tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-357943202009-11-11T10:46:42.603Znotes from an exiled academicOxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comBlogger272125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-80485577140983359952009-11-09T17:14:00.006Z2009-11-10T12:02:58.927Z2009-11-10T12:02:58.927Z

When I say that I find people's psychologies incomprehensible this is because I find nothing in them that corresponds to basic principles in my own; in fact there seems often to be a deliberate inversion of them. I imagined that since Sir George Joy had had a mystical experience up a mountain in Arabia, even if he would do nothing to help me he would not actively create difficulties for me. I

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-77704852886611322272009-11-04T15:52:00.005Z2009-11-04T15:59:40.992Z2009-11-04T15:59:40.992Z

copy of a letter to an academicPlease let all potential financial supporters (such as salaried and statusful academics who have never suffered from being deprived of a career) know of our continuing and urgent need for financial support.A significant amount of extra work has been created for us (as it is intended to do) by the ridiculous restrictions on waste disposal. Small bins are provided,

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-4257238209278500132009-10-30T11:00:00.000Z2009-10-30T12:49:09.244Z2009-10-30T12:49:09.244Z

A newborn girl was taken into care because of fears her weight would balloon in the care of her obese parents. The child was removed from her mother within hours of being born earlier this week and has been placed with a foster family. Her parents, who are both clinically obese, have already had two children taken into care amid concerns about the youngsters' weight.They have been warned they

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-39973601958246768962009-10-28T19:19:00.003Z2009-10-28T19:27:12.751Z2009-10-28T19:27:12.751Z

He [Nietzsche] condemns Christian love because he thinks it is an outcome of fear: I am afraid my neighbour may injure me, and so I assure him that I love him. If I were stronger and bolder, I should openly display the contempt for him which of course I feel. It does not occur to Nietzsche as possible that a man could feel universal love, obviously because he himself feels almost universal

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-82052201238748558372009-10-22T12:55:00.002+01:002009-10-22T13:02:31.375+01:002009-10-22T13:02:31.375+01:00

The concept of the “alien God” is an important element of Gnostic Christianity. The following extract from Hans Jonas provides an introduction to the idea.The fact that this concept occurred in many of the various forms of Gnosticism which spread around the Mediterranean for several centuries after the supposed life of Christ suggests that it may have arisen from the views and outlook of an

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-53836997906552500952009-10-12T14:21:00.007+01:002009-10-26T13:22:48.817Z2009-10-26T13:22:48.817Z

Baroness Delyth Morgan [a person called "Children’s Minister"] commissioned a report [at great expense to taxpayers] on home education, which alleges that parents could be using home education to mask sexual abuse and/or domestic servitude. (Daily Mail, 5 October 2009, Letters page, extract from letter written by Nikki Galbraith.) But ‘teachers’ and education ‘authorities’ certainly are using the

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-7867787440241823332009-08-20T10:15:00.015+01:002009-08-20T11:51:01.304+01:002009-08-20T11:51:01.304+01:00

The commonsense view of invention ... overstates the importance of rare geniuses ... the question for our purposes is whether the broad pattern of world history would have been altered significantly if some genius inventor had not been born at a particular place and time. The answer is clear: there has never been any such person. (Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, Jonathan Cape 1997, pp. 244-

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-48817667035307083822009-08-04T12:04:00.012+01:002009-08-04T15:31:03.768+01:002009-08-04T15:31:03.768+01:00

Debbie Purdy is a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis who thinks she may, in the future, wish to commit suicide with the assistance of the Swiss euthanasia group Dignitas, and who says she would want her husband to accompany her on her trip.The Director of Public Prosecutions has been ordered to clarify the factors which would be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute someone

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-30381612170033360502009-08-01T15:12:00.004+01:002009-08-01T15:28:00.047+01:002009-08-01T15:28:00.047+01:00

Copy of a reply to an email from a person living overseas, who appears to have been a fan of my books for some years. What I have written is of general relevance to people who might consider coming.I gather you are thinking of coming to this country. There are problems associated with someone coming from outside the EU, and I am afraid we could not give you any help with them. Things are very

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-65416580189755498632009-07-27T19:14:00.000+01:002009-07-27T19:17:40.049+01:002009-07-27T19:17:40.049+01:00

Watching, as usual, the least offensive thing I could find on the TV while I used my exercise machine, I found myself seeing The Killing Fields, about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Everyone in this film was risking, and trying to avoid, torture and death at short notice, as murderously inclined collections of people washed around the country, and other people tried to guess where they would go

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-49275754591411647262009-07-24T11:54:00.003+01:002009-07-24T12:05:13.656+01:002009-07-24T12:05:13.656+01:00

The rise of individualism prior to 1945 was not a simple matter. Probably the factors that would lead to its downfall were present from an early stage, and certainly so by the time the Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882.Herbert Spencer identified a watershed at about 1850. Society, as he saw it, was always in a state of conflict between collectivism and individualism. Up to

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-50257464290429116402009-07-21T12:26:00.008+01:002009-07-29T18:34:36.802+01:002009-07-29T18:34:36.802+01:00

copy of a letter to a person who came to one of my seminarsYou seemed to understand why what I say in my books, and my outlook in general, arouses such hostility and makes me an Outsider. If I meet you again I hope you might explain it to me because, however odd it seems to you, I do not actually see anything outrageous in it. I am just, as I always was, a perfectly respectable bourgeois

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-62163778724755481402009-07-19T13:27:00.000+01:002009-07-19T13:28:52.072+01:002009-07-19T13:28:52.072+01:00

