By Thaddeus Kozinski, Oct 28, 2009 in Musings, Questions, Pedagogy and Teaching
A philosophically good attitude with respect to curriculum is also essential to the good Christian university. The liberal arts are ends in themselves, surely, and should be taught as such, with literature taught in a primarily poetic, not philosophical, mode. Although, all else being equal, the philosophical act is higher than the poetic act, as Pieper has shown, the poetic mode must be pervaded by and opened up to philosophical speculation, even if the poetic mode remains primary. Moreover, Not all liberal arts are equal, and this should also manifest itself pedagogically: grammar must be ordered to logic, grammar and logic to rhetoric, the trivium to the quadrivium, all seven liberal arts to philosophy, and philosophy ordered to and practiced in the light of revealed theology.
In turn, theology must be fecundated, enlivened, purified, and penetrated by philosophy and dialectics—indeed by all the liberal arts—else the queen of the sciences become rigid, dogmatic, graceless, fundamentalist, anti-liberal, and enslaving. That which is “lower” than theology should not be glossed over and given short shrift due to immoderate religious zeal or an orthodoxy-at-all-costs mentality, for this suggests a fanatical, and eminently unphilosophical mindset. If either Socrates or Christ is banished from the curriculum and pedagogy of the Christian university or the soul of the philosopher, the result is theological totalitarianism or a dictatorship of relativism, on the one hand, and fanaticism or dilettantism, on the other. Both extremes display an anti-dialectical, reactionary, “answers without questions” ethos, whether the answers are the true ones of Divine Revelation or false ones of secular ideology. Such a university, if Christian in affiliation and confession, may offer true answers to its students, but at the expense of the necessary dialectical questioning and Socratic ethos that is indispensable to render true answers the answers to real questions in their hearts.
Similarly, such a philosophical “answer-man” might possess true answers, but it would be poisonous to his soul, a bulwark for his spiritual pride and Gnostic, “inner circle” certainty. Neil Postman has written:
Knowledge is produced in response to questions; and new knowledge results from the asking of new questions; quite often new questions about old questions. Here is the point: Once you have learned how to ask questions—relevant and appropriate and substantial questions—you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.
Just as philosophy and theology must be held in the right balance, the curriculum must also hold in fruitful tension the poetic and the philosophical. The liberal arts must neither become mere poetic fodder for the “real” intellectual food of, for example, Aristotelian philosophy or Integrally Christian theology, nor must poetic knowledge become hegemonic and all-encompassing, with philosophy dismissed as so much useless and pride-inducing abstract speculation, only good for the poetic meat one can glean from its otherwise scanty bones. To secure the right balance of the poetic and the philosophical is a complex matter, as Plato’s ironic yet unassumingly sophisticated and nuanced treatment of it in the Republic reveals, but, as Dr. Peter Redpath has suggested, without the right balance, philosophy becomes neo-Protagorean, mytho-poetic sophistry under the aegis of political ideology, and poetry fails its charge to keep both systematic philosophy and theology in touch with the earthly realities of man’s senses, through which all human knowledge has its origin and in the absence of which it becomes unmoored, delusional, and dangerous.
Lastly, the pedagogy of the university must be properly ordered and balanced, with pride of place being given to Socratic tutorial over lecture and seminar. The lecture and seminar modes of teaching, though appropriate and even necessary on certain occasions and with certain subjects, must never be the primary mode of teaching for the liberal arts and philosophy in general. When lecture predominates the class becomes one of teacher-derived-and-promulgated questions, answers, and arguments, with the students serving as mere passive receptacles of knowledge, completely bypassing the vital student-derived and initiated questions and aporias that must precede and evoke any definitive answer or resolution. Of course, excessive and impertinent seminar teaching can result in an educational ethos of “questions without answers,” resulting in misology and skepticism, and a false sense of intellectual sophistication and self-sufficiency in the students.
In conclusion, what our anti-philosophical culture needs most, besides mass conversion and spiritual healing, is the reappropriation, rejuvenation, and rearticulation of the Christian philosophical tradition, as well as a refounding of our Christian universities firmly and integrally on this tradition. As we have discussed, our Christian philosophical tradition cannot flourish without integrally Christian—that is, good—universities. But such universities, in turn, require an already flourishing Christian philosophical tradition to inform them and render them good! It’s quite a paradox, yes, but it is one that should not leave us without hope, as long as there are a few good Christian philosophers in the world!
