Author: Kleiner

Here is a nice article on liberal education.  It first gives what I take to be a nice summary of what liberal eduction is (couched in terms of “stewardship”).  It strikes a nice balance between the requirement for attentive listening (submission) and later critical judgment in our reading of great books.  Perhaps most interesting are the final points in the article concerning the “cosmopolitan temptation”.  Liberal education can make us lovers of abstractions, people who move so easily through different times and places (through our reading of great western works) that we find ourselves not properly “situated” in a concrete time and place of our own, sacrificing our own particularity and hence our own capacity to really flourish as human beings (the kind of beings for whom flourishing is always “caught up in” the particular time and place of their lives).  Here is a little taste of the article:

“In such a context, stewardship suffers, for the mind given to abstract universal concepts will readily gravitate toward saving “the world” or “ending hunger” but will find it less natural to consider how to preserve a local community or care for the poor widow around the corner. In short, if a liberal arts education makes it more difficult for human beings to live lives suited to human beings, then it has fallen victim to the temptation of abstraction. A properly conceived liberal education must, to be sure, include an appreciation of abstract universal principles, but at the same time, it must include resources that equip the student to return to the particulars better suited than before to engage the local community of which the student is a part.”

Not a philosophical event, but philosophers who are also interested in religious studies might consider attending the annual Leonard Arrington Mormon History Lecture.  This year:

Presenter: Kathleen Flake, professor of American religious history in the Divinity School and Graduate Department at Vanderbilt University (TN).

Title: The Emotional and Priestly Logic of Plural Marriage.

Where/When: Thurs Oct 1, 7pm, Logan Tabernacle (50 N Main St)

I thought I would post a few of Thomson’s most compelling arguments from her article “A Defense of Abortion” here (we are covering this in Social Ethics) for possible discussion:

Thomson takes a moderate view on abortion, arguing that is permissible in some cases but impermissible in others.  She begins by, surprisingly, granting the pro-life view that personhood begins at conception.  Most pro-lifers think that once you grant that point, the matter is settled.  But Thomson tries to show that it is not, that the right to life just means you have the right to not be unjustly killed.

She relies heavily on analogies, and I will present two here:

Analogy 1: Imagine you are asleep, and while you are asleep you are hooked up to a famous violinist who can only be kept alive (for whatever reason) if he is hooked up to you.  Obviously you did not consent to the violinist using your body, but disconnecting yourself from him would lead to his death.  Thomson points out that, in this case, while it would be really really nice of you to remain hooked up to the violinist, no one would demand that you remain hooked up.  In other words, it would be morally permissible to disconnect yourself from him.

Thomson is banking that most of us would agree on this, and uses this example to show that abortion – even if the unborn has a right to life – would be morally permissible in cases where the person did not consent to the unborn using their body to live (say, rape).

Analogy 2:  IF it is the case that the morality of abortion hinges on whether or not the woman has consented to the unborn using her body (example 1 is supposed to show this), then what about this? – Imagine you own a home and install a top of the line alarm system to protect yourself from burglars.  No alarm system is 100%, but say yours 99.8% effective.  You dutifully arm the system every time you leave the home, lock the doors, etc.  Of course, a burglar might still enter your home.  But no one, Thomson suggests, would think that you have consented to the burglar being in your home just because you left your house unattended.  After all, what more precautions could you have reasonably taken?

What does this have to do with abortion?  Thomson argues that this analogy shows that abortion is also morally permissible in cases of failed contraception.  The pill is (or can be if taken properly) 99.8% effective.  By almost any measure that is a “reasonable precaution” and provides evidence of a refusal of consent for the “burglar” (sperm) to invade your “home” (egg).

A conversation I had with my 3 year old daughter this evening while sitting under a tree looking at acorns.

Madeline: What do you call this?

Dad: It is a seed.

Mads: I like to call it a baby tree, because it will grow up to be a big tree just like this one [gesturing to the large tree we are sitting under].

Dad: Why do you say that?

Mads: Because that is what they do.  Big trees used to be baby trees just like this seed, and then they grow up and are big. [translation: Because it is in their nature to actualize their telos]

Conclusion: my 3 year old daughter already apprehends a basic truth about her world (that entities in the world have teleological striving) that thick-headed materialists still don’t get.

Madeline 1.  Materialists 0.

By the way, Curious George even knows this – read “Curious George Plants a Seed”.  The synopsis:

Curious George watches Jumpy the squirrel bury an acorn in the yard. Upon learning that Jumpy is storing food for later, George decides to do the same. The man with the yellow hat comes home to find the kitchen empty and its contents buried in the yard! It’s time to teach George about what things grow and what don’t. George finally gets it right when he grows a beautiful sunflower from a seed.

Silly as it might sound, this story presents Aristotle’s distinction between things that have a nature (an internal principle of change) and artefacts (things that have an external principle of change) in a way that is understandable for toddlers.

Keep in mind, I’ve been a stay-at-home Dad for 4 months, so I am still transitioning from Elmolectual to intellectual.  Bear with me.

I always teach lots of Plato early in my Intro course, and this term I’ve been thinking in particular of how contemporary philosophers revere Socrates.  It is funny that nearly everyone from all different philosophical stripes claim Socrates as their forebearer.  For instance, Huenemann will discuss skepticism, point to Socrates and say ‘See, just like Socrates!’.  I’ll make appeals to moral realism and our orientation toward transcendence, point to Socrates and say ‘See, just like Socrates!’.

To try to make this into a question (or a series of questions):  Why is it that two philosophers who disagree on everything else can agree that Socrates is the model philosopher?  When they agree on that, are they referring to the same Socrates?  Is Socrates the sort of figure that can be fashioned to fit anyone’s needs, such that Socrates becomes no one because he is everyone?  Or has everyone gotten Socrates a bit right, and (like all people only more so) he is just impossible to reduce?