If there were any principle of permitting expression of all valid points of view, then we would have a claim on financial support and social recognition for our squashed and suppressed philosophy department.But why should one expect that to be the case? Neither Nazi Germany nor Marxist Russia permitted the expression of views critical of their ideology, so why should socialist Britain? In fact

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-67594333794629886662009-07-17T11:44:00.003+01:002009-07-17T11:49:16.590+01:002009-07-17T11:49:16.590+01:00

Another terrible development which has not yet come about, but soon will, and which as usual we are prevented from speaking out against by lack of social status and financial support. Discussing different plans to computerise medical records in a recent Daily Mail:Patients’ medical records could be transferred to Google under plans being considered by the Tories ... But campaigners and doctors

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-28381408609183803942009-07-15T14:49:00.002+01:002009-07-15T14:55:56.884+01:002009-07-15T14:55:56.884+01:00

I think that statusful agents of the collective should want to visit the least fortunate members of society to hear how they experience the difficulties of their position. But I know that this is an old-fashioned idea which seems natural to me because I remember pre-Marxist society, and it has no applicability within the current quasi-Marxist society in which everyone, even those old enough and

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-90538980611413142162009-07-10T07:34:00.005+01:002009-07-10T07:59:58.870+01:002009-07-10T07:59:58.870+01:00

.1905:The look in her eyes was exactly the look which Miss Minchin most disliked. She would not have it; she was quite near her, and was so enraged that she actually flew at her and boxed her ears …It made Sara start. She wakened from her dream at the shock, and, catching her breath, stood still a second. Then, not knowing she was going to do it, she broke into a little laugh.'What are you

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-5295331196174725822009-07-07T16:35:00.005+01:002009-07-10T15:59:34.701+01:002009-07-10T15:59:34.701+01:00

I have commented previously on the victimisation of pensioners. They are suitable objects for victimisation because they tend to be relatively middle class. The fact that middle class people are able to live longer, through a combination of forethought, intelligence and prior capital accumulation, is taken as a reason for penalising them. According to the prevailing ideology, it ought not to

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-19115387260270459752009-07-02T08:54:00.004+01:002009-07-02T09:09:34.731+01:002009-07-02T09:09:34.731+01:00

The Eastern Orthodox Church seems to be closer to the Gnostic traditions of early Christianity than the Western is. In particular, it seems to be the only form of Christianity that incorporates into its rituals a recognition of the importance of royalty (i.e. of centralisation) as a psychological concept.The Eastern Orthodox marriage ceremony takes the form of a joint coronation of the new

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-5526586577596014122009-06-29T19:49:00.003+01:002009-06-29T19:55:24.697+01:002009-06-29T19:55:24.697+01:00

The communists thought of politeness as a product of bourgeois fetishism. By now, rudeness has become the norm in this country. Agents of the collective with power over individuals (doctors, teachers etc.) are now amazingly rude by the standards of fifty years ago; and fifty years ago had already seen some slippage from the norm that had prevailed earlier. On the other hand, of course, all

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-61026551561680430652009-06-24T14:29:00.002+01:002009-06-24T14:33:21.925+01:002009-06-24T14:33:21.925+01:00

It is amazing how completely the modern ideology has wiped out the worldview that was present approximately at the peak of the British Empire, which was the worldview of the books which I read in my grandfather’s library.It is perhaps no accident that Christianity arose at about the peak of the Roman Empire. Clearly there was a good deal in both situations that would favour centralised psychology

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-52691638246537699292009-06-22T14:53:00.013+01:002009-07-02T09:12:11.800+01:002009-07-02T09:12:11.800+01:00

In an earlier post I discussed the recent case of a mother deemed ‘too stupid’ to look after her own child, and expressed surprise that even conservative journalists no longer find it shocking that children should be removed on such grounds.This case, discussed at greater length in another recent Daily Mail article, presents a number of interesting issues.A) The first is the way that reacting

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-44380537016915960312009-06-16T15:07:00.005+01:002009-06-16T16:51:19.773+01:002009-06-16T16:51:19.773+01:00

Certain works of fiction, significant during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, are no longer read much, but contain elements of a certain outlook – relatively aware of existential reality – which is almost totally absent from modern culture. That this is so is no accident. The outlook in question is incompatible with the ethos which now prevails, after the cultural revolution we have had. The

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-10447080813473200182009-06-11T13:12:00.005+01:002009-06-11T14:17:11.463+01:002009-06-11T14:17:11.463+01:00

I see that family courts are now to be open to journalists, instead of secret, which may conceivably be a consequence in part of our drawing attention to some of the more obvious horrors on our blogs. Actually this will do no good; one only tries to highlight one or two of the worst cases to illustrate the fact that this is bound to result from the principle of individual freedom being violated.

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-80002897844841332062009-06-05T15:40:00.003+01:002009-06-05T16:00:00.882+01:002009-06-05T16:00:00.882+01:00

Would a court have decided a 24-year-old single mother was ‘too stupid’ to care for her three-year-old daughter if this wasn’t so? According to a weekend news report, ‘Rachel’ – her full name withdrawn for legal reasons – has had this happen to her.We’re indignant if the rights of mothers are asserted and children die as a result. We’re indignant if social work professionals and courts assert

Oxford Forumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35794320.post-4565280693302396252009-06-04T11:08:00.005+01:002009-06-04T16:35:44.283+01:002009-06-04T16:35:44.283+01:00

At my last seminar an Iraqi lady commented that the way we had been treated sounded like what happened in an authoritarian regime, only where she came from they would shoot you for expressing any criticism of the system, not merely suppress you. Later she asked, ‘What are they threatened by?’I wrote her the following letter after the seminar.Dear ...When we met, you seemed to feel that we should

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