5 Responses to "The Good Philosopher and the Good Liberal Arts College, Part VI: Toward a Conclusion"
Anthony Gill on Oct 31, 2009
Yowza! That took me a couple readings to figure all this out, and I'm not sure I still understand it. I'm all with you on the give-and-take questioning stuff and I even get this going in lectures of 200+ students. (More on that later perhaps.) But I guess where I flounder is on this poetry and philosophy. I've never been a big fan of Plato with all that "philosopher king" talk because it vests too much power in people who think they know too much. I'm also one of these folks that like my Christianity coming down in Pentecost fashion on me; I'll take Chris Tomlin over Aquinas any day.
That said, and I'm approaching this from a sociological mindset, how would you respond to the following statement (of which I take full credit for)?
Divinity schoos are where faith goes to die.
The reason I asy this is that as soon as a denomination sets up a collegiate divinity school, it seems as if that denominations starts the gradual process of withering on the vine.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm all for religious education and I love that I have a pastor who really gets me to think through various passages in the Scriptures. But a divnity school, especially if it is attached to an elite university, just seems to create incentives to substitute the Great Commission for the "great publication." And that's not even the worst of it. Nowadays, and despite your calling for balance, it seems that the easiest way to find an atheist on campus is to go to the div school.
Lee Trepanier on Oct 31, 2009
My sense is perhaps you are speaking of two different types of institutions which therefore require different pedagogical methods. I believe Thaddeus is referring to a small liberal arts college where the Socratic method can be employed, whereas Anthony is speaking of a typical public or large private institutions where the lecture method is only one to deliever the lessons.
I think Anthony does raise an interesting question as to whether you can infuse a Christian ethos throughout a school without a divinity school is an interesting question; and if so, what sort of Christianity would it be?
Anthony Gill on Oct 31, 2009
Actually, Lee, you are being too kind when it comes my question. Two points to make:
1) I don't really think the pedagogy should differ by the type of institution. Class size, perhaps, but not institution.
2) My bigger concern is with the "over-intellectualization" of religion and its affect on religious participation and belief. My views on this come from a sociological and economic perspective, more so than a theological, philosophical or political theory viewpoint. (I fear that I am way outnumbered by political theorists here.) Let me try to explain this:
Thaddeus does assert a need for balance between an intellectual position and a poetic view of religion. I am assuming that "poetic" could mean a more "emotional" appeal, but I'm not sure. So let me just address the intellectual side. The incentives in academia are set up so as to promote publications, innovative research, and counter-intuitive results. We also trade in the currency of "status" -- you want to be associated with new and novel ideas (and be invited to cool universities to give talks and all the "in" parties).* Working in that environment often forces us to publish results for the sake of publication, for the sake of innovation, or for the sake of gaining status. In secular universities this will tend to push you away from a more "faith-based" or "emotive" approach to religion and more towards one that scours religion of its mystical and transcendental qualities. After all, you don't want your colleagues to associate you with thos snake-handling Pentecostal types, right? I would argue that the same is even true in confessional universities as your academic rewards not only come from internal to the university, but from the wider profession at large. Scholars who study religion not only have to feel apologetic (no pun intended) for their field of study in academia at large, and being one of those folks that champions the benefit of "raising your hands high" at Sunday services is just one other thing you don't want to apologize for. By wanting to fit in with the intellectual elite, you downplay the spiritual aspects of religion.
Okay, so that applies to research perhaps, but what about teaching? Well, I would argue that are scholarly-orientation affects our pedagogy. If I seek a deeply intellectualized faith in my scholarship, that is what I'm going to pitch to my students. I would find it hard to deal with a student who comes to the university with a passionate witness story that brought him or her to Christ and then say, "well, that's great but that's not what it is about." You start to separate those students from what drew them to their faith in the first place and you also run the risk of crafting an intellectual elite (or aristocracy) that looks down upon all those other folks that "aren't just as smart in the Word." That type of separation and elitism is bad for a free society as the elite eventually get to the paternalistic point where they feel the need to guide (or control) those not as enlightened.
Is this argument smacking of some anti-intellectualism? Probably.
Thaddeus Kozinski on Oct 31, 2009
Anthony:
Just a clarification: I did not mean the balance of poetic and philosophical to be applied only or mainly to theology, but to the liberal arts in general.
Thaddeus
Lee Trepanier on Nov 2, 2009
I'm not sure whether your point smacks of anti-intellectualism, although I think you are right it is often portrayed that way. I think one can study and teach experiential components of reality (poetics, emotions, whatever you want to call it) in an effective and reasonable way while, at the same time, recognizing the limits that reason can reveal to us about experience. I'm thinking of thinkers like Voegelin and such who provide us a methodology to approach these problems.