St. Nicholas Society and "un-stealing"
I just read an article about German Catholics wanting a Santa Claus-free Christmas this year. It reminds me of something I have often spoken to students about: creating a “St. Nicholas Society.” The idea comes from the legend of the young St. Nicholas,
who was the orphaned son of wealthy parents. One day he overheard a father lamenting that he had to sell one of his three daughters into slavery in order for the rest of the family to survive. That night Nicholas threw some coins into the family's window to ensure the liberty of the girl, and returned the next two nights to repeat the gift on behalf of the other two girls. This is why the symbol of St. Nicholas is often three coins:
He wanted his gift to be done in secret, perhaps so that he knew he wasn't giving in order to receive gratitude and honor. I have come to think of this as the reverse of stealing, a secret giving or an "un-stealing."
Once, while I was teaching at Penn State, a student told me he was weighing an invitation to join a secret society. Some aspects of the society were appealing - friendship, loyalty, and a shared purpose, for instance - but he did not feel wholly comfortable with the idea. I suggested then (and have suggested to several others since) that they consider forming a secret society that was not inwardly-focused but outwardly-focused. They could call it the "St. Nicholas Society." Its purpose would be to do good in the world without seeking to receive anything in return.
Of course, I have no idea if any of them have formed a St. Nicholas Society. If they have, they have been successful at keeping it secret, at least from me! And you have no idea if I've formed one, or if I just like to talk about it to others.
New Bio-Itzá Website!
Check it out.
The Asociación Bio Itzá does great, inexpensive Spanish-language immersion programs for individuals or groups in Petén, Guatemala. It’s a short trip from the Flores airport to their school and homestays in San José:
and it's also a short trip to Tikal:
They also have a school for teaching indigenous Mayan languages like Itzá, Quiché, and Kekchí.
There are some slightly cheaper language schools in Guatemala, but this one makes your money go a long way, since they use the income to preserve and protect one of the largest unbroken stretches of rainforest North of the Amazon, and to preserve indigenous culture, protect archaeological sites, and promote sustainable agriculture. In addition to learning Spanish, you can learn about medicinal plants; local cooking, music, and culture; rainforest ecology; Mayan archaeology (they have a licensed archaeologist on their staff); and a lot more. Students interested in rural medicine can ask about arranging to work in the local medical clinic. Worth every penny.
(Thanks to Luke Lynass and the other Augustana College students who worked to get this new website up and running.)
On Enemies
Just heard a very thought-provoking talk by Augustana Professor Janet Blank-Libra on the story of Jonah. As she was talking, it occurred to me that in the story, God makes this disturbing analogy in Jonah 4.10-11:
Vine:Jonah::Nineveh:God
It's not the only possible interpretation of the verse, I admit, but it looks like at least one way to read it is that the people I think of as enemies might be as delightful to God as a shady spot in the hot desert was to Jonah.
Sam Harris Needs A Mirror
Sam Harris recently tweeted this column by Nicholas Kristof, adding this tag: “Found: the most sanctimonious person on earth.”
Respect for laws and Respect for the Law
I don’t tend to talk about politics - at least not about specific candidates - on my blog or in my classroom. One of my main reasons for this (I have several) is that as a teacher of philosophy, I am more interested in the ideas than in the people running for office.
The case of Kristi Noem - a Republican running for Congress in South Dakota - is one of those cases where it’s difficult to separate the person from the ideas. I don’t mean that she is inseparable from her politics. I am instead referring to her driving record.
Many people in my state feel that Noem’s record has been subjected to enough scrutiny, and that it is just an example of her opponent, Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, playing dirty politics. The latter may be true (I don’t pretend to know), but I don’t think the former is true. I don’t mean that we need to have a longer investigation of Noem’s driving record. But I do wonder whether Republicans should be endorsing Noem at all.
It’s not that Noem got caught speeding once. It’s not even that she has been caught speeding 20 times. It’s that her record of breaking the law is so long that it speaks of a strong disrespect for Law in general. None of us is perfect, but this record suggests that she’s a habitual speeder. One recent ticket had her clocked at 96 mph (the state speed limit is 75 on highways.) Her actions say pretty loudly that she doesn’t much care for the law. Not a good attribute for someone whose job it would be, if elected, to write the law.
Do we really want to endorse candidates who view the law as something to be obeyed by others but not by themselves? Isn’t that precisely the opposite of the character we want in our legislators? (Or have I just been reading too much Plato?)
