“Arena culture and philosophy: Transcendent whooshing up” plus 1 more |
| Arena culture and philosophy: Transcendent whooshing up Posted: 31 Dec 2010 11:14 PM PST Published: Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011 12:00 a.m. MST Academic life encourages specialization and technical thinking, and, oddly, there are few fields in which this is more true than philosophy. The discipline that should be of interest to everybody is often the most impenetrable. But occasionally brave philosophers do leap out of their professional lanes and illuminate things for the wider public. Hubert Dreyfus of Berkeley and Sean Dorrance Kelly of Harvard have just done this with their new book, "All Things Shining." They take a smart, sweeping run through the history of Western philosophy. But their book is important for the way it illuminates life today and for the controversial advice it offers on how to live. Dreyfus and Kelly start with Vico's old idea that each age has its own lens through which people see the world. In the Middle Ages, for example, "people could not help but experience themselves as determined or created by God." They assumed that God's plans encompassed their lives the way we assume the laws of physics do. For the past hundred years or so, we have lived in a secular age. That does not mean that people aren't religious. It means there is no shared set of values we all absorb as preconscious assumptions. In our world, individuals have to find or create their own meaning. This, Dreyfus and Kelly argue, has led to a pervasive sadness. Individuals are usually not capable of creating their own lives from the ground up. So modern life is marked by frequent feelings of indecision and anxiety. People often lack the foundations upon which to make the most important choices. Dreyfus and Kelly suffer from the usual Cambridge/Berkeley parochialism. They assume that nobody believes in eternal truth anymore. They write as if all of America's moral quandaries are best expressed by the novelist David Foster Wallace. But they are on to something important when they describe the way — far more than in past ages — sports has risen up to fill a spiritual void. Spiritually unmoored, many people nonetheless experience intense elevation during the magical moments that sport often affords. Dreyfus and Kelly mention the mood that swept through the crowd at Yankee Stadium when Lou Gehrig delivered his "Luckiest Man Alive" speech, or the mood that swept through Wimbledon as Roger Federer completed one of his greatest matches. The most real things in life, they write, well up and take us over. They call this experience "whooshing up." We get whooshed up at a sports arena, at a political rally or even at magical moments while woodworking or walking through nature. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Fresno State profs hope to encourage civil discourse Posted: 31 Dec 2010 04:46 PM PST Similar stories:
Two members of the philosophy department at California State University, Fresno, have been awarded a $100,000 research grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to promote civil discourse on religion and religious diversity in the central San Joaquin Valley. Vincent F. Biondo, assistant professor of Western Religious Traditions, and Andrew Fiala, chairman of the philosophy department and director of Fresno State's Ethics Center, were named in 2011-13 grants for projects involving ethics, religion and civil discourse. Biondo and Fiala plan to present a conference in September for religious leaders and teachers on how to civilly talk about religion in public schools. A workshop for teachers on how to implement curriculum on religion in schools is planned in the summer of 2012. Both events also are geared to humanities scholars from throughout California. The project's goal is to educate and learn from religious leaders and teachers and to build partnerships among humanities scholars. Biondo and Fiala say they want to see the partnerships lead to the formation of scholarships for interfaith and inter-religious organizations and the development of a humanities course on "Religion in California." "We need to know how to work together to improve life in the Valley," Biondo says. The professors also plan a book for teaching about religious diversity. Fiala wrote a 2007 book -- "What Would Jesus Really Do?" -- that challenges readers to take Jesus' moral teachings and supplement them with contemporary ethical writings on current situations to get their answers. Biondo served six months as a Fulbright Scholar in Wales in 2009. He interviewed mainly Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders to better understand how interfaith cooperation plays a role in the prevention of urban violence. Fresno State's College of Arts and Humanities, the Ethics Center and the School of Education also will help present the conference and workshop. The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a total of $23 million for projects. It was founded in 1965 as an independent agency to support research and learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of humanities. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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