∞
All Your Deeds
I just read the seventy-third psalm. I don't understand much of it, but it begins with a complaint about injustice, and I certainly feel like I get that part.
The last line caused me some trouble, though. In it Asaph, the psalmist, says "I will tell of all your [God's] deeds."
Okay, what exactly are those deeds? What can we ever reliably say about God's deeds? If God had done something in history that were not open to historical doubt, there would be no atheists.
The tradition gives us stories about God, and a century of biblical criticism calls those stories myths. Still, as I have argued elsewhere (here, and here, for example) myth is not - or should not be taken as - a synonym for falsehood. Stories may be myths and true, even if not historically true.
As Howard Wettstein argues in his Significance of Religious Experience,
Which makes me wonder: what roles does God play in my life? What "deeds" may I speak of?
Before I reply, let me hasten to say this: I am often reluctant to write too strongly about this sort of thing because I do not want to say that others must believe what I believe. If God has led me to belief, (grant me that for the sake of argument for a moment) God has not strong-armed me into belief but allowed me to arrive at my beliefs over time, letting them be shaped by experience. I do not see why I should allow you less liberty than God has allowed me.
So I write the following admitting that I do not know what I am writing about. As Augustine confessed, when I speak of my love for God, I do so simultaneously wondering what I mean by "God." What can I compare God to? What is God like? I do not know how to answer those questions, except by telling stories, expositing roles. So here goes:
When I was a child, belief in God motivated a family in my neighborhood to care about me and to welcome me into their home when my family was falling apart. Without that love...I shudder to think what I would be today.
God gives me a name for what I pray to. God gives me a focal point for my attention in the vast cosmos, and God gives me a sense that in such a cosmos persons matter. And because persons matter, justice matters. This is not to say one cannot be just without belief, or that belief makes one just - far from it! - only that I find for myself the two ideas closely bound together.
God gives me solace in my mourning and hope when I pray. My mother is dead, but when I speak to God about her, she is not lost.
God gives me a story about the centrality of nurturing love. A reason to think all things are related. Someone to thank. Someone to be angry with. Rest for my soul. Quietness, and in it, trust.
God gives me a story about giving, and why giving and receiving should matter so much.
A story about why, and how, to turn a guilty conscience into repentance. A reason to forgive, and, very often, the strength to forgive. And to hope that I too am forgivable.
A reason to hope that no one is beyond redemption, beyond all hope, completely unworthy of love.
Belief that every person matters. More than that, belief that a teenage girl could be a vessel of the divine; that a third-world martyred prophet could save the world; that an inarticulate foreigner could be a world-historical lawgiver; that a persecuting zealot could get hit so hard by grace that he lives the rest of his life to preach good news for all people everywhere.
Hope that prison doors could be opened, that tongues could be loosed, that great art and great music might be signs of the divine.
I could be wrong about all of this, I know. I know there are other explanations of what I have written above. I also know those explanations apply to music, too, and I'm not interested in hearing about them there either if the reason for offering them is to help disabuse me of my love for good music. I know that people use the same word I use here to justify violence, self-interest, and hatred. I cannot help but feel angry and disgusted when it is used for those ends, ends which seem so contrary to what the word means for me, ends that make me think someone has read the wrong script, mis-cast the character, not known what deeds God has done.
The last line caused me some trouble, though. In it Asaph, the psalmist, says "I will tell of all your [God's] deeds."
Okay, what exactly are those deeds? What can we ever reliably say about God's deeds? If God had done something in history that were not open to historical doubt, there would be no atheists.
The tradition gives us stories about God, and a century of biblical criticism calls those stories myths. Still, as I have argued elsewhere (here, and here, for example) myth is not - or should not be taken as - a synonym for falsehood. Stories may be myths and true, even if not historically true.
As Howard Wettstein argues in his Significance of Religious Experience,
The Bible’s characteristic mode of ‘theology’ is story telling, the stories overlaid with poetic language. Never does one find the sort of conceptually refined doctrinal propositions characteristic of a doctrinal approach. When the divine protagonist comes into view, we are not told much about his properties. Think about the divine perfections, the highly abstract omni-properties (omnipotence, omniscience, and the like), so dominant in medieval and post-medieval theology. One has to work very hard—too hard—to find even hints of these in the Biblical text. Instead of properties, perfection and the like the Bible speaks of God’s roles—father, king, friend, lover, judge, creator, and the like. Roles, as opposed to properties; this should give one pause. (108, emphasis added)The stories may not be about historical "deeds" but may be about the character, the roles of God.
Which makes me wonder: what roles does God play in my life? What "deeds" may I speak of?
 |
| The preface to the complaint in Psalm 73 |
Before I reply, let me hasten to say this: I am often reluctant to write too strongly about this sort of thing because I do not want to say that others must believe what I believe. If God has led me to belief, (grant me that for the sake of argument for a moment) God has not strong-armed me into belief but allowed me to arrive at my beliefs over time, letting them be shaped by experience. I do not see why I should allow you less liberty than God has allowed me.
So I write the following admitting that I do not know what I am writing about. As Augustine confessed, when I speak of my love for God, I do so simultaneously wondering what I mean by "God." What can I compare God to? What is God like? I do not know how to answer those questions, except by telling stories, expositing roles. So here goes:
When I was a child, belief in God motivated a family in my neighborhood to care about me and to welcome me into their home when my family was falling apart. Without that love...I shudder to think what I would be today.
God gives me a name for what I pray to. God gives me a focal point for my attention in the vast cosmos, and God gives me a sense that in such a cosmos persons matter. And because persons matter, justice matters. This is not to say one cannot be just without belief, or that belief makes one just - far from it! - only that I find for myself the two ideas closely bound together.
God gives me solace in my mourning and hope when I pray. My mother is dead, but when I speak to God about her, she is not lost.
God gives me a story about the centrality of nurturing love. A reason to think all things are related. Someone to thank. Someone to be angry with. Rest for my soul. Quietness, and in it, trust.
God gives me a story about giving, and why giving and receiving should matter so much.
A story about why, and how, to turn a guilty conscience into repentance. A reason to forgive, and, very often, the strength to forgive. And to hope that I too am forgivable.
A reason to hope that no one is beyond redemption, beyond all hope, completely unworthy of love.
Belief that every person matters. More than that, belief that a teenage girl could be a vessel of the divine; that a third-world martyred prophet could save the world; that an inarticulate foreigner could be a world-historical lawgiver; that a persecuting zealot could get hit so hard by grace that he lives the rest of his life to preach good news for all people everywhere.
Hope that prison doors could be opened, that tongues could be loosed, that great art and great music might be signs of the divine.
I could be wrong about all of this, I know. I know there are other explanations of what I have written above. I also know those explanations apply to music, too, and I'm not interested in hearing about them there either if the reason for offering them is to help disabuse me of my love for good music. I know that people use the same word I use here to justify violence, self-interest, and hatred. I cannot help but feel angry and disgusted when it is used for those ends, ends which seem so contrary to what the word means for me, ends that make me think someone has read the wrong script, mis-cast the character, not known what deeds God has done.
