Mark your calendars for a HalHum 101 info session on Sep 13 at 1:30 PM at the North Memorial Library! Hear from graduates of the program, and experience the joy of learning as we’re guided through the ancient poetry of Sappho with Dr. Eli Diamond. https://t.co/XRMX6d7UBa
Applications for Halifax Humanities 101 are now OPEN! If you love reading and discussing big questions, then this FREE 8-month great books course is for you! Apply today: https://t.co/FKvLs0CDr0
A HUGE congratulations to our graduates!
"It's customary to end on a quote.... :
'The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be ignited.'
And I'll just add that our minds have been wildfires."
Terra Nova Rubacha, HH101 Valedictorian 2025
"The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away." Simone Weil, "The Iliad, or, the Poem of Force"
"Action, with all its uncertainties, is like an ever-present reminder that men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin something new."
Hannah Arendt, "Labor, Work, Action"
On Wednesday evening we held the 2nd Annual Humanities Today Lecture, and what a night it was! Thank you to everyone who joined us, and especially to Dr. Adamson for taking us on a whirlwind tour through your philosophical podcast project.
and as certain as it is that the second value-judgement has long been in the ascendant, there is even now no shortage of places where the outcome of the conflict remains undecided."
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals 2/2
"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;"
Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"
From a Talk at Google that Peter Adamson gave back in 2017: "And you don’t cover [female philosophers] because you’re being politically correct, or something, you cover them because they’re there."
Join us next week on Wednesday, April 16 to hear how the project has grown since!
Nora: That's just it. You have never understood me... I've been greatly wronged, Torvald. First by my father, and then by you."
Ibsen, A Doll's House 2/2
"Nora: I'm not talking about worries. I say we've never once sat down together and seriously tried to get to the bottom of anything.
Helmer: But, my dear Nora, would that have been a thing for you? 1/2
Our Humanities Today Lecture with Dr. Peter Adamson is in two weeks! Now is a great time to dip into his podcast, The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. Here's the latest episode, "Well Hidden: Descartes’ Life and Works":
https://t.co/SbwsyWCoCW
Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength."
Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground 2/2
"Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? 1/2
"The principal objective of every science of life, whether individual or social is, in brief, to define and explain the normal state and to distinguish it from its opposite." Émile Durkheim, The Science of Morality