On Wendell Berry

Here - a perspective by Russell A. Fox on one of the great environmentalists of our time. Berry is indispensable; I used one of his shorter books - Life is A Miracle once in a course. The book is essentially a response to Edward Wilson's Consilience, an empiricist attempt to claim that ethics is a branch of human biology. The students (at least those who did the reading) really caught on to the radically different way of being an environmentalist that Berry promotes.

Cross and Context: Douglas Hall

Just noticed this piece from several weeks ago in Christian Century from Douglas John Hall, one of Canada's premiere Protestant theologians, now retired from McGill University. Nothing controversial from this doyen of liberal protestantism, yet there is a nod to theology as a counter-cultural force. Instance this:

What then is the mission of a church that can no longer count on its favored status in Western civilization to ensure its meaning and its continued existence?

I believed that the very first responsibility of Christian communities in such a situation was a) to begin at last to recognize the radical incompatibility of Christian establishment with the biblical and best traditional conceptions of the Christian movement, and b) to explore the possibilities of Christian witness and service from a position outside or on the edge of the dominant culture.

I remember a conversation early in the 1970s in which a small group of clergy in the city where I lived were discussing the question, "On the pattern of Revelation chapters 2 and 3, what do you think ought to be the 'message of the Spirit' to the churches of this city?" I found myself answering this question almost without knowing what I said: "The Spirit writes to the churches of North America: Disestablish yourselves!"

To which one might heartily agree, except that one is also hard pressed nowadays to name a church or church figures whom we might call established! Of course, there are vestiges of the old order, such as official chaplains to sundry offices of state carrying out various public functions. Then again, as in Quebec curently, efforts are fully under way to rid hospitals of their official, denominationally affiliated chaplains. Now there's disestablishement - with a vengeance.

Cut from the Same Augustinian Cloth: Benedict XVI and Rowan Williams

Oh, what a treat is this article here - in this week's Tablet, a British, lay Catholic magazine. It comes from Rupert Shortt whose biography of Williams has won rave reviews and who also has a biography of Benedict XVI published in 2006. Here are two compelling snipets on what each church leader demonstrates about their mutual dependence on Augustine and more.

"Rowan Williams may represent a fairly uncommon amalgam of liberal and conservative impulses, but that is no less true of Joseph Ratzinger..."

"It seems to me that Benedict’s understanding of Catholicism itself might be enlarged through further engagement with a figure of Rowan Williams’ stature. The journey could at the same time reconnect Joseph Ratzinger with his younger, pre-conciliar self."

Hey students! Hard work yields success

This time of year, faculty members adopt tactics both subtle and not-so-subtle to implore students to set aside the gadgets and crack open the books. And, yes, it is true that hard work can (and does) yield academic success, but for reasons that are largely cultural, hard work has become feared and praises of hard work are deemed politically incorrect. Two articles spotted today seem to indicate how significant this cultural problem is.

First, take a look at Tom Friedman's article from Saturday's Times in which he cites another article in the Washington Post on the lack of student motivation as a major problem that besets America. The U.S.A. has dropped to no. 11 in a "ranking" of best countries, and there are good reasons why the U.S. is underperforming. Excerpt:

The second piece, which could have been called “Why We’re No. 11,” was by the Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson. Why, he asked, have we spent so much money on school reform in America and have so little to show for it in terms of scalable solutions that produce better student test scores? Maybe, he answered, it is not just because of bad teachers, weak principals or selfish unions.
“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation,” wrote Samuelson. “Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a ‘good’ college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school ‘reform’ is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers.” Wrong, he said.

  The other article comes from the University Affairs, a Canadian university monthly for faculty, administrators and others. In that article, Alan Slavin, a Physics prof at Trent University in Ontario discusses the failed curricular reforms in that province made during the late 1990's. But, then, in a revealing aside near the end comes this:

I recently reviewed the drop-out rate from my introductory physics class that I have taught quite regularly from the 1980s. Over this time, the drop-out rate has increased gradually from eight percent in the early 1980s to more than 20 percent now, with one glaring exception. In the Ontario double-cohort year of 2003-04 and the next year, (which included about 25 percent of the four-year students who stayed in high school for an optional fifth year), the drop-out rate plummeted to eight and 10 percent, even though the class performance was not exceptional. Similar results were seen at Brock and Guelph universities. The best explanation is that these students were told that they would have to work very hard to gain one of the limited places at university. The work and study habits they developed then carried into university, and helped them through their first year. The lesson is that at least some student problems can be reversed very rapidly if the incentive is large enough.

The double cohort is a reference to the year in which grade 12 and grade 13 students graduated together, thus swelling universities' freshman year classes. Revealing though...

Religious Naturalism Against Undergraduate Atheism

In this fascinating review of two books by religious naturalists, John Cottingham takes on what is termed the undergraduate atheism of the Ditchkins crowd (Dawkins, Hitchens et al) and the responses of religious naturalist Mark Johnston and the French writer André Comte-Sponville.