∞
Worries Incompatible With Wisdom
Here is a thought-provoking perspective on the value and aims of studying the liberal arts. Imagine a university promoting itself in this way today, saying, in effect, "You should study the liberal arts, and most likely this will help you not to worry about the wrong things."
It may not be immediately obvious that there are cares that are "incompatible with wisdom," but it doesn't take too much reflection to see that there are certain kinds of worries that we really are unwise to cling to.
******
I don't think that "cares incompatible with wisdom" means "foolish cares." John is not simply being polite; he is also being compassionate, and acknowledging that we do not generally choose our troubles, and it can take training, and hard work, not to worry about them. Sometimes, worrying isn't even a choice, and we should be slow to damn those who worry uncontrollably.
“While there are many sorts of arts, the first to proffer their services to the natural abilities of those who philosophize are the liberal arts….The liberal arts are said to have become so efficacious among our ancestors, who studied them diligently, that they enabled them to comprehend everything they read, elevated their understanding to all things, and empowered them to cut through the knots of all problems possible of solution….They are called “liberal” either because the ancients took care to have their children [liberos] instructed in them; or because their object is to effect man’s liberation, so that, freed from cares, he may devote himself to wisdom. More often than not, they liberate us from cares incompatible with wisdom. They often even free us from worry about [material] necessities, so that the mind may have still greater liberty to apply itself to philosophy.”*
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| This is one of the things you don't need to worry about. |
*****
It may not be immediately obvious that there are cares that are "incompatible with wisdom," but it doesn't take too much reflection to see that there are certain kinds of worries that we really are unwise to cling to.
 |
| My dog worries about hot-air balloons. I do not know why, but that's okay. |
******
I don't think that "cares incompatible with wisdom" means "foolish cares." John is not simply being polite; he is also being compassionate, and acknowledging that we do not generally choose our troubles, and it can take training, and hard work, not to worry about them. Sometimes, worrying isn't even a choice, and we should be slow to damn those who worry uncontrollably.
*****
*John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon. Daniel D. McGarry, trans. (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2009) Book I, ch 12. P. 37.
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Steinbeck and Greene On Respect For Enemies
These two passages seem like they ought to be put together somehow. The first is from Steinbeck, the second is from Greene. Although the first is non-fiction and the second is fiction, they both deal with the same thing: soldiers who found themselves lamenting the deaths of their enemies, and who admired their enemies' fighting. The two passages remind me, in turn, of Josiah Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty, where he claims that soldiers may be loyal to their fellow soldiers but also to the same spirit of loyalty in their enemies, even though they are not loyal to their enemies themselves. I am also reminded of William James's point in "The Moral Equivalent of War" where he says that no one would repeat the American Civil War, but, just as surely, no one would erase it from history. The conflict engenders virtues and sacrifices that it would be just as wrong to seek as to destroy.
John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley In Search Of America, (New York: Penguin, 1983) 159-160.
Graham Greene, The Quiet American, (New York: Modern Library, 1992) 196-197.
“Some years ago my neighbor was Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who wrote Heavenly Discourse. He was a very old man when I knew him, but as a young lieutenant just out of military academy he had been assigned to General Miles and he served in the Chief Joseph campaign. His memory of it was very clear and very sad. He said it was one of the most gallant retreats in all history. Chief Joseph and the Nez Percés with squaws and children, dogs, and all their possessions, retreated under heavy fire for over a thousand miles, trying to escape to Canada. Wood said they fought every step of the way against odds until finally they were surrounded by the cavalry under General Miles and the large part of them wiped out. It was the saddest duty he had ever performed, Wood said, and he had never lost his respect for the fighting qualities of the Nez Percés. ‘If they hadn’t had their families with them we could never have caught them,” he said. “And if we had been evenly matched in men and weapons, we couldn’t have beaten them. They were men,” he said, “real men.”And here's Greene:
“Trouin said, ‘Today’s affair—that is not the worst for someone like myself. Over the village they could have shot us down. Our risk was as great as theirs. What I detest is napalm bombing. From three thousand feet, in safety.’ He made a hopeless gesture. ‘You see the forest catching fire. God knows what you would see from the ground. The poor devils are burned alive, the flames go over them like water. They are wet through with fire.’ He said with anger against a whole world that didn’t understand, ‘I’m not fighting a colonial war. Do you think I’d do these things for the planters of Terre Rouge? I’d rather be court-martialled. We are fighting all of your wars, but you leave us the guilt.”These are things that I, who have never had to fight a war, can only gaze at from afar, with wonder, and sadness, and gratitude.
*****
John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley In Search Of America, (New York: Penguin, 1983) 159-160.
Graham Greene, The Quiet American, (New York: Modern Library, 1992) 196-197.
∞
This week I've been reading and re-reading Howard Wettstein's The Significance of Religious Experience and, at the same time, talking with my friend John Kaag about creativity and wonder in Peirce and the other classical Pragmatists.
At the end of his Cambridge Conference lectures of 1898, Peirce quoted a phrase from the Book of Acts, ch 17. The phrase is "live and move and have our being." It appears in a speech by St. Paul, the only time the Greek Testament records a Christian conversing with philosophers. Paul quotes two Greek writers in that speech, Aratus and Epimenides.
The citation of Epimenides is relevant to the Areopagus, the place where Paul is speaking, as I have written elsewhere. Paul quotes Epimenides' poem, the Cretica, in which Epimenides says of Zeus. "In him we live and move and have our being."
Epimenides had been summoned to the Areopagus several centuries prior to Paul's visit. The Athenians were suffering from a long plague and none of their sacrifices had ended it. As Diogenes Laertius recounts,* Epimenides suggested that if their sacrifices to the gods they knew were not availing them, perhaps they should sacrifice to an as-yet unknown god.
The difficulty is that if you don't know the god, how do you know what the god wants? What are the proper prayers? What are the right sacrifices? Who should make them?
Epimenides' solution appears to have been to confess ignorance and then to engage in the ritual to the best of his knowledge. In the absence of settled doctrine, he leaned on human practice. As Epicurus once pointed out, (see the very first line in Epicurus's Principal Doctrines) if your god gets angry about that sort of thing, it's probably not a god worth worshiping anyway.
To put a positive spin on that, consider how the Epimenides story ends: he directs the sacrifices, and the plague ends. And the Athenians leave the altars to an unknown god on the slopes of the Areopagus, where Paul finds one centuries later. Maybe, just maybe, it's possible to pray without knowing everything about God. And maybe, if there's a God, that God knows we don't know much about God at all, and is okay with that. Maybe religion is, as Wettstein suggests, like mathematics, something we can engage in even in the absence of settled knowledge about the underlying metaphysics. I hope so.
******
Epimenides, Or Religion Without Metaphysics
This week I've been reading and re-reading Howard Wettstein's The Significance of Religious Experience and, at the same time, talking with my friend John Kaag about creativity and wonder in Peirce and the other classical Pragmatists.
At the end of his Cambridge Conference lectures of 1898, Peirce quoted a phrase from the Book of Acts, ch 17. The phrase is "live and move and have our being." It appears in a speech by St. Paul, the only time the Greek Testament records a Christian conversing with philosophers. Paul quotes two Greek writers in that speech, Aratus and Epimenides.
