No. 7: 2023.08.29

Alexander/Aristotle/Darwin/Dostoevsky/Du Bois/Emerson/Hawthorne/Kipling/Shelley

Here's some things people have been writing:

Dostoevsky thought the west was declining and that Russia would rise up to take his place, as evidenced by a January 18, 1856 letter to Apollon Maykov. This feeling is the one that prevails in modern Russia’s recollection of the past. foreignaffairs

Kipling’s poem If shines a light on the worth of independent thinking. collabfund

Aristotle’s tutoring of Alexander the Great is akin to how Vivek Ramaswamy has educators come to the house to teach his children. So says his wife Apoorva. theatlantic

Shelley’s Frankenstein is humanist, even romantic science fiction. This blog from 1998 (which sparked conversation a few days ago) contrasts how a cyberpunk version might look as he explores the topic at large. streettech

Du Bois popularized the idea of double consciousness where black people saw themselves both through their own eyes and through that of society. A teacher in Florida said he taught his students about it and was then anonymously accused of indoctrinating. nytimes

Darwin, intrigued by a “monster” barnacle during, spent eight years researching them. Today, scientists are trying to use barnacle analysis to reconstruct the path of wreckage—like that from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. nationalgeographic

Emerson and Hawthorne inspired Leo Marx, a weighty voice on the bond between technology and society—most notably in 1964’s The Machine in the Garden. When he died in 2022 Nicholas Carr wrote about how Marx shaped his own writing. roughtype

Kant’s’ thoughts on space and time extent is discussed on r/askphilosophy. reddit

Epictetus, Austen, Twain, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Dante, Tolstoy, Augustine and Thoreau all show up on r/literature’s latest “What are you reading” thread. reddit