History of Philosophy II

In response to the question concerning the legality of the Communist Party I had quite a lot of interesting responses. My own experience here in Anchorage convinces me that while it is not illegal, no one wants to openly admit to being Communist. We have instead a national organization that seems to be the most active part of the party today in the US that I have seen The National Labor Federation. Here in Anchorage the member organization is called the Alaska Workers Association. The leadership of that organization has asked me several times if they could do presentations in my philosophy classes. I have always said no since their presentation would not fit into the syllabus and would be inappropriate for other reasons as well. But it strikes me that they no longer refer to themselves as communists. There must be a reason. Today we spent most of the time talking about Kierkegaard. The movie I mentioned as drawing an interesting parallel in my mind at least was Fanny and Alexander. Was Soren's life a series of such contrasts? Looking at the text we had fun discussing the first stage on life's way - the aesthetic life. For the second stage I talked about Agamemnon and mentioned this movie: Iphigenia. For the third stage Soren used the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son. The quiz question today was what is the difference between depression and despair? We then began talking about Nietzsche but did not get very far.