The citation of Epimenides is relevant to the Areopagus, the place where Paul is speaking, as I have written elsewhere. Paul quotes Epimenides' poem, the Cretica, in which Epimenides says of Zeus. "In him we live and move and have our being."
Epimenides had been summoned to the Areopagus several centuries prior to Paul's visit. The Athenians were suffering from a long plague and none of their sacrifices had ended it. As Diogenes Laertius recounts,* Epimenides suggested that if their sacrifices to the gods they knew were not availing them, perhaps they should sacrifice to an as-yet unknown god.
The difficulty is that if you don't know the god, how do you know what the god wants? What are the proper prayers? What are the right sacrifices? Who should make them?
Epimenides' solution appears to have been to confess ignorance and then to engage in the ritual to the best of his knowledge. In the absence of settled doctrine, he leaned on human practice. As Epicurus once pointed out, (see the very first line in Epicurus's Principal Doctrines) if your god gets angry about that sort of thing, it's probably not a god worth worshiping anyway.
To put a positive spin on that, consider how the Epimenides story ends: he directs the sacrifices, and the plague ends. And the Athenians leave the altars to an unknown god on the slopes of the Areopagus, where Paul finds one centuries later. Maybe, just maybe, it's possible to pray without knowing everything about God. And maybe, if there's a God, that God knows we don't know much about God at all, and is okay with that. Maybe religion is, as Wettstein suggests, like mathematics, something we can engage in even in the absence of settled knowledge about the underlying metaphysics. I hope so.
 |
| Foreground: Agora of Athens; Background: Acropolis (L) and Areopagus (R) of Athens. |
I took this photo from the temple of Hephaestus on the West end of the ancient agora of Athens. The ruins in the foreground are the old marketplace and civic buildings. At the top left is the Acropolis and the Parthenon; just to the right of the Acropolis is the Areopagus, which currently hosts no buildings, though if you look closely you can see some tourists walking around on the hill. Presumably Epimenides built his altars on the slope leading up to the Areopagus. According to the story in Acts, St Paul preached first in the agora and then on the Areopagus, walking up past an altar left by Epimenides.
*****
* We also find reference to the altars erected by Epimenides in Pausanias (I.i.4); and in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius. Lucian's Philopatris alludes to it as well, but it is possible that he is referring to Acts 17. Epimenides is quoted more than once in the Greek scriptures; he is also quoted in Titus 1.12.
∞
An Ounce Of Prevention
An old Chinese legend tells about a man who was searching for the world's greatest physician.* He learns of a man who can heal any illness, and he assumes that this healer must be the one he is seeking. The healer denies this, saying that another physician is even greater. The greatest physician is the one who can heal any disease before it even begins.
I've lost track of how many times I've heard someone say recently that the point of the Second Amendment is, first of all, to safeguard the other rights enumerated in the Constitution, and second, that a well-regulated militia is necessary in case we ever need to overthrow a government that has turned into a tyranny.
I have a little (though not much) sympathy with the second of those positions, but the first is, I think, simply wrong. Here's why: the First Amendment is itself an extremely powerful tool, and it is fitting that it should precede the Second, because an attempt to solve problems by reasonable words should always precede the attempt to solve our problems by force. In other words, if we exercise our First Amendment rights responsibly, we will never need to invoke the Second to overthrow our government. One of the beautiful things about our Constitution is the way it provides means for us to address unjust power grabs by our government officials without starting an insurrection.
But the bigger problem is one of what fills our hearts and minds: Focusing our attention on preparing to overthrow a future tyranny is like a physician preparing to euthanize a patient who might someday become ill. Yes, it is possible to "cure" any illness by killing the patient, but it's not good medicine. We need more than just preparedness to kill a disease; we need to promote good health as well.
If you're concerned about the nation becoming a tyranny, buying more guns is a poor response. Here are some far better responses:
* Thomas Cleary tells this story in the translator's introduction to his edition of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War (Shambhala: Boston and London, 1988) p. 1.
I've lost track of how many times I've heard someone say recently that the point of the Second Amendment is, first of all, to safeguard the other rights enumerated in the Constitution, and second, that a well-regulated militia is necessary in case we ever need to overthrow a government that has turned into a tyranny.
I have a little (though not much) sympathy with the second of those positions, but the first is, I think, simply wrong. Here's why: the First Amendment is itself an extremely powerful tool, and it is fitting that it should precede the Second, because an attempt to solve problems by reasonable words should always precede the attempt to solve our problems by force. In other words, if we exercise our First Amendment rights responsibly, we will never need to invoke the Second to overthrow our government. One of the beautiful things about our Constitution is the way it provides means for us to address unjust power grabs by our government officials without starting an insurrection.
But the bigger problem is one of what fills our hearts and minds: Focusing our attention on preparing to overthrow a future tyranny is like a physician preparing to euthanize a patient who might someday become ill. Yes, it is possible to "cure" any illness by killing the patient, but it's not good medicine. We need more than just preparedness to kill a disease; we need to promote good health as well.
If you're concerned about the nation becoming a tyranny, buying more guns is a poor response. Here are some far better responses:
- Support good schools. One of the best defenses against a nation falling apart is a well-educated populace. People who are able to think for themselves are less likely to let others do their thinking for them, which is one of the surest defenses against abdicating to a tyrant. People who know their rights and their history will be well-prepared to fight to defend them. People who only know how to fight but don't know what they're fighting for promote instability in government.
- Promote economic opportunity for everyone. We celebrate Dr. King as a promoter of equal rights, but it's worth remembering that for him those rights were closely tied to the opportunity to exercise them and to help one's family to flourish.
- Encourage bright people in your community to become teachers. Public school teachers play too important a role for us to not want our brightest minds in our classrooms. I'm not just talking about STEM fields, either. Literature, history, social sciences and arts are the disciplines that shape our imaginations. Without good art and good stories, you don't have a nation, period.
- Subscribe to your local newspaper. Here are two of the most important professions for any democracy: law and journalism. Without defense attorneys to defend rights, equal rights don't mean much. And without investigative journalism, power will corrupt governors unchecked. Your subscription is your share of the paycheck of people who will watch the custodians of the state. There's not much more important than that.
*****
* Thomas Cleary tells this story in the translator's introduction to his edition of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War (Shambhala: Boston and London, 1988) p. 1.
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The Howler Monkeys of Petén, Guatemala
Each year I co-teach a January-term class on tropical ecology in Guatemala and Belize.
One of my favorite experiences when I return to Guatemala is hearing the howler monkeys at night. Their voices travel for miles through the forest, it seems. My students are often alarmed by the noise, because the monkeys will approach silently and then begin to howl in the treetops overhead with voices that seem to belong to something much bigger than a mono aullador, as they are called in Spanish.
