Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Godzilla, in yesterday's entry, brought our attention to east Asia and we will stay there today. Hackett Publishing has come out with a book with the title I've just given this blog post. Again (as with the Godzilla movie), I haven't partaken myself, and I'm working simply from a review.  It turns out that the Korean peninsula has produced a distinctive school of neo-Confucianism, and eight individuals within that line are featured in this anthology.  Jeong Dojeon and Gwon Geun kicked off this party in the late 14th and 15th centuries. Seo Gyeongdeok and Yi Eonjeok seem to have been more original figures than their precursors. They have the air not of people bringing something Chinese into a new place, but of people making something new out of it.   A third group in the 16th century broadened the issues that such philosophizing covered, focusing among other things on the role of emotions in causing behavior. There was a fourth and final group (final at least in the c...

  No, I'm not going to do a review.  Haven't seen the movie.  But I did read a review by Owen Glieberman that struck me as fascinating. Glieberman says the problem with the recent movie Odyssey, is that Christopher Nolan kept the gods out of it.  The gods are primordial forces, and Homer without his gods is a much less interesting story teller. BUT ... he continues, if you do want to see the embodiment of primordial forces, creatures very akin to Homer's gods, on a movie screen:  THAT is what Godzilla movies are for. The puny humas trying to avoid destruction in a world like this are, well ... very much like Odysseus and his men seeking to sail between rocks and a whirlpool because of the anger of Poseidon. Fair point, Mr. Gleiberman     Godzilla Minus Zero Review: An Even Grander Clash-of-the-Titans Sequel