Michael Weinman, Author at Public Seminar

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Challenging Plato’s Prejudice Against Imitative Art

An excerpt from ‘Plato and the Moving Image’

August 16, 2019 • by Shai Biderman and Michael Weinman

For all that remains contested concerning the relationship of philosophy and film, and the status of the term "theory" in that regard, one principal result of this is the wide acceptance of a way of thinking about cinematic experience and philosophical practice as much more related than previous thought, such ...

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A View from Berlin on the Mass-Shooting at Tree of Life

The anti-semitic and anti-advocate rhetoric surrounding the killings at Etz Chaim, Pittsburgh

November 3, 2018 • by Irit Dekel and Michael Weinman

We got the news of the massacre in Etz Chaim, the “Tree of Life” synagogue in Pittsburgh, while sharing an early dinner at home with friends. We were nine, and -- as it happens -- all Jewish: German, American, and with Israeli origins. The contradictory initial reports shattered the evening ...

A View from Berlin on the Mass-Shooting at Tree of Life

Education

Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

Satire and the Abuse of Anti-Bullying Rhetoric

May 24, 2018 • by Michael Weinman

The White House Correspondents Dinner at the end of last month sent social media and the commentariat alight once again, reporting a scandal where the only scandal is how easy it is for persons across the political spectrum to be scandalized by what is, in fact, the healthy efflorescence of ...

Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

Education

The Parthenon as a Mediator between Greek Mathematics and Liberal Education

An excerpt from Michael Weinman and Geoff Lehman’s latest book

April 2, 2018 • by Michael Weinman and Geoff Lehman

We propose here to pursue a method of speculative reconstruction to detail what can be learned about the “state of the art” in the early development of “liberal education” in ﬁfth-century Greece. One needs to be cautious in speaking about such a development at such a time, which predates ...

The Parthenon as a Mediator between Greek Mathematics and Liberal Education

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Bannon at Booth

A conflict between principle and strategy?

March 15, 2018 • by Michael Weinman

Bannon, surely, needs no introduction, nor need we long belabor the reasons why the decision to invite him to speak at the University of Chicago proved controversial. Still, let’s note that in a letter of protest signed by over 100 members of the University of Chicago faculty, the rationale for objecting to ...

Education

Milo in Berkeley

Further reflections on the renewed academic free speech debate

January 23, 2018 • by Michael Weinman

What light if any, I will ask here, does this claim shine on the larger discourse about academic free speech, specifically as that discussion has come to focus, for historical and strategic reasons, on UC-Berkeley. The proximal cause of Berkeley’s centrality is the shutdown of an intended speech by Milo ...

Education

No-Platforming, “Unite the Right,” and New Free Speech Debate

Reexamining the Hannah Arendt Center’s invitation to Marc Jongen

December 26, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

As a Professor of Philosophy at Bard College Berlin honored to collaborate with Berkowitz and the Hannah Arendt Center on events both in New York and here in Berlin, I’d like to reopen this debate to touch upon Berkowitz’s invitation to Jongen itself and examine what light it sheds on the ...

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Charlottesville, Thomas Jefferson, and America’s Fate

A response to Keval Bhatt

October 22, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In a stirring, passionate, and bracingly clear recent contribution to the ongoing Charlottesville thread in our “Power and Crisis” vertical, University of Virginia student Keval Bhatt accounts for his decision to join others in shrouding the famous, indeed iconic, statue of Thomas Jefferson on the grounds of the University. I ...

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Aristotle on Charlottesville

‘Mixed Actions’ and Exercising Judgement on Violence

August 28, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In the opening movement of book 3 of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that, at bottom, each and every human being is responsible for essentially every action they undertake; put another way: there is nothing a human being does for which they ought not to be praised or blamed. This ...

Education

Finding Value in Schoolhouses as Public Things

A Reply to Johann Neem

August 7, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

I am fully persuaded by Neem’s diagnosis of the current crisis in American public education, and hope we all take his lesson to heart. In this reply, I hope to augment and perhaps slightly shift the prognosis that his (and Honig’s) focus logically entails: that if we want to save ...

Finding Value in Schoolhouses as Public Things

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Why Engage Public Anger

A reply to Chakravarti’s Introduction to ‘Sing the Rage’

August 1, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

“Sing the Rage” is a bold title for a bold book. It is no small provocation to thus entitle a book that argues for a more robust engagement with anger in public life in today’s democratic societies. The title is a further challenge for readers who recall the proem[1] to ...

Power and Crisis

Jerusalem on the Fourth of July

Reflections a bold and immoral message to Americans

July 5, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

A leftover from President Trump’s visit here in late May, the banner’s message is unambiguous. What makes it somewhat interesting is that immediately to its left we saw another banner that depicts (in a clownish and offensive way reminiscent of the Cleveland MLB team’s infamous logo) an American Indian who ...