During one of my last trips I made this video. We were setting up camp in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve, or Biosfera Maya, en route to Tikal, when several troops of howlers began to sing nearby. We followed the voices to one of the nearest troops so we could get a closer look at these gentle beauties, our placid arboreal cousins. Enjoy the sound.
 |
| One of the wonders of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve |
During one of my last trips I made this video. We were setting up camp in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve, or Biosfera Maya, en route to Tikal, when several troops of howlers began to sing nearby. We followed the voices to one of the nearest troops so we could get a closer look at these gentle beauties, our placid arboreal cousins. Enjoy the sound.
If you're interested in bringing your students to this fairly
well-preserved rainforest and arranging local guides, you might check
out the Asociación Bio-Itzá, an indigenous Mayan group dedicated to
preserving their forest, their ancestral knowledge, and their language.
They have a small rustic facility on their rainforest reserve and a
Spanish-language school for foreigners (with very reasonable prices) on the north shore of Lake Petén
Itzá, not far from the airport at Flores and from the beautiful ruins of
Tikal.
*****
(A friend tells me he extracted the sound from this video of mine and uploaded it to the wikipedia page on howler monkeys.)
∞
When I've lived in Europe, I've never needed a car, but here in the U.S. I often feel I need to drive even when I'm not going very far. So I've decided to try to walk or bike whenever I can, and to use public transit. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference for my health, and it might make a difference in the lives of others around me. This is one thing I've brought home.
So how about you? What did you learn? What do you see differently? And what will you bring home?
Re-entry: Bringing It Home After Studying Abroad
In one of my last posts, I talked about what you should do when you come home from study abroad. We often refer to this as "re-entry," which makes me think of spacecraft falling back to earth on a turbulent cushion of superheated air. Exhilarating, terrifying, and hard to explain to those who haven't gone through it, I imagine.
Now let me offer one more step that will make re-entry even more valuable for you. As you journal and reflect on what you saw while you were abroad, take time to look over your journal entries, and ask yourself, What do I want to bring home?
Charles Peirce once wrote, "An American who has never been abroad fails to perceive the characteristics of Americans." Now you've been abroad, and you see things differently. Make your new vision matter. Is there one lesson you can incorporate into your life? One thing you saw abroad that you wish you could have here?
Now let me offer one more step that will make re-entry even more valuable for you. As you journal and reflect on what you saw while you were abroad, take time to look over your journal entries, and ask yourself, What do I want to bring home?
 |
| What will you bring home? |
Charles Peirce once wrote, "An American who has never been abroad fails to perceive the characteristics of Americans." Now you've been abroad, and you see things differently. Make your new vision matter. Is there one lesson you can incorporate into your life? One thing you saw abroad that you wish you could have here?
When I've lived in Europe, I've never needed a car, but here in the U.S. I often feel I need to drive even when I'm not going very far. So I've decided to try to walk or bike whenever I can, and to use public transit. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference for my health, and it might make a difference in the lives of others around me. This is one thing I've brought home.
So how about you? What did you learn? What do you see differently? And what will you bring home?
∞
Try To Understand One Another
“Try to understand one another. You can’t hate men if you know them.”
John Steinbeck, From his journal, and written about his fiction writing. Quoted in the introduction to Of Mice and Men, (New York: Penguin, 1994) xi.
John Steinbeck, From his journal, and written about his fiction writing. Quoted in the introduction to Of Mice and Men, (New York: Penguin, 1994) xi.
∞
When You Come Home From Studying Abroad
It being the end of our January term, Augustana College students have just returned from studying abroad in Thailand, Cuba, India, New Zealand, touring Europe, and elsewhere. We place a high value on study abroad, because when you return, you can never see the world the same again.
We think that when Americans study abroad, that's good for the whole world because it helps Americans to see America as they could not see it otherwise.
Of course, it's not without its costs. Our students who have just come back are jetlagged and road-weary. Many are a little deeper in debt. And the new term is about to begin.
That being the case, let me offer some advice to those of you who are returning from studies abroad. I know you're tired, so I'll be brief:
1) Get some rest. Stay up until it's dark out, and then sleep deeply. Get back in sync with the sun on this side of the world.
2) Journal every day. Trust me. Do this. Do it now. Don't put it off. Your memories are already fading. Get it down. Write however you want - impressionistically, narratively, whatever. Write about all five senses. Write about language. Write about the people you were with, and write their names down. Write down names of places, hotels, restaurants, museums. Do it now. Go.
3) Tell stories. To anyone who will listen. Storytelling is one of our oldest and best ways of sharing our experiences. Enrich your classmates and professors who couldn't join you. Tell us what you saw, what surprised you. Tell us anecdotes about specific times, places, meals, people, vehicles. Give us detail. As you do, you will nourish your own memories, and you'll sort out what matters most to you. As Umberto Eco once wrote,
4) Come up with a couple of one-liners. This is how to prepare for the inevitable question, "How was India?" If you say "It was amazing!" the conversation is over and the opportunity is gone. Instead, try something like "I never had food like the food I had in Delhi!" or "I wish you could have seen the quality of the rivers" or "The best day was the fourth day." If the questioner was just being polite, that will satisfy them. But these specific memories, offered as one-liners, are invitations to further conversation. They are a way of saying "Would you like to know more?"
You had a great experience. Some of it was wonderful, some was no doubt very difficult. This is why we go. Now, you've brought it home. Do what you can to preserve the memories, and to share them with the rest of us.
So welcome home! And now, go get some sleep. (And then you can read Part Two of this post.)
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| Epidauros |
We think that when Americans study abroad, that's good for the whole world because it helps Americans to see America as they could not see it otherwise.
Of course, it's not without its costs. Our students who have just come back are jetlagged and road-weary. Many are a little deeper in debt. And the new term is about to begin.
That being the case, let me offer some advice to those of you who are returning from studies abroad. I know you're tired, so I'll be brief:
1) Get some rest. Stay up until it's dark out, and then sleep deeply. Get back in sync with the sun on this side of the world.
2) Journal every day. Trust me. Do this. Do it now. Don't put it off. Your memories are already fading. Get it down. Write however you want - impressionistically, narratively, whatever. Write about all five senses. Write about language. Write about the people you were with, and write their names down. Write down names of places, hotels, restaurants, museums. Do it now. Go.
3) Tell stories. To anyone who will listen. Storytelling is one of our oldest and best ways of sharing our experiences. Enrich your classmates and professors who couldn't join you. Tell us what you saw, what surprised you. Tell us anecdotes about specific times, places, meals, people, vehicles. Give us detail. As you do, you will nourish your own memories, and you'll sort out what matters most to you. As Umberto Eco once wrote,
"One who tells stories must have another to whom he tells them, and only thus can he tell them to himself."*And perhaps most importantly,
4) Come up with a couple of one-liners. This is how to prepare for the inevitable question, "How was India?" If you say "It was amazing!" the conversation is over and the opportunity is gone. Instead, try something like "I never had food like the food I had in Delhi!" or "I wish you could have seen the quality of the rivers" or "The best day was the fourth day." If the questioner was just being polite, that will satisfy them. But these specific memories, offered as one-liners, are invitations to further conversation. They are a way of saying "Would you like to know more?"
You had a great experience. Some of it was wonderful, some was no doubt very difficult. This is why we go. Now, you've brought it home. Do what you can to preserve the memories, and to share them with the rest of us.