Addendum: A friend of mine points out that while the link above states it, I do not mention that Noem also has six times failed to appear in court; and she has twice had arrest warrants issued against her. I’m not just asking Republicans if they want this to be their public face; I’m asking all of us if we want this to be the profile our legislators. A state in which the legislators do not honor the law is a state in serious trouble.
Is Prayer "Effective"?
I recently read a short essay that described prayer as something that should best be studied by the physical sciences. This claim has been made for quite a long time, and I think there may be some truth to it.
I wonder, though, if the people who make this kind of claim are trying to understand prayer as a kind of incantation. That is, it seems like they are saying that the best way to examine prayer is to study its effectiveness, by which they mean that some people should ask God for something and then we will measure the frequency with which those prayers are "answered."
Now, I'm no expert on prayer. And I know that any discussion of prayer is going to get sticky. But I think this kind of effectiveness study is misguided. I don't think we should think of prayer as words we say in order to make God do things that God would not otherwise do. If it were, that would make prayer into a kind of magic, or it would turn God into a kind of technology, or both.
When I read the prayers in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, or when I listen to or read others' prayers, I see something else: the people who pray seem to have the expectation that God will do what God will do, not what they want God to do. In a way, this makes sense: if God is personal, then God is not to be dominated or pushed around any more than we are. It seems like most of the prayers I've read sound like requests and arguments and complaints and even like words spoken in love. Even when (as in the Book of Job) people chastise God for seeming not to act, or when they rebuke or forgive God for not having acted, there seems to be a sense that God is a person, not a tool.
I think that if we were to look to some of the great works of prayer - the works of the mystics in any tradition, for instance - or even if we were to ask ordinary people why they pray, we would find that their concern is not with whether prayer makes miracles happen but with the way in which prayer manifests and nurtures their relationship with the divine. I don't really know how to judge that sort of claim, and I often just listen to it in wonder. But I'm pretty sure that if we were to attempt to measure the "effectiveness" of that prayer, we would wind up ignoring or doing violence to the claim that what matters most in prayer is the conversation and the relationship.
"I Know That I Don't Know"?
Of course, it is a little silly and possibly self-contradictory, since knowing one thing means knowing something, while knowing nothing precludes knowing something.
Still, if Socrates said it, it's worth repeating, right? (For kicks, Google it and see how many times it is quoted authoritatively.)
But I wonder if Socrates ever said it at all.
Yes, I know that we don't know exactly what Socrates said. Socrates left us no writings, and as for transcriptions of his conversations, we have only three first-hand sources to rely on: those of Plato and Xenophon his students, and of Aristophanes his ostensible rival. It seems likely that Aristophanes did not attempt to represent Socrates accurately, nor as a philosopher. Plato may well have invented much of Socrates' dialogue as well, but he also had a stake in continuing and defending the philosophical work of Socrates in Athens.
For this reason, when philosophers refer to Socrates, we are usually referring to the Socrates found in Plato's rather extensive writings.
So did Plato's Socrates ever say "en oida oti ouden oida"? It appears not.
The closest thing I've found is a passage in Plato's Apology of Socrates, where Socrates says something that should really be translated as something like this: I do not claim to know those things that I do not know.
This is not only more reasonable, it's also good advice: don't pretend to know what you don't know and you'll avoid a lot of trouble.
It's important for another reason, though. The "en oida oti ouden oida" quote seems to be something of a staple of frosh philosophy texts and classes.
The danger here is that we will present an ancient philosopher (two of them, in this case) as though he were fairly foolish; and as a result, we will not take ancient philosophy seriously.
All it should take to cure this is a quick look at the Greek text of any of Plato's dialogues. The Phaedo, for instance, bears a slow and careful read in Greek, since no translation I've found captures all the wordplay. And as Peirce pointed out, when one reads the Greek, one discovers something else that the translators often veil from our sight: Plato's Socrates uses the language of syllogism in a way that shows that he was doing Aristotelian logic before Aristotle was.
By relying on hearsay rather than on engagement with the primary texts, we close off a path of inquiry into a whole set of ancient philosophical texts. "Doesn't their being ancient mean that they are exhausted?" you may ask. Old trees, it seems to me, may still bear rich fruit. And just as we find that old caves sometimes have rich troves of ancient unread texts, what else might we find if we take the time to read the ancients closely?
Theology and Theomythy
I was just reading Jamie Smith’s recent post on “Poetry and the End of Theology” over at his Fors Clavigera blog. His post reminded me of something I was thinking of several years ago when I was writing From Homer to Harry Potter.
