The start of my European adventure

I made my last post from Hong Kong, and this comes from Frankfurt, as I keep coming ever closer to Utrecht and the start of my study in Europe. My arrival at the Erasmus Mundus Masters of Applied Ethics programme has already been delayed by almost three weeks, as I have been subject to a number of delays. I even had a last round of drama at Auckland airport as I tried to depart. But all of that draws to an end, and I am ever so close to getting down to the real business. Somebody joked that I should use my (copious) time travelling from Auckland to Utrecht to write a book about all the trials that beset me as I tried to get here, instead I wrote a technical minded-little piece on meta-ethics (the previous post) and read Bernard Williams's Morality, An Introduction to Ethics twice. This gives you some indication of what type of person I am, a request somebody else made of me and my blog.

It's hard to keep up with the breakneck pace of academic philosophy...

As I said a few posts ago, I'm currently using this blog as a place to comment on the articles I should be discussing with my peers in Linköping, Sweden, as I start the course of study I've been invited on. I'm not in Sweden, or the Netherlands, or anywhere connected to that study, because I do not have a visa to enter Europe. I've spent the past few days wrestling with the various authorities as I try to change this regrettable and rather silly state of affairs. I'll be trying to catch up in the next few days, because I need to hit the ground running once I'm finally over there, and because I need a productive way to pass my time other than working up passive aggressive attitudes towards bureaucracy.

It doesn't do to complain

I say in the sidebar that I'm currently studying in Europe, but I'm getting slightly ahead of myself. I should be in Europe, attending the Erasmus Mundus Masters in Applied Ethics (MAE) introduction in Linköping, Sweden. Instead, I'm stuck in Auckland, New Zealand, for another week, sorting out visa trouble. You see, I've been invited to this course of study by nobody less than the European Commission, but I can't actually enter Europe. It's a tremendous inconvenvience, and a very expensive one, but there's nothing I can do about it. So, instead of sitting on my hands, I'll be using this blog to post a few comments on the articles that are being discussed at the introduction week, articles which constitute a first pass over the applied ethical literature.

Waka Huia

I'm Marinus, a South African who is a graduate student in philosophy and has lived and studied in New Zealand for a number of years.

I've created this blog at the start of my study in Europe in pursuit of a scholarship in applied ethics, largely to have a place to record various things relevant to my year of study there.

The name comes from a type of artefact made by the Māori, where waka is a canoe or container, and huia a type of bird whose feathers were and remain very valuable ornaments, though it is now extinct. A waka huia is an oblong, richly carved wooden box in which head-ornaments are kept, and is the most valuable type of treasure-box for the most precious items, on account of the head being the part of the body that garners the greatest respect. I'm hardly a New Zealander, and not Māori at all, but the image of a canoe for the treasures of the head as a chronicle of my study abroad is simply too fitting to resist.

My screen-name comes from a little short story, They're Made out of Meat by Terry Bisson, which does as good a job as anything else I can think of to drive home what it means to deny that there is anything more to human beings than our physical material.

The image in the header is of a waka huia in Te Papa (the national museum of New Zealand).