2005-01-03

I hear my species calling, but the pizza guy is on the other line

This is, apparently, from a high school textbook in philosophy published in 2003 and still in use. According to a letter in Tuesday's edition of Danas, on page 187 of Udžbenik filozofije by Ivan Kolarić, in the section on Nietzsche, the good professor Kolarić says:

".....However, our misogynist, while he is incomparably more moderate than his teacher Schopenhauer, succeeds in undertsanding the very essence of the female being when he writes: 'Woman is an enigma whose solution is a child!' Truly, women who have not given birth are like unripe fruit, they have not affirmed their nature, they have not answered the call of their species and they have not realized the meaning of their lives...."

Or maybe you prefer the original:

".....Međutim, naš ženomrzac, mada neuporedivo umereniji od učitelja mu Šopenhauera, uspeva da dokuči samu bit ženskog bića, kad kaže:'Žena je enigma čije rešenje je dete!' Zaista, žene koje nisu rađale su kao nedozrelo voće, one nisu potvrdile svoju prirodu, nisu odgovorile pozivu vrste i nisu ostvarile smisao svog života....."

The writer of the letter, Ljiljana Negojević of Kraljevo, points out that "The words between quotations are Nietzsche's, the rest is the personal position of the author of the textbook, which students are obligated to learn." There may be a pedagogical theory associating students' tendency to learn with the type of fruit they most closely resemble.

Professor Kolarić would appear to be head of philosophy and sociology at that distinguished academic institution, the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pale, right in the vibrant downtown of "Srpsko Sarajevo."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think this was taken out of the context and is fully missunderstood. As the mather of fact, I've heard of the professor and I fully appreciate his commitment to the philosophy. If somebody does not know, he is the only one who has provided serbian students with an admirable philosophy textbook. The professor is also highly admired among the science public in Serbia, Republika Srpska and Montenegro. But, I am not surprised that all that is forgotten in a second in such a lo-moral countru such as Sebia.(unfortunatelly)