Back in Homer’s time, the words λογος (logos) and μυθος (mythos) were near synonyms. Over time, they came to be distinguished from one another as meaning something like “an account in propositions” (logos) and “an account in stories” (mythos).
The word “logos” is one of the roots of our word “theology,” of course. Theology, then, means something like the attempt to discuss the divine in a logical and propositional manner. Which is all well and good, unless it begins to turn God into something we only analyze and never experience, about which we speak propositions but whose story never means much to us.
As a philosopher of religion, I think theology is important. The things we believe have consequences for us and for others. As one of my mentors, Ken Ketner, puts it, “Bad thinking kills people.” We know this from experience: people use theological ideas to justify all sorts of unethical behavior.
Nevertheless, theology is pretty dry stuff, and its very dryness has a genealogy and has consequences that we should be aware of. As Jamie puts it, some of the dryness of contemporary theology comes from a Cartesian anthropology that assumes that the most important part of us is that we are thinking things - things that care chiefly about propositions. If all we care about is getting our religion right, than this is the kind of theology we need, I suppose.
But is that what we are? Are we not also beings who live in the world, who live out stories, and who tell stories? Aren’t creativity and poetry and loveliness important to us as well? This got me thinking: maybe what we need is less theology and more theomythy. I’m not sure just what that would look like, but I think it might be worth a try. I’m interested in what you believe, sure. But I’m also interested in hearing your story.
On Traveling and Journaling
This probably sounds like a dream life, and I have to admit it's not all that bad.
But it's also a lot of work. A weeklong class in Greece usually takes me a little over a year to prepare, and in the semester leading up to it the workload approaches the amount of preparation I do for any of my other classes. Last fall I was teaching my usual load plus prepping two study-abroad courses, so I was swamped much of the time.
But it's worth it. My students come back with perspectives they could not have gained at home, if their journals are to be believed.
I always require my students to keep a journal while we're traveling. Sometimes I ask them specific questions, but usually I tell them to journal not for me but for themselves. You may think this naive, and you may be right. But I'd rather be naive than cynical. That is, I'd rather appeal to their self-interest and to their own sense of themselves as growing learners than force them to write answers to my pre-fab questions.
I do give them some guidance, however. Here are some of the things I teach them about journaling:
1) Pay attention to the little things, and write down whatever catches your attention. If you noticed it, it probably matters.
2) Pay attention to all of your senses. We tend to write about major events that happened, as though we were news reporters looking for the big story. But why not write about the smells? What sounds do you hear? What do the birds or the streets or the nighttimes sound like? How does the place you're in feel on your skin? What new tastes have you encountered? And so on.
3) Write continuously. Don't plan to write a sketch or outline and then fill it in later. As soon as you are on that plane home you will begin to forget what you experienced, and you will forget far more quickly than you want to believe. Write now.
4) Write "gestures" and impressions. Some of us have very good prose composition skills, and some of us do not. But all of us can write down a few phrases, a few adjectives, a few words we've heard in passing. Why not include entries in which you stand in one place and write down a list of nouns, of verbs, of adjectives that strike you as you soak the place in?
5) Draw pictures. This is one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received, and I am no artist. Cameras are great, but they capture what they see. Drawing captures what you see. Drawing also forces you to see what you wouldn't have seen otherwise. As Louis Agassiz once said, a pencil is one of the best tools for seeing. One of the best drawing tools I know of is a cheap ball-point pen. You don't need fancy paper, and you don't need a lot of time. Most of my best journal drawings are made in under two minutes with a cheap pen.
Try this out, and see if it doesn't completely change your journals. When I'm in Greece, I like to show my students the different kinds of stonework in ancient walls. The kind of stonework is helpful for dating the site, and it tells us a lot about the technology of the people who built the walls. I've found that as I try to draw a section of wall, the differences between cyclopean walls, Lesbian walls, and Roman walls become clearer to me, I remember them better, and I am better able to teach about them.
6) Revisit your journal periodically. Last of all, when you get back, revisit your journal from time to time. Start off doing so every week, and then every month and every year. When you revisit it, add a page or two of notes. What does your experience traveling back then mean to you now? Traveling is a luxury some of us enjoy, but it can also be a valuable learning opportunity, one that continues to be valuable for as long as we continue to reflect on it.
Do you have other journaling tips? I'd love to hear them. Meanwhile, I've got to get back to preparing for my next trips and courses abroad.
Buen viaje!
Learn Spanish in Guatemala, Help Save the Rainforest
Immersive Spanish language learning in Guatemala’s Asociación Bio-Itzá supports cultural preservation and sustainable community development efforts.
