Night School

Strange words, but major connotations for language and identity, two major cornerstones of existence. Join the regular duo this week as they unpack the terms with their special guest theorist, artist, academic and global traveler Ray Langenbach.

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In his time, Hamzah Fansuri was the traveler, theologian, philosopher and poet of the Malay Archipelago, par excellence. Join the Night School family tonight as we go over his basic ideas as well as the context that enabled them.

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We engage in a bit of navel-gazing after a year of Night School topics. With the help of academic and performance artist Ray Langenbach, Fuad and Sharaad, re-visit the original concept of the show, talk about shows that struck a cord and critically evaluate weaknesses in the show. We conclude with a look forward.

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"I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul" said Socrates in Plato's account of the Greek philosopher's trial, Apology. We explore the arguments of Socrates in his trial and the question of wisdom, death and the defense for thought.

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“If you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing,” wrote 20th century French theorist Michel Foucault. In this discussion we look at Foucault's work "The History of Sexuality, Volume 1" as it relates to notions of governmentality, sexual identity and the body.

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“Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell,” wrote American social theorist, Irwing Goffman. YouTube poses new challenges for the presentation of our selves to a public, real or presumed. What can the study of discussions around such net-based communications tell us about humans and the societies we continually build? We take a socio-linguitic approach this week.

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Dead at 31, the fragments of Indonesian diarist Ahmad Wahib’s “Pergolakan Pemikiran Islam” is a study how a world in tumult can be productive of deep contemplation. Born into an Indonesia triumphant in its revolution against Dutch colonial rule but struggling to define the new born nation in the face of its undeniable diversity, Ahmad also defines a self through a struggle about what his faith can be. Questions of individualism and a mature subjectivity arise in this week’s episode.

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“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom,” wrote the 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Immensely influential, Hegel shaped the concerns and thinking of generations to come. Chris Chong picks one of Hegel’s more accessible text - The Philosophy of History – to get a sense of his ambitious and complex intellectual project.

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“Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.

At least the ancient Greeks were being honest,” wrote novelist Chuck Palahniuk. But how have philosophers understood the question of free will? That’s the topic today.

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“In its rational form [dialectic] is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary,” wrote Karl Marx in Capital Volume 1. Today we take on a methodology worth grappling with.

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