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This fall we will see many more offerings in Philosophy than we have had in recent years, due mainly to the return/addition of more teaching faculty.

Gordon Steinhoff will return from his 09-10 sabbatical, and will resume teaching his courses in logic, metaphysics, and East Asian Philosophy.

Harrison Kleiner has been hired as a Lecturer, and will be teaching Ethics and Social Ethics, as well as distance ed sections of Social Ethics and Business Ethics. He also will be teaching a section of USU 1320 (Civilization: Humanities). We’re not sure yet exactly what Kleiner will be teaching in the spring, but his assignment is sure to include the highly-anticipated Contemporary European Philosophy. Also note that Kleiner is moving office, from the basement of Main to Main 341A.

Gary McGonagill will also be joining our faculty as a Lecturer this fall from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Dr. McGonagill’s Ph.D is in Classics from Harvard, and he will be teaching our Ancient Philosophy course, as well as some sections of Intro to Philosophy and yet another section of USU 1320. His work has focused on the intersections of ancient Greek philosophy with early Christianity. McGonagill will also offer a seminar course in the spring, on a topic of his own devising.

Huenemann has been appointed an Associate Dean in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, so he will only be teaching one course each term next year, but he will be generally available for advising, consultation, and sarcastic skepticism.

An article here reprises some of G.K. Chesterton’s thoughts on America.  Chesterton called America a “nation with the soul of a Church”.  It is, Chesterton remarked, the only nation “founded on a Creed” (“a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.”).

An excerpt from the article:

“Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world,” Chesterton continues.  America’s creed is universal in its implications, recognizing knowable truths applicable to all men at all times. And in that sense, the country’s essence, he concludes, is “religious because it is not racial” in the way that “England is English as France is French or Ireland is Irish; the great mass of men taking certain national traditions for granted.”

At the same time, America’s creed is limiting because the creed itself defines what it is to be an American; it is the truths we hold. As Chesterton puts it, even when American pluralism is compared to a melting pot, “that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt.” That solid substance – that creed – he writes, is “traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy.”

Very interesting philosophically:

We are overshadowed by a nimbus of ideas. There is our physical reality and then there is our conception of ourselves, our conception of self — one that is as powerful as, perhaps even more powerful than, the physical reality we inhabit. A version of self that can survive even the greatest bodily tragedies. We are creatures of our beliefs. This is at the heart of Ramachandran’s ideas about anosognosia — that the preservation of our fantasy selves demands that we often must deny our physical reality. Self-deception is not enough. Something stronger is needed.

Full article here (part 4 of a 5-part series).

coming up in November. Details here.

Ah, the sober truth.