Author: Kleiner

Ever wonder what you should be doing here at college?  What is college for?  Are you here for job training or to be educated?  What is the difference?  What does it mean to be educated, anyway?

If you are interesting in exploring these questions, you are invited to apply to a new College of Humanities and Social Sciences reading group called “What is an Educated Person? – a CHASS Reading Group” which will meet every Tuesday (spring term 2013) from 3:00 to 4:30 in RWST 311.

Expectations: Each week students will read selections from classic and contemporary seminal works on education and the meaning of life, post a brief reading reflection on a blog, and participate in the weekly discussion.  Discussions will be moderated by Dr. Harrison Kleiner and Dr. Susan Shapiro.  While the reading group does not count for USU credit, students may get Honors credit through an Honors Contract.

Thanks to the generous support of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the USU Honors Program, students will receive their program books for free.

Spring 2013 readings:
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (selections)
Plato, The Republic (selections)
John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (selections)
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (selections)
Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity (selections)

Students of sufficient intellectual maturity who are eager to read, think, and discuss the purposes and meaning of higher education can apply.  We welcome applications from freshman to seniors and from every discipline and college.  Application information can be found at saintsocratessociety.com or email harrison.kleiner@usu.edu.

Application process:

Submit applications to harrison.kleiner@usu.edu.  Include as attachments to the email:
– A resume.  Your resume must include the following items: your contact information (phone, email, address); academic year; major; GPA; academic achievements; extra-curricular activities; the name and email address of a USU faculty member who can be contacted for a reference.
– Submit a list of at least 3 books that have helped to shape your self-understanding.

Finalists will be interviewed by a team composed of Drs. Kleiner and Shapiro.

Priority deadline for applications: Wednesday December 5, 5pm.

I am, once again, doing a “silence” project with my students.  Here is the write-up for this year:

“I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” – Pascal

Students are invited to participate in this voluntary exercise.  You are free to participate to whatever degree you choose, or not at all.  But I should say that I am convinced that the greater the degree of participation in the exercise, the greater the impact of it.  So if you are going to do this, I would encourage you to put on the letter and more importantly the spirit of the following “laws”.

The exercise begins tomorrow at the end of class and runs until December 3 at the end of class.  Students are agreeing to:

• not watch any television, movies, or other video
• not listen to an iPod or other portable music device
• not play any video games on any sort of device
• not check facebook, twitter, or any other social networking site
• not get on the internet (exceptions only for legitimate school work)
• check email for only 15 minutes a day
• treat their cell phone like a land line (plug it into the wall and leave it there)
• not text message, video message, or use any other messaging/texting on a phone, computer or any other electronic device

These are the rules of the exercise.  Following them is a matter of your discipline and honor.  The spirit of the exercise is plain enough – detach yourself from glowing screens and the “digital world” and re-enter the real world for a few weeks.  I think you can do this, and will enjoy the fruits of having done so.  But if  you cannot do it all, remember Chesterton’s maxim that “if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”  Even if you can only cut yourself off from a glowing screen for 3 hours a day, that would be good.

As a sister project, which I think will come naturally, I would encourage you to give up multitasking.  The digital world inundates us with content, and presumes that more is better.  Multitasking is similar, it presumes that the point of life is to “get things done.”  But, in this season of thanks, perhaps we could refocus our priorities.  Be a lover instead of a doer; seek to be measured by your love rather than by your accomplishments.  After all, how would a lover like being part of a multi-task?  (Try texting on your next date while you talk to her and see how it goes over).  So be really intentional in the next few weeks in attending to what is before you.  Be a single-tasker.

Good luck!  Last thing: I encourage those who participate to write a very short (1 or 2 paragraphs) informal reflection on their experience.  Please post it to this post as a comment!

USU is hosting an Ethics Bowl on Saturday, Nov 10.  The event will last much of the day.  We are in need of at least 4 moderators.  Students can fill that role so I am looking for some student volunteers.  It should be fun – you’ll get to hear some interesting moral dilemmas and various arguments on all sides.  No special training or expertise required to serve as a moderator.  You just need to be able to watch a clock to keep teams within their time limits.  You’ll get a free lunch to boot!

Let me know if you are interested by emailing me: harrison.kleiner@usu.edu

An embarrassment of riches next week.  Hemming lectures on Tuesday, and then another philosophy lecture on Thursday:

John Crosby of Franciscan University of Steubenville will be presenting a talk titled “The Phenomenology of Love”.  It should be an excellent talk, of particular interest to those interested in 20th century continental thought.  I expect his paper to draw from the work of Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) and the great – and widely under-appreciated – Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Dr. Crosby’s lecture will be in Main 304 on Thursday Nov 1 at 4:00pm.

Laurence Paul Hemming will be returning to USU next week.  He has lectured here before and has been very well received.  He is very capable on a wide range of subjects (his last talk was on Zeno’s paradox), but is probably best known for his work on Heidegger (his book Heidegger’s Atheism was well received) as well as work on Nietzsche.

He will be here next Tuesday (Oct 30) at 3:30 pm in Animal Science 314.  The title of his talk will be ‘Rationalising the Animal in Humanity: Philosophy and the Birth of Thinking’.

Everyone is also welcome to his public lecture at the St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church at 7pm Tuesday.  Hemming has published an excellent book on the liturgy, and his lecture that evening is titled ’Why worship is the source and summit of our lives as Catholics?’.

Church address: 725 South 250 East in Hyde Park.  Drive north from campus on 800 East for  few miles.  A little past 2900 North, you enter into Hyde Park (and the street number changes to 250E).  You will see the church on the left a few blocks later.