Philosophy and Lewis Carroll

Friday, May 15, 2020

On February 28th, Professor Michael Della Rocca happily tackled deductive reasoning with a group of over a dozen students from Directed Studies. This optional, Friday-afternoon event was the first philosophy-focused forum in the brand new, student-organized “60 Minutes in Present Politics, Philosophy, and Prose” initiative. The discussion revolved around Lewis Carroll’s famous (and rather odd) critique of deduction in What the Tortoise Said to Achilles and a short work by Professor Della Rocca on F. H. Bradley’s critique of the sensibility of relations. The forum’s effortless blend of pizza-fueled head-scratching and deep intellectual inquiry neatly captured the spirit of joyful curiosity that permeates Directed Studies.