Cropsey on natural slavery Cropsey wore street clothes and changed into a blue pinstripe suit in his office before giving his lectures.  He kept his socks in the bottom drawer of his desk.  On top of his steel filing cabinet , which contained Leo Strauss' private papers,  was an 18th Century leather bound folio volume from Pierre Bayle's  Dictionary , which contained Leo Strauss' private papers.  I don't think these smelled of socks.  The Bayle volume contained Bayle's article on Spinoza.  Cropsey espoused his own brand of scepticism, so the Bayle was not surprising, nor was his reluctance to let non-Straussians peruse Strauss' correspondence.  Cropsey had us read Aristotle's  Politics , Plato's  Meno , and  Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology . The translation we used for Aristotle's  Politics  was translated by Straussian Carnes Lord--we called it the Lord edition.  One of the essay questions Cropsey set for us related to what Aristo

If you really want to understand the University of Chicago and its Great Books program, you must first get through a few preliminaries, including, (1) getting to Hyde Park--the once affluent commuter community on the south side of Chicago; (2) learning the language of town and gown; (3) finding a place to live; and (4) hearing from Ford and learning about "umbrella coverage", which has nothing whatever to do with Ford or insurance. Getting there I have never owned a car, so have taken the bus, or subway, or elevated, or electric light rail--or even real trains--all of my life.  For those who enjoyed Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , and actually took on board the idea that almost as important as reaching a destination is your journey (physically and spiritually) to get there, taking slower forms of public transportation has a number of side benefits. Oh, there's the interesting people you see (after all, it takes all kinds--as we have all been

When  I was very young I remember seeing a reproduction of the famous equestrian painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps by Jacques Louis David in a freebie book that showed up in the mail one day.   The publisher--very likely Time Life--hoped to tempt you to subscribe to the whole series.  But in a family like ours, the book was just another way to ease the boredom until something else dropped through the slot in the door, like an individual portion of Captain Crunch, which showed up when the Posties were on strike.  The box advertised that Captain Crunch "stays crunchy, even in milk" and featured a perforated front, which open like barn doors to allow you to eat right out of the box.  Skip the Dishes is not a new concept in the history of marketing. I don't know who delivered the prize package--only remember waiting for decision as to whether I would get it, or it would go to one of my other two brothers.  There were competing claims regarding who got the last such

It seems to be an occupational hazard of teaching maths that you become slightly potty.  Who could teach trig without being eccentric, or logs without the occasional twitch, or ruffle.  Few remember John Napier, but everybody is grateful for the Texas Instruments programmable calculator (cooler than the Hewlett-Packard, which indicated your dad was probably an accountant), with the vinyl case you could loop through your belt and look like a NASA engineer. But the maths teacher I'm thinking of could give any quirky person a run for his money.  Henry Wise Wood\s Mr. Turley was obvious as an odd duck. It was 1977, and Mr Turley wore a full length fur to class.  His wife, he told us, was a real estate agent, and, in Calgary in a boom time, realtors made good money.  But his wardrobe was not limited to opulence.  He wore a different three piece suit every day--the colours were always pastel--and the fabrics were more than likely fake.  He drove a Caddy, and, with his flamboyant dre