Dude!…
A request for submissions from the venerable academic publisher Blackwell:
Black Sabbath and Philosophy
Edited by William Irwin
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series
Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written to engage the intelligent lay reader. Contributors of accepted essays will receive an honorarium.
Possible themes and topics might include, but are not limited to, the following: “Am I Going Insane?”: Madness in Sabbath and Foucault; Purging Fear and Pity with Sabbath and Aristotle; “War Pigs” and Pacifism; Gods who can Dance: Nietzsche, Sabbath, and Dionysus; Sabbath’s Sonic Meaning and the Devil’s Interval; “Fairies Wear Boots”: Drugs and Transcendence; “Push the Needle In”: The “Hand of Doom” and Addiction; “Solitude”: Existential Alienation and Despair; Working Class Heroes: Sabbath’s Politics; Spiral Architects and Rock Poets; “My name is Lucifer, please take my hand”: The Occult and the Virtues of Blasphemy; Sweet Leaf and Snow Blind: The Epistemology of Addiction; Is it still Sabbath without Ozzy?: The Metaphysics of Band Identity through Time; The Godfathers of Metal: Genre and Influence; Iron Man and The Wizard: Sabbath’s Mythology; “Tomorrow’s Dream”: Existential Freedom and Rebellion; Johnny Blade and Hypermasculinity; Why Scary Music Makes Us Feel Good: Sabbath and the Paradox of Horror; “Dirty Women”: Gender and Sexuality in Black Sabbath; The Fifth Member in “Creativity and Performance: Is Sabbath more than the Sum of its Parts?; “Lord of this World” and the Problem of Evil.
More (including, for interested readers, submission guidelines and a link to the series’ site) at Christopher Shea’s “The Philosophy of Heavy Metal.”
Ozzy Osbourne (in his pre-reality show days) and mates: Black Sabbath c.1970
As we search tirelessly for meaning, we might send homey birthday wishes to the second daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, teacher and transcendentalist philosopher, and Abigail May, social worker and reformer: Louisa May Alcott was born on this date in 1832.
While Louisa May was largely schooled by her father, she received instruction from Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller– all family friends. She worked as a seamstress. a governess, and a domestic, then as a Union nurse during the Civil War, before her writing was successful enough to support her. A committed abolitionist and feminist, she was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts.
Success– and lasting fame– came to her with the publication of Little Women…. the heroine of which, Jo March, was, like her creator, born in the “difficult month” on November.
