the exhaustion of criticism and “pseudo-modernism”
A recent entry in this blog entitled “the exhaustion of criticism” (published July 9th, 2011) accused academic critical studies in general, and Biblical Criticism in particular, of exhausting itself (and its potential readership), to the point of a complete disciplinary unraveling. I do believe that scholars working in the Humanities (Philosophy, Theology, Religious Studies, History, [...]
Lapore is wrong about meaning in Poetry
Ernie Lapore, “Poetry, Medium, and Message.” The Stone. New York Times Online. 7.31.2011. Rutgers philosopher Ernie Lepore writes about poetry in yesterday’s installment of “The Stone,” a philosophy “blog” on the New York Times. Something about the article rankled me and inspired this cranky response. Lapore says the New Critics locate meaning, and the resistance [...]
Dewey, Democracy, Ethics, and Education
At the beginning of our 12th week of class, my American Philosophy class (PHI 216) read John Dewey’s “The Ethics of Democracy,” an essay published in the 1888 edition of the University of Michigan’s Philosophical Papers [see here google books full text]. It’s curious timing for me, since I am also trying to find time [...]
Conscience, Liberty, and the Wall of Separation
Here in the fifth week of our course in American Philosophy, we are just entering the 19th century, and so far all that we have encountered in the way of intellectually rich philosophizing in America can be categorized either as political theory or philosophical Christian theology. Philosophical theology, or theological philosophizing, proceeds in the same [...]
Ontology as the Forbearance of God
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) During our third week of the course American Philosophy, we entered the 18th century in the colonies, a time of expansion, change, and development. Usually, the period is identified with the “Enlightenment”, that is, with the emergence of rationalism in science, history, philosophy and theology. The most prominent American thinker of the [...]
The Plantation
John Cotton (1584–1652) For our second day of PHI 216, American Philosophy, we are reading John Cotton’s famous 1630 sermon “God’s Promise to His Plantation.” John Cotton was a prodigy. Educated at Cambridge (Emmanuel College), he received his first degree at 19 and joined the faculty after receiving the A.M. at age 23. As a [...]
On my reading list: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant 1724–1804 (Wikipedia). Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. First edition, 1781. Second edition, 1787. In the studies and reading rooms of nineteenth-century American Philosophers, this was considered a most important book. Kant was the the root and stem of eighteenth-century German Idealist philosophy. A hundred years later, idealism had swept English philosophy and [...]
Apocalypse Then: Armageddon Fever in the 1980′s
Set the dial on the wayback machine to the 1980′s: Reagan was president, Russia was still “the Soviet Union” (which Reagan called “the Evil Empire”), and people lived daily with the fear that the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviets, along with the public-policy known as “M.A.D.” (mutually assured destruction) might one day [...]
Manunkind on “Cyber Monday”
This Monday morning, I spent about 50 minutes trying to convince a group of 12 students, 18-20 year olds, that they should share the moral philosopher Philip Hallie’s outrage about Nazis torturing Jewish and Gypsy children… almost 70 years ago… and that they should enter into his professional concern — his puzzlement — over the [...]