From a slightly terrible interview by 3:AM, but this was funny:
3:AM: Can you say something about how studying Shakespeare has impacted on your philosophical outlook? Are there positions you argue now that you doubt you would have argued had you not read Shakespeare?
McGinn: Shakespeare has had no impact on my philosophical life, except to make it seem less worthwhile.
22 April 2013
Random thoughts on the marathon and after
1. The courage of the spectators and the runners who ran to the aid of those injured - who tied tourniquets and carried them out to the ambulance - who ran on to give blood - and of the first responders and the police, the doctors and the nurses. Thank you.
2. Do the injured have health insurance? How will they pay for all their medical bills and all they'll need after? Will the One Fund help with things like prosthetics and counselling and retrofitting their homes? The six-year-old will need different prosthetics as she grows up. (My god six! How will her parents explain it to her? And tell her of her brother's death?) Would it be better to donate to the Fund directly or buy a t-shirt?
3. I didn't get the sense - from my fb feed anyway - that the city shut down from fear, but rather to give the police a free hand in finding and capturing the suspect, to bring things to an end that day. (Admittedly my fb feed is full of graduate students. In my case, the only difference was that I checked twitter rather more frequently throughout the day.)
4. Was it worth the loss of a day's profit? Should we be counting in those terms? It's hard to escape that kind of cost-benefit analysis. And hard to escape utilitarianism altogether, when thinking about public policy.
5. Should the suspect be treated as an enemy combatant? As if he had put himself in a state of nature - a state of war - against, well, the state.
6. My god the poverty of political theory to think about these things.
7. He lived here longer than he had in Krygyzstan (or wherever); he spent most of his school years here; he was a naturalized citizen. Claim him as an American. I don't mean that it's America's fault, or anything like that - I think that whether or not it was his brother's fault it was his own doing too - the things you learn in moral theory 101; how anemic they are - but claim him as an American. And that means: claim him as a Bostonian, too. (I suppose: Cantabrigian?)
8. It probably took someone living here to think of bombing the Boston marathon. That is a betrayal.
9. Group psychology can be a little - odd, I suppose. (a) It can be induced through the media. (In my case, anyway.) (b) The memorials, the candlelight vigils, the wishes on twitter, a moment's silence before the London marathon, the Yankees playing Sweet Caroline, people singing the national anthem at the Bruins game - does it help the victims and their families? Perhaps it does to know that the city, and the world, too, grieves for them and honours them. But more than that it seems to be about the participants themselves - the participants in these rituals? I mean - our need not just to grieve for the victims, but to grieve for them collectively, and to grieve for people we only knew as fellow members of this city (or even: people who happened to be in this city at the time). This goes beyond normal horror at the bombing, and sympathy for the victims. The city grieves, the Globe says. The city is beginning to heal. Where does this need come from? Does it have to do with the nature of the attack? Or just human nature? Goodness knows I'm not immune to it - witness this post I guess - but it's - interesting? (Academia screws up your normal instincts, I suppose is what I'm saying.)
10. I am so, so sorry for the injured.
2. Do the injured have health insurance? How will they pay for all their medical bills and all they'll need after? Will the One Fund help with things like prosthetics and counselling and retrofitting their homes? The six-year-old will need different prosthetics as she grows up. (My god six! How will her parents explain it to her? And tell her of her brother's death?) Would it be better to donate to the Fund directly or buy a t-shirt?
3. I didn't get the sense - from my fb feed anyway - that the city shut down from fear, but rather to give the police a free hand in finding and capturing the suspect, to bring things to an end that day. (Admittedly my fb feed is full of graduate students. In my case, the only difference was that I checked twitter rather more frequently throughout the day.)
4. Was it worth the loss of a day's profit? Should we be counting in those terms? It's hard to escape that kind of cost-benefit analysis. And hard to escape utilitarianism altogether, when thinking about public policy.
5. Should the suspect be treated as an enemy combatant? As if he had put himself in a state of nature - a state of war - against, well, the state.
6. My god the poverty of political theory to think about these things.
7. He lived here longer than he had in Krygyzstan (or wherever); he spent most of his school years here; he was a naturalized citizen. Claim him as an American. I don't mean that it's America's fault, or anything like that - I think that whether or not it was his brother's fault it was his own doing too - the things you learn in moral theory 101; how anemic they are - but claim him as an American. And that means: claim him as a Bostonian, too. (I suppose: Cantabrigian?)
8. It probably took someone living here to think of bombing the Boston marathon. That is a betrayal.
9. Group psychology can be a little - odd, I suppose. (a) It can be induced through the media. (In my case, anyway.) (b) The memorials, the candlelight vigils, the wishes on twitter, a moment's silence before the London marathon, the Yankees playing Sweet Caroline, people singing the national anthem at the Bruins game - does it help the victims and their families? Perhaps it does to know that the city, and the world, too, grieves for them and honours them. But more than that it seems to be about the participants themselves - the participants in these rituals? I mean - our need not just to grieve for the victims, but to grieve for them collectively, and to grieve for people we only knew as fellow members of this city (or even: people who happened to be in this city at the time). This goes beyond normal horror at the bombing, and sympathy for the victims. The city grieves, the Globe says. The city is beginning to heal. Where does this need come from? Does it have to do with the nature of the attack? Or just human nature? Goodness knows I'm not immune to it - witness this post I guess - but it's - interesting? (Academia screws up your normal instincts, I suppose is what I'm saying.)
10. I am so, so sorry for the injured.