It's a brilliant review, but the books sound brilliant in their own ways too, especially Johnston's, since he appears to have reoriented the atheism/theism debate to one in which the evolutionary desires for selfish and selfless behaviour play a central role in the analysis of religion. Johnston apparently offers up process thought as a third option lying between the classical theist / atheist divide. Ok, but can a process God, who is indistinguishable from Nature (capital N) really sustain the retrieval of a true morality and life's true meaning that Johnston wants to retrieve? Cottingham says no. For instance:

Both writers mention, en passant, that they were brought up as Catholics. But, like many academics and intellectuals, I suspect they have given insufficient credit to the pervasive subliminal effects of the culture to which they were exposed, day by day and week by week, as they grew up. To be sure, there was much about that culture, especially in its more rigid and fossilised forms, that was no doubt oppressive, if not worse. But the sense, powerfully articulated in both writers, of the sacred, of the mystery and wonder of existence, of the power and resonance of the moral ideals that call us to transcend ourselves, of the supreme value of love and self-sacrifice — how much of this is really independent of the liturgical and scriptural and sacramental culture which nurtured them? And how much of it can be retained once that culture has been dismantled?

Reviewing Hauerwas

I've heard several people laud Stanley Hauerwas's memoir, Hannah's Child. Here is a review by Martin Copenhaver in Christian Century that summarizes and evaluates the book in a fair and insightful way. Excerpts from the review:

As he writes elsewhere in the memoir, he believes that "wherever Christians exist they are constituted by words and actions that should—but may not—make their lives difficult." This is a moving account of a Christian simply—and powerfully—living out the implications of his convictions...
Hauerwas contends that you cannot rightly consider someone's thought apart from that person's life; as he often puts it, "Only ad hominem arguments are interesting." Obviously, to write a memoir is to invite just that kind of argument....
It is telling that Hauerwas is fond of Oscar Wilde's contention that we are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent. In his inconsistency, then, Hauerwas is consistently true to himself.

The first line there is an excellent way of describing the essentially (i.e.: not optional) challenging character of Christian faith and the theological reflection that it inspires - in our culture of 'live and let live'

The Great University Debate Has Begun

Well, at least south of the border. There are good reaons to hold this debate in Canada too, except that Canadians are a lot more reticent to debate most things. We are complacent if nothing else....

Here, read Camille Paglia's praise of trades, in which she also advocates core curricula in colleges and universities, an idea that couldn't arrive fast enough in the increasingly fragmented and hyper-specialized Canadian university. She is a bit too sweeping in some of her statements however. See for yourself...

And here, taking up the two big books on the subject of tenure is a fine New York Times piece.

Enjoy!

William Cavanaugh on Hitchens

Whew, what a devastating critique of Christopher Hitchens this is. In politics, this kind of writing would be called a 'gotcha'. Cavanaugh (St. Thomas Univ., Minneapolis) takes apart Hitchens' argument that religion is inherently violent- in an Australian Broadcasting essay. Completely demolishes the argument that is.
Excerpt:

Totalitarianism aims at human perfection, which is essentially a religious impulse, according to Hitchens. Religion poisons everything because everything poisonous gets identified as religion.
At the same time, everything good ends up on the other side of the religious/secular divide. Hitchens says of Martin Luther King Jr., "In no real as opposed to nominal sense, then, was he a Christian." Hitchens bases this remarkable conclusion on the fact that King was nonviolent, and the Bible preaches violence from cover to cover.
What is not violent cannot possibly be religious, because religion is defined as violent. So Stalin is religious but Martin Luther King is not.

HT: faith and theology

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini: Round 2

I recently blogged a LRB review of a new book by these two titled What Darwin Got Wrong

Here is another review, equally interesting from the redoubtable Simon Conway-Morris. Snippet:

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini declare their secular credentials and are adamant that God, like Mother Nature and the Tooth Fairy, is a dispensable fantasy. But suppose they are correct in arguing that there really are nomological principles that underpin what evolution can and cannot achieve? If such principles are inherent to the universe, one is led inevitably to inquire why they are constructed that way. Pure accident.

 From the context of Conway-Morris's review, what is that sentence "Pure accident." doing at the end of this paragraph? Is this his description of Fodor and P-P's view? It seems so, but it is not entirely clear...

On Tenure: Thinking Outside the Box

Here is a good article on tenure, from which the following snippet stands out on incentives for joining the ranks of academe:

the appeal of job security may be overrated. Tenure may be an added incentive, but it's almost never a deal maker. "All sorts of brilliant people want to be members of academe," says Trower. "I don't think it's because of tenure. It's because of the work." The life of the mind is its own reward.

So what's the alternative model? Renewable contracts. Some suggest seven years. Others say 10. The goal would be to give professors enough security to make them comfortable but not enough to breed complacency and lock the university into a deal that no longer makes sense.

