narrative
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Seminar: Hermeneutics – An Introduction
Fall 2026 | Hermeneutics – An Introduction | Philosophy Seminar Human beings are always interpreting: words, gestures, events, traditions, texts, and, perhaps most of all, one another. But interpretation is not simply extracting a meaning from these things we encounter. Every attempt to understand brings us into further questions: What makes understanding possible in the…
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On Propaganda
A Philosophical Happy Hour on propaganda’s causes, consequences, and cures. The advent of mass communication—beginning with the national newspaper but greatly accelerated first through radio and second, with great totalization, through television—ushered in a new paradigm for shaping the actions of human beings: propaganda. It has been used to impose faux cultural homogeneity, to establish…
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On the Significance of Fictitious Entities
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the moral, psychological, and cultural significance of fictitious entities in human life. Cultural Role of Fictitious Entities Fictitious entities, myths, and media entertainment saturates much of our cultural ethos and society today. Many references we use and employ, metaphors we construct, the subterranean moralizing messaging we find is more often…
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On Tragedy
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the nature and purpose of tragedy in both poetic and real experience. Twenty-three years ago, on nearly this day, many of us bore witness to an undoubtedly tragic event—a relative few with our own eyes, most through the television. I do not need to elaborate: only to say that I…