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Richard Farr
Richard Farr
Richard Farr has a Ph.D. in ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of science from Cornell University; taught philosophy at several universities; ran a corporate communications business; and is working on a book about what makes great speeches great. His book about Scott's last expedition, Emperors of the Ice, won a 2009 Washington State Book Award, among other honors.
How Heroes Rise and Fall ...And Rise Again: The Strange Case of Robert Falcon Scott
What makes heroes, what causes them to fall from grace--and what, in relatively rare instances, causes them to rise again? For decades after his death in 1911, "Scott of the Antarctic" was feted worldwide as the ultimate hero for his travels to the South Pole. By the mid-1980s, however, the tide had turned and Scott was routinely dismissed as an amateurish fool whose bad decisions had led to the deaths of his men. (Meanwhile his colleague and rival, Ernest Shackleton, had become the hero du jour.) Now, once again, the tables are turning: several writers have argued that the criticism of Scott is misplaced. New considerations cast his expedition, his whole era, and indeed our own way of thinking about the past in a new light, begging a much larger question: how should we form judgments when we don't have all the facts?
Contact Richard at (206) 371-7828 or by email. He currently lives in Seattle, WA.
Richard Farr from Humanities Washington on Vimeo.
