Back to Teaching Philosophy

After a six-month hiatus from teaching, I will be back teaching at Dowling College this fall.

I have at least one evening section of Western Philosophy; an introductory course covering from the Pre-Socratics all the way to Idealism and Empiricism. A second course may run if there are enough students. That's the killer course, I think, which starts later in the semester and goes for 3:45 each meeting. Which is way too long. I have to do cartwheels to keep the students interested.

Even though I took a break, I love to teach. I just hate the apathy of some students.

I don't take it personally. I get enough compliments from students. I just hate the lost opportunities the students have to make connections from philosophy to the rest of their lives, and to gain almost indescribable insights.

Philosophy is the most important subject you can study. I'll prove it.

What is a Ph.D. degree anyway? You know, as in Ph.D. in economics, chemistry, psychology, etc.? It is, a doctor of philosophy degree. In economics, or chemistry? Why?

Because the degree signifies not only that you know a lot of stuff. It also signifies that you have been to the boundaries of your field and seen all the things that you do not know the answers to. The same way Socrates, the model philosopher, did when he said he was only wise because he knew that he did not know. The university is built around the Socratic/Platonic model of knowledge and ignorance.

You're not "smart" (wise) if you don't know that you don't know. I hope to convince some students of that this fall, and help them see the "hidden blessings" of it, as Socrates notes in Plato's Apology. Wish me luck.

On Supposedly Seeing Signs

Three times in the last two weeks friends have asked me whether I am going to return to stand up comedy. (For the record, I would like to. Just a matter, as always, of finding the time.)

When the second friend asked me, and I told her that she was the second person, she replied somewhat playfully, "See, it could be a sign."

I found myself surprised by my response, which was truthful, but so long as it remained publicly unspoken, more tentative: "I don't believe in signs anymore."

I have been pondering the implications of this, my belief, for some time now. (Note, this too, is a "belief.") A belief born of what I would call a personal backlash against my own pious self deceptions for many years.

Among these pious self deceptions: seeing signs about whom to date, what career to pursue, or even that my mother was not going to die of cancer at 48, as she did. (I saw signs for that on bumper stickers that happened to show up on cars at just the "right time." Her church friends saw other signs and gladly interpreted them for me both before and after her death.)

Does such a skeptical belief, born of dissatisfaction and sometimes even disgust with a particular culture's understanding of how God works in a particular time, and the wasted time it caused me, make me irreligious?

I would like to think not. I would like to think that I am looking for a more pure form of connection with the ultimate reality. And yet, I wonder, can one expect a pure intuition of the ultimate reality while living any kind of normal life? Is it really possible not to look for signs?

Maybe there are more pure "signs" than ambiguous bumper stickers seen at just the right time? For example, the beautiful face of a child. Is it a sign of God's love? Or, my persevering wife?

I have frequently wondered whether my new found semiotic deconstruction has a stopping point. Or, does it obliterate everything that is significant in my life -- everything that would mediate between me and the First Cause.

I have often wondered whether I can make decisions anymore, given this skepticism. Is any direction in life "important?" I have become deeply skeptical of having any "enthusiasms" about anything. This is very unlike what I used to be.

And yet, the strongest enthusiasm that I have is love. I shudder to think that I could part with the enthusiasm for my child. Yet, I shudder a little less to think that buying into the child as sign means I have to buy into the bumper sticker too.

Perhaps all signs that come forward to mediate must themselves be mediated and tested? But where does that stop (thank you, Charles Peirce), and what is to stop the self deception one would impose on any sign? Grace? (Which we often "discover" in signs.)

I don't know.

Dawkins Tweaked in New Music Video

I had to share this humorous little item from YouTube about Richard Dawkins - a very smart and very condescending man, leading a modern "posse" of pugnacious atheists.

Humor helps put things in perspective.

Mathematicians In Search of Infinity

Someday I will write the book entitled "The Best and Worst Cases for God." The worst case is well known: The Problem of Evil, and is a particular obsession of this blog.

The best case is less known, I think, and is to be found rolling somewhere around in this marvelous documentary from the BBC entitled "Dangerous Knowledge."

The mysterious power of mathematics, which so fascinated Plato and contributed to his Theory of the Forms, is also one of my fascinations.

I don't claim to have the analytical and logical power of a mathematician. One of the great regrets of my life is that I did not pay enough attention in my high school's experimental "Unified Mathematics" course, despite the solicitous concern for my success there by Sister Higgins. (I was too interested in analyzing the various properties of 1653 girls in my new high school.)

But like many philosophers and mathematicians, I am compelled to ask "Why the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics?" (Kurt Godel is a particular fascination. What are the implications of his famous Theorem?)

I have found my way back to mathematics somehow. I hope that somewhere Sister Higgins is smiling.

Talk Shows the Mysterious Power of Mathematics

Here's a very interesting video from the Ted Talks on the origin of fractals, and how they are used extensively in African culture. It reminds me of why I find mathematical history so fascinating.

The speaker, Ron Eglash makes some broad, rather unsubstantiated claims in this, particularly when, like the proverbial man with the hammer who sees everything as a nail, he suggests capitalism is an out-of-control self-replicating system.

Nevertheless, Eglash makes a real contribution to our understanding of mathematics and culture, and raises truly fascinating questions. Particularly about the mysterious power that mathematics offers up to us out of the riddles at its core.

Lecture on Evil, Harry Potter and More

Here is a very interesting video about the problem of evil, presented on the Google Channel. It is a a lecture by philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain, with ample examples from the Harry Potter series. It reminded me of the importance of the Platonic and Augustinian conceptions of good even for understanding modern life and literature.

A Final Thought on Utility in War

One final thought on the post just before this one, in case I didn't make myself quite clear on what I meant by "morally extraordinary" behavior in World War II.

Bret Stephens makes the argument in the posted video that the firebombing of German and Japanese cities - which, it seems, everybody now accepts as morally licit - "hastened" the end of the war.

Well, exactly which bombings? If the earlier acts against non-combatants were moral because they would hasten the war, and presumably save even more lives, then why did we need the later atomic bombs?

Weren't the atomic bombings justified on the grounds that they were "necessary" to end the war? In what sense, if we were already engaged in acts of the same nature, also meant to end the war.

And, as has been argued before, Hiroshima didn't do the trick. Or, did it? No one is really responsible for scientifically pinning down this utilitarian calculus, probably because it cannot be done.

In fact, if atrocities in war are justified on the grounds that they will save more lives later, doesn't that mean that every atrocity, from Genghis Khan on, if done in the name of bringing about peace, was actually morally justified?

These specious arguments make a hash out of the whole notion of just war, and human rights for that matter. As Socrates pointed out, evil is done because it is believed to be good. The question for the American Right in general, and Mr. Stephens in particular, is, "are good intentions all one needs to engage in extraordinary wartime acts?"