So welcome home! And now, go get some sleep. (And then you can read Part Two of this post.)
 |
| My mother in Rome during her college years. |
*****
*Umberto Eco, Baudolino, (New York: Harcourt, 2002) p.
207.
∞
Wettstein on Narrative Theology
I have occasionally written about theology and theomythy in this blog. And in my book From Homer To Harry Potter my coauthor and I attempted a longer defense of the idea that the heart of the Bible is not propositional theology but narrative theology and storytelling. I am right now working up a review of a marvelous book by Howard Wettstein (the picture on his home page is worth a thousand words) entitled The Significance of Religious Experience. His book is thought-provoking and illuminating -- I'll save the details for the full review -- but for now, let me offer two helpful quotes.
“We often speak of the biblical narrative, and narrative is another aspect of the Bible’s literary character. The Bible’s characteristic mode of ‘theology’ is story telling, the stories overlaid with poetic language. Never does one find the sort of conceptually refined doctrinal propositions characteristic of a doctrinal approach. When the divine protagonist comes into view, we are not told much about his properties. Think about the divine perfections, the highly abstract omni-properties (omnipotence, omniscience, and the like), so dominant in medieval and post-medieval theology. One has to work very hard—too hard—to find even hints of these in the Biblical text. Instead of properties, perfection and the like the Bible speaks of God’s roles—father, king, friend, lover, judge, creator, and the like. Roles, as opposed to properties; this should give one pause.” (108)
I will confess that this is a difficult review to write; it's rare that I find a book that I'd rather quote at great length rather than summarize. His writing is lucid, combining analytic rigor and pragmatic vision with Talmudic wisdom. It is delicious in its suggestiveness. It's the sort of book I expect will tinge everything I write for a long time.“Biblical theology is poetically infused, not propositionally articulated.” (110)
∞
On Creeds
"Creeds are better sung than signed.”
-- F.F. Bruce, quoted by Robert Gundry, his doctoral student, in Books& Culture, January/February 2013, p. 30.I observe that signing a creed is a political act; singing one is a liturgical act.
∞
Librarians: Saving The Past, Saving The Future
This week in Timbuktu terrorists fleeing French forces torched an ancient library, destroying invaluable manuscripts. The good news is that some locals managed to save some of the manuscripts, and others have preserved them digitally. Not all is lost.
But sadly, much is lost. Some of my academic friends, upon hearing this news, denounced the terrorists as worse than murderers. I won’t go so far as to say that the destruction of these antiquities is the equivalent of murder, but it seems to arise from a similar intent: the desire to dominate others.
People who burn books are trying to limit the thoughts of those who are alive. Book-burning is an attempt to silence authors, to eliminate their voices. At its best it is insultingly paternalistic; at its worst it is bullying and even tyrannical.
Which suggests that the work of librarians, and of all who preserve books, is the opposite of tyranny. To save books, and to make them available to others, is to nourish democracy. It is to preserve the voices of the past, the Cadmean souls of long-lost authors, for the sake of what we may yet learn from them.
We sometimes depict librarians as pale denizens of musty stacks, lurking behind counters in drab frocks and silencing those who dare to speak too loudly in their bookish caverns. But the function of the librarian is quite the opposite of this; on the rare occasion that they ask us to be quiet it is only so that the voices of authors may speak loudly across space and time. It is not just uniformed warriors who defend liberty; the librarian is also an essential servant of freedom. We mustn’t forget that.
But sadly, much is lost. Some of my academic friends, upon hearing this news, denounced the terrorists as worse than murderers. I won’t go so far as to say that the destruction of these antiquities is the equivalent of murder, but it seems to arise from a similar intent: the desire to dominate others.
People who burn books are trying to limit the thoughts of those who are alive. Book-burning is an attempt to silence authors, to eliminate their voices. At its best it is insultingly paternalistic; at its worst it is bullying and even tyrannical.
Which suggests that the work of librarians, and of all who preserve books, is the opposite of tyranny. To save books, and to make them available to others, is to nourish democracy. It is to preserve the voices of the past, the Cadmean souls of long-lost authors, for the sake of what we may yet learn from them.
We sometimes depict librarians as pale denizens of musty stacks, lurking behind counters in drab frocks and silencing those who dare to speak too loudly in their bookish caverns. But the function of the librarian is quite the opposite of this; on the rare occasion that they ask us to be quiet it is only so that the voices of authors may speak loudly across space and time. It is not just uniformed warriors who defend liberty; the librarian is also an essential servant of freedom. We mustn’t forget that.
∞
Drawing Outside The Lines: Marginalia and E-Books
I was an early adopter of the Kindle, but I stopped using it several years ago. The books I most wanted weren't (and many still aren't) available for it, and it was hard to use it as I like to use books.
You see, I am an annotator. I draw in books.
Everyone told me when I was a kid that you should NOT draw in books. But I can't help it.
Last summer my sister-in-law, seeing me read with a pencil in my hand, asked me if I always do that. I hadn't really thought about it as unusual until then, but yes, I guess I do. That way my reading becomes a kind of conversation with the book. The author writes, and I write back.
It is becoming a bit easier to annotate e-books, but we have a long way to go, perhaps because we have structured our computers to think in a linear fashion. Computers think in stoichedon, in lines and ranks, like soldiers in formation. Which is a good way to organize information, but it's not the only way, because it's not the only way lines can move. "Idea mapping" or "mind mapping" is another way. This can be expanded to three dimensions or more, as well. Think of a way a line can move and you have another way of taking notes.
Over the years I have devised my own shorthand for note-taking. For some things, I borrow old conventions of abbreviation and expand them, like this:
And so on. Some words, like selah, have entered my annotative vocabulary because they say so much so briefly. (See footnote 3 here, about "selah.")
At times, I've also found it helpful to invent new symbols, pictograms of whole ideas, sentences that can be written a single picture. I can do these with a flick of the pen, but they're much harder to incorporate into a digital text.
I draw lines from one page to the next to connect ideas. I circle names when they first appear in a text so that I can find them again. I draw vertical lines beside paragraphs to quickly highlight long sections of text. A double line emphasizes that highlighting.
I draw maps, and sketch pictures. Sometimes I write in other languages, other alphabets, when those other languages get the idea down more quickly, or more carefully. I haven't written music in books, but I don't see why you couldn't.
And all of that becomes an icon of a conversation. The annotated page is no longer text; it is an image, and a symbol of a set of relations between ideas and authors.
When I was in grad school, José Vericat (who did not know me from Adam) kindly gave me a list of books belonging to Charles Peirce and housed in one of Harvard's libraries. Peirce died in 1914, but his lines and words still illuminate his reading of those pages.
Another bit of scholarly generosity was shown to me a few years ago when I was working on my book on the environmental vision of C.S. Lewis at the Wade Center. The director, Christopher Mitchell, learned of my interest in Lewis's reading of Henri Bergson. Mitchell brought me Lewis's copy of Bergson's Évolution Créatrice to peruse. Every page is covered with marginalia written by Lewis as he recovered from his war injuries.