Come Along, Inspector Jesus?
When my youngest son was still quite small, he loved the Advent hymn, “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.” We think he loved it in part because he loved the movie “Inspector Gadget,” and he thought the words were “Come Along, Inspector Jesus.” (We had several such mis-hearings of hymns, it turns out. Another favorite was the second line of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” which my son heard not as “Let me to thy bosom fly” but “Let me chew thy apple pie.” I think of apple pie as a gift from God, so I have no problem with this.)
I’m not sure why, but this year I’ve been more conscious than ever of Advent. It seems that everywhere I go I hear Christmas music during Advent, which has been striking me like Christmas carols on the fourth of July - a confusion of holidays. Liturgical calendars have left a shadow-impression of themselves on cultural calendars, but much of their detail has been lost. Who celebrates Pentecost, for instance? Yet it used to be one of the most important of Christian holidays. Christmas and Easter are great gift-giving holidays, but Lent’s main appearance seems to be in Mardi Gras.
I don’t plan to be a curmudgeon about this, and lament that we’ve lost the “good old days” of piety and that today’s culture is somehow more degenerate than yesterday’s. I’m quite fond of today, actually. (It’s where I live, after all!) I don’t dislike being wished a “Merry Christmas” in Advent any more than I disliked hearing my son sing “Come along, Inspector Jesus!” (And no, I don’t mind being wished “Happy Holidays” either. Anyone who wants to wish me well on any given day is always welcome to do so!)
But I do think that it’s worth revisiting old ideas to see if we’ve “mis-heard” them. For myself, it has been a delight to be in Advent this year. When I’ve heard Christmas carols (as early as November!) I’ve tried to think of Advent hymns instead. The result has been that I’ve been nurturing the pleasure of expectation and anticipation, and, now that Christmas is upon us, singing those Christmas hymns is going to be a real treat.
However you celebrate these days, whether you distinguish Advent from Christmas and Epiphany, or celebrate Christmas from Hallowe’en to Mardi Gras, or if you just finished celebrating Hanukkah, or are enjoying some other holiday, I wish you all the best that holiday has to offer. And if you celebrate no holy-days, but are only having some time off, I wish you good rest in that. And for all of us, I wish us good hearing, joy in mis-hearings, and better ears to hear in the future.
Do Philosophy Classes Have "Labs"?
When I was preparing to go to grad school I was torn between two choices: Ph.D. in marine/riparian biology, or Ph.D. in philosophy? I love fish, aquatic invertebrates,
(well, most of them, anyway) and the environments they live in. Wouldn't it be great to make freestone streams and tidal pools into my classrooms?
But I also love philosophy. Philosophy has connections to every other discipline; it offers a unique perspective on human activities; and it promotes some of the most interesting and fruitful conversations I know of. (Yes, I admit some professional bias here, and don't begrudge others a similar bias towards what they love.) Philosophy classes take on questions about truth, value, meaning, religion, justice, science, language, reason, history, relationships, and much more. It can be very difficult, but there's usually a huge payoff for the effort you put into it.
Now that I teach philosophy, I often find myself lurking around the biology department at my school, to read their journals, to talk with the professors there (who patiently put up with my presence there), and to eye their labs with envy.
Now, I think bio labs are great places, but it's not the places themselves that I most like. It's rather the idea of the place. Labs are spaces set apart for learning by experience. We have labs for the sciences, and we have labs for the arts as well (though we usually call those "studios"). In the social sciences they use labs for observing human activities, and foreign languages have (or ought to have) labs for practicing language. Writers have workshops, historians have museums and archives, and other disciplines have internships.
Philosophy, unlike all these other disciplines, does not appear to have any labs at all. At least, not at first glance.
Partly this is due to the reflective nature of philosophy: philosophers have often understood our discipline as a step back from experience in order to gain a cool, disinterested view of the world. To some degree, we still think that, but that idea of having a privileged access to reality through the use of the right kind of language, or through a scientific worldview, has fallen under suspicion. Pace Descartes, we don't necessarily understand the world better by turning completely away from it.
Contrary to popular opinion, "philosophy" is not a synonym for "opinion." Nor is it a synonym for "doctrines." Philosophy has grown and changed quite a lot in the last few centuries, which means that is not always easy to define. One thing that is common to all philosophers, however, is that philosophy is an activity. Doing philosophy is not the mere rehearsal of past views, nor is it merely an attempt to present our already established opinions in clearer or more persuasive language.
