Peripatetic Praxis :: Global Spiral

4/28/2009 - It’s the end of the university as we know it (and I feel fine)…
My inbox filled up faster than a grad student at a reception for the guest speaker with emails from correspondents alerting me to this pronouncement by Mark C. Taylor, calling graduate education “the Detroit of higher learning.” Readers of this blog will find nothing new in Taylor’s bill of particulars: we produce graduates for whom there are no jobs; we use grad students like indentured servants; the students rack up huge debts; they’re trained to publish articles for journals that no one reads; there is over-specialization and undergraduate education suffers for it; disciplinarity is no longer the effective model for research and learning... More

7/28/2008 - On the impossible
People like us, it seems to me my friends, are after something like “the whole story of the whole cosmos for the whole person.” We are “after” it, because we do not have it. We do not have it, because the whole story, the story of the whole, is impossible. But it is the impossible which drives us. Indeed, the drive for the impossible might be the most divine thing in us.... More

6/04/2008 - Global Dimming
One does what one can to give science, religion, art, and culture a good name, but sometimes all you get is a load of Bovine Excr....(oops)! More

4/11/2008 - A Common Morality
Maritain teaches that to find we have a common, unwritten sort of natural law to guide human action is a bare minimum, enough to start a great and necessary work, but not enough to finish it. Nevertheless, will we not start it? More

4/03/2008 - Life is Not a Gift (and Neither is Dessert)
We treat gifts as if they were obligations and our just desserts as if they were gifts. I think we may have the whole thing backwards... More

3/06/2008 - There are 10 kinds of people...
....those who know binary and those who don't. (Get it?) And Russell Jacoby knows binary! More

2/26/2008 - Metaphysics Matters
...or why we do what we do, part deux: A recovery of metaphysics means to move deftly and hopefully between the “foolishness” of thinking the whole is wholly inaccessible, and the “idolatry” of thinking that the whole is wholly articulable in some sort of “superdisciplinary” form. It is a fine line, and it is of vital importance to preserve this hope. More

1/31/2008 - “Out in the main square with a pile of wood around my ankles…”
Things are really heating up (maybe...), but can we talk about it? And should we actually talk about it virtually? And who's to blame, anyway? Academics--that's who! More

1/23/2008 - A light-hearted look at melancholy....
According to Eric G. Wilson, happiness is not all it's cracked up to be, and he's on a mission to save melancholy from extinction. (And what's all this got to do with transdisciplinarity anyway?) More

1/11/2008 - Rapidly produced, just as rapidly forgotten
Is blogging the main vehicle for the next generation of public intellectuals, or is it a further sign of their disappearance? Russell Jacoby is pessimistic.... More

1/03/2008 - What’s the worst that could happen?
It seems we have gotten scared witless by the specters of global warming and jihadism–so much so that we cannot focus on much more widely significant problems like the potential for a global recession, which would affect millions of people, or our plague of urban violence, lousy schools, and abandoned kids, which affects a whole region, or even just the problem of potholes or snow removal or any other demands of communal life. More

12/27/2007 - God Rest Ye, Village Atheists
I’d like to analyze a scan of Richard Dawkins’ brain. More

12/27/2007 - Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan again
We need Ayaan Hirsi Ali to keep the West alert to the sickness in the Muslim culture, a sickness that Tariq Ramadan is hoping to treat for the good of all concerned, but especially for the good of Islam itself. More

12/27/2007 - The Only Thing Worse Than Being Talked About
Two well-known academic philosophers, are engaged in a meaningless public feud, bringing further “glory” to a profession that has become largely irrelevant. More

12/14/2007 - Peripatetic Poop-pouri
We're sure to be in deep doo-doo after this post! More

12/14/2007 - Political Religion

"It would be nice today to hear a candidate step up and oppose all that is 'appalling, brutal and bigoted' in the limited religious views that substitute for spirituality in American politics today. Who knows — it might even be good politics." Sure, but such opposition might manifest itself in a variety of political positions and programs, and we'll need political wisdom in addition to theological authenticity to figure it out. More

12/10/2007 - Health and Hope
Anyway, the question of what constitutes health in the first place needs to be addressed, and that means we need to think about what it means to be human person, as well as what it means to be in community, and even about the very notion of the good. In other words, the public discussion that is going on regarding health care needs to become more philosophical than it has been. Otherwise, there is no hope in contending with our problems. More

11/29/2007 - Tariq Ramadan or Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
The Islamist question, in the forefront of European and American thinking, might be put this way: Should support go to “enlightened fundamentalists” or to “Muslim dissidents”? (I have some problems with referring to any believer as “fundamentalist”…) Another way would be to ask, should we promote difference-based “multiculturalism” or resemblance-based “universalism”? More

11/26/2007 - “dumb–almost cosmic stupidity”
I couldn’t agree more with this assessment by Glenn T. Miller, academic dean and professor of ecclesiastical history at Bangor Theological Seminary, on the decision to split the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings. More

11/13/2007 - The Top 100 Effects of Global Warming
Very scary global warming worries.... More

11/13/2007 - Peripatetic Potpouri
“The salaries aren’t that great, the prestige isn’t that great, the ability to interact with the world isn’t that great, the career options aren’t that great, the methodologies are narrow." Why philosophize? And other tidbits... More

11/09/2007 - National Service...in Retail???
The education of the whole person requires more than just intellectual development, and service learning and other such programs are attempts to fulfill that aspect of education that brings persons into concernful relations with each other. More

11/05/2007 - One Flew over the Cukoo’s Nest
The news that Anthony Flew had abandoned atheism broke in 2004, and it has been a big deal to a certain crowd of people in the “science and religion dialogue.” Evangelicals: “Aha! Told ya so! One more for our side!” Militant Atheists: “He’s apostate. Of course, he’s old. He’s facing death and is afraid all of a sudden. He’s senile. He’s being manipulated.” More

11/01/2007 - The (Natural) Law: Not (just) a good idea…?
"'Natural' means the attempt to ground ethics in existence and in a shared understanding of what it is to be human, while 'law”'means something very unlike the modern understanding of the term–principle or orientation might be a more appropriate term today, as opposed to fixed and rigid 'laws' in a legalistic sense. Even a shared understanding of what it means to be human does not mean that all persons must follow the same course of action in a given situation for we also share in common human uniqueness." Every reader of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics would know as much (as would, of course, just about anyone). More