I think my favorite part of Thomas Cahill's book, How The Irish Saved Civilization, was seeing the facsimiles of marginal paintings - including some racy self-portraits - by monks who copied books in Ireland in the middle ages.
My point in this long blog post? Keep drawing in books. And maybe I'll get another Kindle someday if they can figure out a way to make it easy for me to draw outside the lines. And to preserve those drawings for posterity.
You see, I am an annotator. I draw in books.
Everyone told me when I was a kid that you should NOT draw in books. But I can't help it.
Last summer my sister-in-law, seeing me read with a pencil in my hand, asked me if I always do that. I hadn't really thought about it as unusual until then, but yes, I guess I do. That way my reading becomes a kind of conversation with the book. The author writes, and I write back.
It is becoming a bit easier to annotate e-books, but we have a long way to go, perhaps because we have structured our computers to think in a linear fashion. Computers think in stoichedon, in lines and ranks, like soldiers in formation. Which is a good way to organize information, but it's not the only way, because it's not the only way lines can move. "Idea mapping" or "mind mapping" is another way. This can be expanded to three dimensions or more, as well. Think of a way a line can move and you have another way of taking notes.
Over the years I have devised my own shorthand for note-taking. For some things, I borrow old conventions of abbreviation and expand them, like this:
could - cd
would - wd
should - shd
something - s/t
everything - e/t
nothing - n/t
because - b/c
nevertheless - n/t/l
And so on. Some words, like selah, have entered my annotative vocabulary because they say so much so briefly. (See footnote 3 here, about "selah.")
At times, I've also found it helpful to invent new symbols, pictograms of whole ideas, sentences that can be written a single picture. I can do these with a flick of the pen, but they're much harder to incorporate into a digital text.
I draw lines from one page to the next to connect ideas. I circle names when they first appear in a text so that I can find them again. I draw vertical lines beside paragraphs to quickly highlight long sections of text. A double line emphasizes that highlighting.
I draw maps, and sketch pictures. Sometimes I write in other languages, other alphabets, when those other languages get the idea down more quickly, or more carefully. I haven't written music in books, but I don't see why you couldn't.
And all of that becomes an icon of a conversation. The annotated page is no longer text; it is an image, and a symbol of a set of relations between ideas and authors.
When I was in grad school, José Vericat (who did not know me from Adam) kindly gave me a list of books belonging to Charles Peirce and housed in one of Harvard's libraries. Peirce died in 1914, but his lines and words still illuminate his reading of those pages.
Another bit of scholarly generosity was shown to me a few years ago when I was working on my book on the environmental vision of C.S. Lewis at the Wade Center. The director, Christopher Mitchell, learned of my interest in Lewis's reading of Henri Bergson. Mitchell brought me Lewis's copy of Bergson's Évolution Créatrice to peruse. Every page is covered with marginalia written by Lewis as he recovered from his war injuries.
I think my favorite part of Thomas Cahill's book, How The Irish Saved Civilization, was seeing the facsimiles of marginal paintings - including some racy self-portraits - by monks who copied books in Ireland in the middle ages.
My point in this long blog post? Keep drawing in books. And maybe I'll get another Kindle someday if they can figure out a way to make it easy for me to draw outside the lines. And to preserve those drawings for posterity.
∞
Locking Up The Neighbors
This week the South Dakota Senate made a good decision for a bad reason. The Senate approved a welcome set of changes to the way the state treats convicted criminals, effectively reducing prison sentences for a variety of offenses.
South Dakota's prisons are nearly full to capacity, and the state was forced to choose between building more prisons and reforming its sentencing laws. The latter choice was the less expensive one, and that appears to be the main reason for the reform.
I've read that in the USA we now have more prisoners than farmers. I'm also told we have more prisoners than any other country in the world, and a much higher per-capita incarceration rate than any other developed country. Either we produce more criminals than other countries, or we are more aggressive in our incarceration policies.
I've argued before that our criminal code should not be devised along economic lines, but along the lines of love. Jens Soering similarly argues forcefully that our prisons are "an expensive way to make bad men worse."
We don't need to make men worse but to give them every opportunity to better themselves.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be tough on crime; we should be very tough on crime. But our current policies are not so much tough on crime as they are tough on criminals.
What I am saying is this: we should not regard criminals as people with a past but as people with a future. Many need to be incarcerated, yes, but if a man is to be locked up, let us lock him up as a neighbor. As they enter the prisons, let it be our first and guiding thought that they will soon emerge as our neighbors. And let us therefore do all we can to allow them to emerge as better men and women, not as worse ones.
South Dakota's prisons are nearly full to capacity, and the state was forced to choose between building more prisons and reforming its sentencing laws. The latter choice was the less expensive one, and that appears to be the main reason for the reform.
I've read that in the USA we now have more prisoners than farmers. I'm also told we have more prisoners than any other country in the world, and a much higher per-capita incarceration rate than any other developed country. Either we produce more criminals than other countries, or we are more aggressive in our incarceration policies.
I've argued before that our criminal code should not be devised along economic lines, but along the lines of love. Jens Soering similarly argues forcefully that our prisons are "an expensive way to make bad men worse."
We don't need to make men worse but to give them every opportunity to better themselves.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be tough on crime; we should be very tough on crime. But our current policies are not so much tough on crime as they are tough on criminals.
What I am saying is this: we should not regard criminals as people with a past but as people with a future. Many need to be incarcerated, yes, but if a man is to be locked up, let us lock him up as a neighbor. As they enter the prisons, let it be our first and guiding thought that they will soon emerge as our neighbors. And let us therefore do all we can to allow them to emerge as better men and women, not as worse ones.
*****
UPDATE: I did not know it at the time, but as I was writing this post above, a family in my city was pleading with a judge to have mercy on the man who killed one of their family members. Their words, which you can read here, show a remarkable ability to look past their desire for vengeance and exemplify concern for the criminal. It is possible. It is possible. It is possible.
∞
Finding One's Way: Three Questions About Vocation
My students often ask me, "What should I do with my life after I graduate?"
The simple answer I usually give is this: you should pursue your vocation.
In answering that way, I hope to encourage students not to accept others' stories about how their lives should go, and to begin to give them some tools for answering their own question.
My reason for caution is that the word "vocation" is a tricky one. It has tendrils that grow in many directions, and some of them don't need much fertilizer before they reach into some messy metaphysical and ethical questions.
There's an important lesson in all those stories about magic that have been handed down through the ages: words have real power to change the world and to swerve the direction of others' actions. Which means they should be handled with care. "Vocation" is one of the strong words. It's got a kind of magic to it because it has the power to enchant our lives by drawing a lot of ideas together into one place, and by drawing some long arrows leading towards and away from the place where you stand right now. Its root, the Latin word vocatio, means "calling." This is what I mean by the "tendrils" and the messy metaphysics they can grow into: if you're called, that might imply a caller, which might imply some strong obligations.
Here are some suggestions for how to handle the idea of vocation with care:
First, don't tell other people what their vocation must be. Imposing strong narratives on others' lives is what we do when we pretend to be God. I don't recommend trying to play that role. Read some Milton before you do, anyway.