Gavin D'Costa on a Theology of Religions

View here

This past week's Web Reading

1. On Catholic universities and academic life. From this post, one of an increasing number of pointed jabs at the narrowing of academic life. A topic that is set to explode soon onto the front pages of the western press if another economic crisis precipitates a funding crunch...:

The hyper-specialization of knowledge is one of the characteristics of the modern university, which results both in the increasing balkanization of knowledge and in what Luke Timothy Johnson recently (and precisely and felicitously) described as the “desperately trivial character of much academic scholarship.” Young scholars must find ways to get published in obscure academic journals that no one will ever read. While there may be interesting minutiae in the sciences that are also significant, this is rarely the case in the humanities where minutiae remain minutiae, of little significance except insofar as an article about them might help one secure tenure.

And the following remark is not just true but damning. Damning of the entire enterprise that trumps "research" (not scholarship) over teaching in the effort to show students that it really is ok to know more and more about less and less:

Men and women trained as professors in recent decades tend to lack the capacity of earlier generations of scholars to give a broad, accessible account of their field of study, one that can inform the public at large.

Here endeth the lesson...

2. Terry Eagleton on John Cornwell on Newman. hmmm... I think I prefer A.N. Wilson's TLS review (sorry can't find it online)

3. Rod Dreher c/o Flannery O'Connor on Anne Rice's decision to leave the church. Ecclesiology 101 anyone?

4. Rod Dreher on Philip Rieff c/o Ross Douthat on just how deep the debates over SSM really go, and how no proponents and few opponents are willing to stretch their minds that far. Go Rod go.

5. And for something completely... well, only somewhat different: Edward Feser on the immorality of using the bomb. August 9, 1945. Nagasaki. Let us remember.

Money taketh happiness away!

From the abstract of a paper available here:

having access to the best things in life may actually undercut people’s ability to reap enjoyment from life’s small pleasures.

I love the title: "Money Giveth, Money Taketh Away"...

Plagiarism is a Big Moral Deal

But not according to Stanley Fish today in a NYT post titled "Plagiarism is Not a Big Moral Deal". Now a lot depends on Fish's use of the words "big" and "moral".

First, on the claim that plagiarism is an issue in the small world of academia. Fish notes:

The concept of plagiarism, however, is learned in more specialized contexts of practice entered into only by a few; it’s hard to get from the notion that you shouldn’t appropriate your neighbor’s car to the notion that you should not repeat his words without citing him.

So, plagiarism is not like stealing apparently. But is that right? Is it really more like breaking the rules of a game? This is what Fish suggests with the several paragraphs long discussion of various sports and their rules. A rule, in that context, is simply an agreement on the procedures that should be followed. No big moral deal - as he says.

Second, on defining plagiarism, it is found to lack a philosophical basis, and therefore has no moral claim on which its proscription can stand:

the ground plagiarism stands on is more mundane and firm; it is the ground of disciplinary practices and of the histories that have conferred on those practices a strong, even undoubted (though revisable) sense of what kind of work can be appropriately done and what kind of behavior cannot be tolerated.

So disciplinary practice and moral proscription are two parallel universes? Fish says that originality, which is what plagiarism is intended to protect is not such a big deal:

If it is wrong to plagiarize in some context of practice, it is not because the idea of originality has been affirmed by deep philosophical reasoning, but because the ensemble of activities that take place in the practice would be unintelligible if the possibility of being original were not presupposed.

But originality does not need to be philosophically based in order for the literal copying of a text to be wrong. Taking something without asking is wrong. Period. That is a moral claim, and there are numerous contexts to which it applies. Some are professional, others are not. Why is this so complicated? Stealing is morally and professionally proscribed and no philosophical justification or that philosophy's denial (Fish) adds anything to this proscription.

Fish ends with the following, which is where he is most tellingly wrong:

Everyday disciplinary practices do not rest on a foundation of philosophy or theory; they rest on a foundation of themselves; no theory or philosophy can either prop them up or topple them.

No, Professor Fish. Everyday disciplinary practices rest on the foundation of human art and science, the conventions of which are possible on the basis of human nature, a nature capable of virtue and vice and much else besides.

That is the ultimate moral foundation by which the rising problem of plagiarism ought to be judged. Plagiarism is stealing or lying and usually both if done intentionally. (The plagiarism which I've encountered as a teacher is the unintentional sort - people who literally did not know that they were stealing/lying!)

But here's the point: the person who plagiarized Professor Fish undoubtedly still feels guilt over what he/she did. And guilt is a sure sign of moral failure, a different kind of failure than forgetting to tag third base on the way to home.

Christopher Hitchens, Man of Faith

So says a friend of his, in the NYRB. Read to the end to see what kind of faith Ian Buruma is referring to. After years of enjoying his pugnacious and rhetorically breathtaking articles in the Atlantic and elsewhere (prior to his atheist book anyway), this evaluation of "Hitch" is a most revealing read.