Philosophers do, in fact, set aside spaces and times for practicing philosophy. One important kind of lab philosophers have is the seminar, which has its roots in Plato's practice of philosophy. Whatever else we might say about Plato, he knew how important good conversation is to advancing philosophy. In his dialogues, Plato uses conversation to illustrate two points: first, we need to spend at least some of our time in serious, sustained conversation and reflection with others. Second, when we do so, we need to follow the argument where it leads and not just where we want it to go.
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| A brook trout I photographed in Maine. |
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[Images: Raphael's "School of Athens," showing famous Greek philosophers "at work"; two mayflies photgraphed in the summer of 2009 in Gravenhurst, Ontario; one of the tributaries to Lake Muskoka in Ontario; a brook trout photographed on the Magalloway River in Maine, 2009 while fishing and doing some research with Matt Dickerson. The Raphael image is in the public domain; the others are my own photos. I think mayflies are especially lovely creatures. The adult stage shown above is a very brief period of their lives; most of their lives are spent underwater, and their appearance is quite different then from what it is as adults.]
Mike Wanous, Great Professor!
Augustana College Biology Professor Mike Wanous has once again lived up to Augie’s slogan “Great Professors." challenged his lab sections to raise money for microlending website kiva.org this year. Between the two sections, they raised over $3000. The payoff? The winning lab section won the right to style Dr. Wanous' hair. Here’s the coiffure he was sporting last week:
Google Wave and My Course in Greece
Each year I teach a course in Greece, and I require my students to make presentations at a variety of archaeological and cultural sites.
This year I am playing around with Google Wave's map feature and wondering if I can use Wave to help prepare my students to make the most of our limited time in Greece.
Do you have suggestions for how I can use this for my course? Are you also new to Wave and interested in Greece? If so, send me a wave at dr.dlohara@googlewave.com and I'll include you in my "sandbox" where I'm playing around with the possibilities.
(Photo credit: Dr. Jeffrey A. Johnson, Providence College)
IAPS meeting at APA in NYC, December 2009
In case you’re interested in the philosophy of sport:
IAPS meeting at APA in NYC
John E. Smith, RIP
I just heard the very sad news that John E. Smith, a past president of the Charles S. Peirce Society, died last night. The few times I corresponded with him, he was remarkably generous with his time. As a graduate student I spoke with him about Peirce and about the philosophy of religion. Rather than speaking down to me as was his right, he spoke to me as a fellow inquirer, and his words were both words of wisdom and words of welcome. Later, as a young professor, I corresponded with him about one of his books when I was teaching my first seminar in American philosophy. He wrote back quickly and offered me both help and encouragement. The world was better for having him in it, and I am deeply saddened by his passing. I hope one day to meet him again, if only to thank him once again for all he did for me. May he rest in peace, enfolded to the Bosom of Abraham.
I Cannot Tell A Lie
American mythology tells us that Washington said that. Of course, if someone says "I never lie," you cannot tell from that statement whether it is true or not. And if they say "I always lie," it's hard to make sense of what they are saying. But that is beside my point here. There are a number of ethicists and theologians who tell us that we should never lie. Kant, for instance, says that lying is a violation of the Categorical Imperative. That is, when you lie you are acting according to a rule that you wouldn't want others to adhere to, and you're manipulating what others believe, which is a way of using them as means rather than respecting them as ends. Augustine and Aquinas both tell us that all lies, even "jocose" or humorous lies, are sinful because they are ways of bearing false witness, something we're commanded not to do.
Are they right? Is there never a time when lying is justified? What do you think?
Socrates and the Trees
I disagree with what Socrates says here, and it is an unfortunate fact of history that many Platonists have taken a similar position to this one. I just read this line in an otherwise very good book, David Keller and Frank Golley's The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science To Synthesis.
It's a fine collection of key articles in environmental philosophy. In the introduction, however, they contrast Socrates with Thoreau - something Thoreau himself did - and make Thoreau out to be the one more interested in trees. Thoreau was interested in trees, especially at the end of his life, but that does not make the comparison apt.
The irony of this line is that it comes from a dialogue in which Socrates continues to point out to his interlocutor just how much one can learn from a close observation of nature. He repeatedly draws attention to the trees, the water, and the cicadas. Socrates and Plato are not known as fathers of empiricism, but the view that their heads are so far in the Clouds that they cannot see the well they're about to step into has occupied too much of our attention. We would do better to notice that Socrates pays attention to the trees. We would do better still to pay some attention to the trees ourselves.