Second, no matter how strong your sense of your own calling, remember that we see as in a glass, darkly. You can't judge a voice except with your own ears, so remember the limitations of your hearing.
Third, and along those same lines, don't make rash decisions about the last step of your journey; look instead to the next step. This means having some humility, and a lot of patience with yourself and with your own life. It means not knowing how the story of your life will unfold, but reading it - and writing it - one page at a time.
With those caveats in mind, here are three questions that I offer students who are trying to figure out what their calling may be. I recommend taking the time to consider them thoughtfully. Write your answers down, and after a while, ask trustworthy friends who know you and love you if they agree with your answers. As you consider these questions, don't think about jobs and careers, lest that limit your answers. The aim in asking each of these questions is this: to know yourself better.
First, what are you good at? What are your skills and your strengths? Don't just think about the things you enjoy doing here; include all your gifts and talents.
Second, what do you love to do? Don't just think about what you're good at, but include those things you love but haven't any talent for.
Third, what do you want to accomplish? How would you like the world to be changed when you are done with it? How would you like to be known? What do you most want to do, or be? What would you write in your autobiography?
Do any patterns appear? As you answer these questions honestly, do you discover anything about yourself that you didn't see clearly before? Answering these questions won't sort everything out for you, and I know I can't tell you what your calling is. But I do think that getting to know yourself, your loves, your talents, and your aspirations can help you to avoid simply doing what others want you to do. And they just might shed some light on the path ahead.
The simple answer I usually give is this: you should pursue your vocation.
In answering that way, I hope to encourage students not to accept others' stories about how their lives should go, and to begin to give them some tools for answering their own question.
My reason for caution is that the word "vocation" is a tricky one. It has tendrils that grow in many directions, and some of them don't need much fertilizer before they reach into some messy metaphysical and ethical questions.
There's an important lesson in all those stories about magic that have been handed down through the ages: words have real power to change the world and to swerve the direction of others' actions. Which means they should be handled with care. "Vocation" is one of the strong words. It's got a kind of magic to it because it has the power to enchant our lives by drawing a lot of ideas together into one place, and by drawing some long arrows leading towards and away from the place where you stand right now. Its root, the Latin word vocatio, means "calling." This is what I mean by the "tendrils" and the messy metaphysics they can grow into: if you're called, that might imply a caller, which might imply some strong obligations.
Here are some suggestions for how to handle the idea of vocation with care:
First, don't tell other people what their vocation must be. Imposing strong narratives on others' lives is what we do when we pretend to be God. I don't recommend trying to play that role. Read some Milton before you do, anyway.
Second, no matter how strong your sense of your own calling, remember that we see as in a glass, darkly. You can't judge a voice except with your own ears, so remember the limitations of your hearing.
Third, and along those same lines, don't make rash decisions about the last step of your journey; look instead to the next step. This means having some humility, and a lot of patience with yourself and with your own life. It means not knowing how the story of your life will unfold, but reading it - and writing it - one page at a time.
With those caveats in mind, here are three questions that I offer students who are trying to figure out what their calling may be. I recommend taking the time to consider them thoughtfully. Write your answers down, and after a while, ask trustworthy friends who know you and love you if they agree with your answers. As you consider these questions, don't think about jobs and careers, lest that limit your answers. The aim in asking each of these questions is this: to know yourself better.
First, what are you good at? What are your skills and your strengths? Don't just think about the things you enjoy doing here; include all your gifts and talents.
Second, what do you love to do? Don't just think about what you're good at, but include those things you love but haven't any talent for.
Third, what do you want to accomplish? How would you like the world to be changed when you are done with it? How would you like to be known? What do you most want to do, or be? What would you write in your autobiography?
Do any patterns appear? As you answer these questions honestly, do you discover anything about yourself that you didn't see clearly before? Answering these questions won't sort everything out for you, and I know I can't tell you what your calling is. But I do think that getting to know yourself, your loves, your talents, and your aspirations can help you to avoid simply doing what others want you to do. And they just might shed some light on the path ahead.
∞
Rejoice!
When I was an undergraduate studying Classical Greek, one of the first Greek words I learned from Professor Eve Adler was chaire! It's the common greeting in Attic Greek, the "hello, there!" of the ancient Greek world.*
We can translate it as "Hail!" or "Hello!" but it literally means "Rejoice!"
There are a lot of ways to greet someone. You can announce your own presence, or acknowledge the presence of others; you can offer a command, or express a wish; you can arrive with a blessing.
I like the idea of greeting someone by wishing them joy. Wherever we're going, it's good to arrive with a desire to see others rejoice, with a blessing on our lips.
This Sunday the Gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary was the story of the Wedding in Cana.
The story goes like this: Jesus is invited to a wedding. The wedding guests drink all the wine, and it looks like the party might be over. Jesus' mother, Mary, tells him "They have no more wine." Jesus makes lots more wine. And it's good wine. The party goes on.
And people wonder why I'm a theist. This is a good God.
Because whatever else is going on in this story, this is a God that arrives with a desire to see people rejoice.
It's easy to forget that.
And then I think: would I even know how to throw a party that lasted for a whole week? What would such a party be like? I admit I don't know. But I like the idea of trying.
How would that change the way we saw the world? What if the aim of life was not prosperity but mutual enjoyment and living towards times of rejoicing? What if we made it our purpose to prayerfully complain, on behalf of others, "They have no more wine!"
So to you reading this, I have one word, a blessing on my lips for you: Chaire! Rejoice! And may you find joy that endures throughout your week.
We can translate it as "Hail!" or "Hello!" but it literally means "Rejoice!"
There are a lot of ways to greet someone. You can announce your own presence, or acknowledge the presence of others; you can offer a command, or express a wish; you can arrive with a blessing.
I like the idea of greeting someone by wishing them joy. Wherever we're going, it's good to arrive with a desire to see others rejoice, with a blessing on our lips.
******
This Sunday the Gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary was the story of the Wedding in Cana.
The story goes like this: Jesus is invited to a wedding. The wedding guests drink all the wine, and it looks like the party might be over. Jesus' mother, Mary, tells him "They have no more wine." Jesus makes lots more wine. And it's good wine. The party goes on.
And people wonder why I'm a theist. This is a good God.
Because whatever else is going on in this story, this is a God that arrives with a desire to see people rejoice.
It's easy to forget that.
*****
Miroslav Volf posted something on his Facebook page this week that reminded me that in some ancient cultures, wedding parties lasted a whole week. I wonder, how long had these people in Cana been drinking?And then I think: would I even know how to throw a party that lasted for a whole week? What would such a party be like? I admit I don't know. But I like the idea of trying.
How would that change the way we saw the world? What if the aim of life was not prosperity but mutual enjoyment and living towards times of rejoicing? What if we made it our purpose to prayerfully complain, on behalf of others, "They have no more wine!"
So to you reading this, I have one word, a blessing on my lips for you: Chaire! Rejoice! And may you find joy that endures throughout your week.
***********
* The Greek word is spelled χαῖρε, dual χαίρετον, plural χαίρετε. I've transliterated it here on the assumption that most of my readers don't know the Greek alphabet. The verb χαίρω, of which these words are several forms, means "rejoice."
