OSU to present philosophical look at stupidity

Friday, March 21, 2008

Free and open to the public on April 10.
 
(March 21, 2008   STILLWATER, Okla.)  – Has the level of stupidity increased in the United States since 2000? Scholar and philosopher David Krell will explore the touchy topic at 7:30 p.m. on April 10 at Oklahoma State University.
 
Krell is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. The talk is based on his teaching experiences in Germany, France and England, as well as the United States.
 
“Dr. Krell is one of the most important continental philosophers of our generation,” said Martin Wallen, an English professor at OSU who is coordinating Krell’s visit. “His talk will ask whether over the past eight years one can say, in a philosophical defensible way, that the United States has achieved a new level of stupidity.”
 
Krell specializes in early Greek thought, Plato, German idealism, romanticism, and contemporary European literature and thought. He has authored more than 10 books including “The Tragic Absolute: German Idealism and the Languishing of God,”; “The Purest of Bastards: Works on Mourning, Art, and Affirmation in the Thought of Jacques Derrida”; and “Contagion: Sexuality, Disease, and Death in German Idealism and Romanticism.”
 
The lecture is free and open to the public in Room 109 of the Bartlett Center for the Visual Arts. To learn more, phone Wallen at (405) 744-9474 or visit english.okstate.edu .