approved by the provincial governement. Only 2 universities
in Canada permit this potential for gross interference in the institutional
autonomy of the university. Danny Williams is not invited to my upcoming
potluck dinner, let me tell you my son. But I stray ... things can get lonely
here in the Fortress. Dave, Adam and Liz have left, and I'm here alone with Ms.
Foot and her awful cigars. She appreciates avoidance of identification of
marital status in titles but laments my dislike of cigars as well as my single
malt preferences. She's an Islay person, while I remain a denizen of the
Highlands ... all of the Highlands :)  )

Walter O.
Somewhere in the Canadian Arctic (or is it Russian?. Speaking of which: Hristos
Voskrese! Metaphorically speaking, of course.)


    

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