∞
Suspicion And Society
"If the officers and soldiers are suspicious of each other, warriors will not join up."*
*****
* Zhuge Liang, quoted by Thomas Cleary in his introduction to Sun Tzu's The Art Of War.
∞
The Virtue of Virtue
Virtue ethics is problematic. It certainly is helpful at times, but it is not helpful when
it names virtues that others cannot relate to; or when we use it to describe
virtues that only certain classes of people can ever attain; or when virtues
entail a metaphysics to which others are unwilling to commit. The very word “virtue” raises a
red flag for some people because it is a gendered word, rooted in the Latin vir, meaning an adult male. I often wish we had a better
translation of the word Aristotle first used, arête, which means something like “excellence.”
At any rate, virtue ethics may have great value if we allow
Aristotle’s description of arête to
be a moving target, and if we appeal to it as an approach to governing our own
conduct rather than as a way to make rules for others. (Isn’t it the case that so often we
write rules for others rather than for ourselves? That should tell us something.)
Aristotle tells us that virtue is the mean between extremes,
as the man of practical wisdom would determine it. But which of us is the man of practical wisdom? No one of us has that down. So no one of us may be expected to
understand virtue exactly. This
would appear to be an argument for a collective decision, and to some degree it
is. Our public deliberations about
ethics, about methods of research, about law, about public conduct – all of
these are, in a way, attempts by groups of people to figure out what a truly
wise and prudent person would do.
So to some degree, communities and their traditions are
embodiments of decisions about virtue.
We must remember, however, that we’re always on the move, ever seeking,
never fully finding.
I am reminded of Kierkegaard’s citation of Lessing in
Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
We live lives of unknowing, ever striving for what we might know. "Now we see as in a glass, darkly; now we see in part." And that's not so bad, is it? Peirce might call the belief that we don't know fully a regulative ideal; or I suppose, in Rorty’s terms, we might call it a pragmatic hope. If we take ourselves not to have arrived at perfect justice yet, that belief will drive us to keep seeking to improve our justice.“If God held all truth enclosed in his right hand, and in his left hand the one and only ever-striving drive for truth, even with the corollary of erring forever and ever, and if he were to say to me:--Choose! I would humbly fall down to him at his left hand and say: Father, give! Pure truth is indeed only for you alone!”*
You’ve read this far, so you’re probably ready for me to
make my point. Here it is: as we
talk about policies and politics, rules and laws—in short, when we are deeply
concerned with governing others—let us not neglect governing ourselves, by reflecting on, and trying to enact, virtue in our decisions. Life is uncertain. We do not know what will come next,
what we will be given, what will be taken away. But no one can take away the small decisions we make, the
small decisions that, one by one, make us.
******
*Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, Vol I) 106. The quotation is a citation from Lessing by Kierkegaard.
******
*Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, Vol I) 106. The quotation is a citation from Lessing by Kierkegaard.
∞
Evolution and Education
Sometimes I meet students who are afraid that evolutionary science poses a threat to their belief in God. I think it is helpful for them to ask themselves this question:
Of course, this doesn't clear up all the obstacles to reconciling religious belief and confidence in science, but it's a start.
If you're a teacher of students who also grapple with this, and you don't understand them, this might help. Some of them will certainly be unreasonable. For them, sometimes all you can do is be an example of reasonable beliefs and hope it sinks in someday. But many of them are concerned about a few big questions, like these:
Acknowledging your students' concerns will help them to see that you care about them as people and not just as names or numbers on a page. Which will already begin to address their deepest concerns.Is God capable of creating through natural processes?There are only two answers to this question. If you say no, you make God too small to be worth worshiping. If you say yes, then you see that there's no prima facie reason why belief in God and belief in evolution need to be opposed to one another.
Of course, this doesn't clear up all the obstacles to reconciling religious belief and confidence in science, but it's a start.
*****
*****
If you're a teacher of students who also grapple with this, and you don't understand them, this might help. Some of them will certainly be unreasonable. For them, sometimes all you can do is be an example of reasonable beliefs and hope it sinks in someday. But many of them are concerned about a few big questions, like these:
- The trust they've placed in their community. Think about it: if your parents or your pastor or someone else you trusted taught you that there's an irreconcilable conflict between science and faith, you might distrust anyone who said otherwise. It might help such students to go back to that community and ask the question I posed above. This may take time, because there's a lot at stake here.
- An even bigger concern is the question of human dignity. I think that's what's behind the old complaint that "I'm not descended from monkeys." If the student is simply concerned about being descended from unwashed furry critters, they should probably look more closely at their family trees. Monkeys are often nicer than our actual relatives.
- But there's another concern here that's actually quite positive, because it means that they care about ethics, and they're trying to preserve that in the face of a perceived threat. Some students correctly intuit that what's at stake in evolution is not merely a theory of descent but a whole theory of knowledge, and of metaphysics. Natural sciences rest upon an assumption of methodological naturalism. That is, they assume that it is possible to explain natural phenomena by appeal to nature and nothing else. So far, so good. But sometimes we then make a little leap to saying that therefore whatever naturalism cannot explain is unknowable or nonexistent. This is not just naturalism but a kind of reductionistic naturalism, and it's tricky territory, because it might imply that there is no real basis for ethics, or for valuing others' lives. I'm not saying we're not free to value others' lives; I'm just saying that some of these students want to believe that there are good reasons to expect everyone to value everyone, not merely a world of subjective interests. And many of them are reasonably suspicious that reductionistic naturalism cannot itself be supported by science; after all, how could natural science prove that what it can't see isn't there? Such claims sound a bit like the misdirection of Wizard of Oz: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" We'd be better off avoiding such claims, both because we cannot prove them and because they do a disservice to science.
Scholia, Essays, and Education
In an earlier post I spoke of the pleasures of finding marginalia in others' books, and of writing one's own marginalia. The word "marginalia" means, of course, "things [written] in the margin." In a way, the aim of education is to prepare us to write our own marginalia.
We set aside places for education, and these we call "schools," from the Greek word scholé, meaning "leisure." Most students don't think of schools as places of leisure, but it is only a person with leisure from menial daily work who has the leisure for school.
That word scholé is also related to the word scholion (Greek) or scholium (Latin). Those words mean "a comment." The act of reading is not complete with seeing the words on the page; we have read a text when we have observed it, worked to understand it, and then contemplated its meaning for our own lives. Looking at words without reflecting on them and then calling it reading is like looking at a menu without eating a meal and calling it "going to a restaurant." Technically true, but not at all nourishing.
Those with leisure to read books also have the leisure to reflect on books and on what they mean for us. When that reflection takes the form of scholia (the plural of scholion and scholium) - that is, when we write comments on texts, the writing is an attempt to complete the act of reading. So when we teachers assign essays we are (ideally) not assigning writing so much as reading. The aim is not a polished essay; the polished essay is merely the sign of something else. The aim is reflection on texts. The word "essay" comes from a French word meaning "attempt, try"; each essay is an attempt to become a little better at observing texts, at understanding what they mean, and at articulating what they mean for us.