Category: Language
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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December 1, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. We’ve all done it. Looking for quick information on some random subject, we inevitably turn to Wikipedia. Created in 2001, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia open to edits, a collaborative effort. Merriam-Webster defines “wiki” as “a website that allows visitors to make changes, contributions, …
November 24, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Each fall, Great Books San Francisco hosts a Poetry Weekend. And if there’s one thing that I’m grateful for in this world, it’s poetry. I love to attend this event because of its hybrid nature. The first day is filled with reading and …
October 27, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Viola Cordova was one of the first Native American women to earn a degree in philosophy. Born in 1937, she grew up in Taos, New Mexico. Embracing both her own past and her curiosity of the world, she discarded notions that philosophy should …
September 22, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. For me, Aristotle’s Poetics is less about advice for the writer than it is about defining structures. By that, I mean that Aristotle wants us to understand how to produce good art that expresses an important aspect of human nature. He goes so …
June 23, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. To all the “honest drinkers” – as Rabelais would have it – congratulations! We made it to the final post in this series on Rabelais. Hopefully the various connections have enriched your experience of what is often considered difficult reading. Today’s blog concludes …
June 2, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Last week’s blog (https://hmu.edu/2023-5-26-reading-rabelais-part-ii/) concluded with a suggested connection between Book Two of Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel and Monty Python skits. We cannot stop at the end of Book Two, however. Moving into Book Three, we find a lengthy discussion between Pantagruel and …
April 21, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Occasionally, I like to write about writing. Today I want to explore writing’s evil stepsister: editing. How does the tangled mess of an idea turn into a polished, organized piece of work? In a blog that I posted last year, I described a few …
February 17, 2023 Thanks to James Robertson, HMU student, for today’s blog. In a poem, Whitman writes “This is no book; who touches this touches a man” (Leaves of Grass). In contrast, Plato has Socrates observe that “writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet …
January 27, 2023 Thanks to James Robertson, HMU student, for today’s post. Learning with Harrison Middleton involves immersion in a world of books and of reading, and is often an experience of enchantment, as now this author and now that nearly captures the heart. There is power in these books, ancient though they may be, …
December 2, 2022 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. I used to whiz right past any additional sections of a book. Focused only on main content, I often skipped the introduction or preface, background material, acknowledgments or footnotes. In other words, I used to skip a lot of text. I chalk this …
