Introduction

Inaugural Post & Introduction

This blog was started by two Columbia University graduates. (And anyone who has read the texts we are reading, or wants to read along with us, is invited to comment and contribute.) One has his BA and MA from Columbia. The other merely has his MA from the Ivy League. Both of our MAs are in Modern European Studies—which means that everything European from the past 200 years or so is in our purview. My emphasis was on philosophy and literature. My BA is from a small college in Minnesota where I studied philosophy, theology and political science. I also spent a short time pursuing a graduate degree in Christian Spirituality. My partner in this endeavor studied philosophy and literature as well. Both of us share a love of literature and a strong affinity for the writings of Nietzsche.

The name of the blog is taken from Nietzsche who advocates an approach to reading and studying that is slow and thoughtful. Nietzsche calls this approach rumination in the preface to his Genealogy of Morality (and elsewhere). He says, "...to practice reading as an art...one thing above all is necessary... something for which one must almost be a cow and in any case not a 'modern man': ruminating." We like this and are therefore willing to call ourselves cows.

Please join us as we slowly and thoughtfully chew.