RWE 🎂🎊🎈

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Bruce Feiler

 His substack post about his Saturday convocation address at MTSU, and my note about it…

For millions of families around the world, back to school is a time of enormous transition. For those just starting college, the transition is particularly momentous, as students and parents alike are separating from one another, shedding lifelong habits, and experimenting with new ones.

Last week I experienced this transition from both ends. On Monday, my wife, Linda, and I dropped our identical twin daughters off at college [see photo below]. Four days later, I was invited to give the Convocation Address at Middle Tennessee State University outside Nashville, where all 3200 incoming members of the first-year class were assigned to read my book, Life Is in the Transitions...

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Bruce’s convocation address at my school Saturday conveyed great advice. His book “Life is in the Transitions” borrows its title from William James (who probably borrowed the thought from Emerson, “shooting a gulf, darting to an aim” etc.)… I’ll reinforce his message with my MTSU Philosophy students today: talk to people who you don’t agree with, try to actually hear what they say before responding. Also: go to the ballet (assuming you’re not into it… if you are, go to the ballgame). And I may regret it, but I’ll also ask the 1st year students how many actually read the book. Thanks for coming to Murfreesboro, Bruce.

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Socrates in print

He famously refused to write anything down, mistrusting the blunt insensitivity of the written word to nuance and facial expression (or perhaps he was just a bit lazy). But I had a chat with him.

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Opening Day, Fall semester ’23

Yet another one! I always love the first class of the semester, almost as much as I love the first game of the baseball season. No errors have yet been committed, no losses registered, no rainouts or cancellations.

I always try to find something a little different to say on Opening Day, while recalling some favorite lines from before. This time I note what Robert Frost said about education…

And what the late Gary Gutting of Notre Dame said in response to the question What is college for?

Colleges and universities have no point if we do not value the knowledge and understanding to which their faculties are dedicated.

This has important consequences for how we regard what goes on in college classrooms.  Teachers need to see themselves as, first of all, intellectuals, dedicated to understanding poetry, history, human psychology, physics, biology — or whatever is the focus of their discipline.  But they also need to realize that this dedication expresses not just their idiosyncratic interest in certain questions but a conviction that those questions have general human significance, even apart from immediately practical applications.  This is why a discipline requires not just research but also teaching.  Non-experts need access to what experts have learned, and experts need to make sure that their research remains in contact with general human concerns. The classroom is the primary locus of such contact.

Students, in turn, need to recognize that their college education is above all a matter of opening themselves up to new dimensions of knowledge and understanding.  Teaching is not a matter of (as we too often say) “ making a subject (poetry, physics, philosophy) interesting” to students but of students coming to see how such subjects are intrinsically interesting.  It is more a matter of students moving beyond their interests than of teachers fitting their subjects to interests that students already have.   Good teaching does not make a course’s subject more interesting; it gives the students more interests — and so makes them more interesting.

Students readily accept the alleged wisdom that their most important learning at college takes place outside the classroom.  Many faculty members — thinking of their labs, libraries or studies — would agree.  But the truth is that, for both students and faculty members, the classroom is precisely where the most important learning occurs. Gary Gutting, The Stone 12.14.11

Last time, Jan ’23… 

“… Universities are factories of human knowledge. They’re also monuments to individual ignorance. We know an incredible amount, but I know only a tiny bit. College puts students in classrooms with researchers who are acutely aware of all they don’t know. Professors have a reputation for arrogance, but a humble awareness of the limits of knowledge is their first step toward discovering a little more.

To overcome careerism and knowingness and instill in students a desire to learn, schools and parents need to convince students (and perhaps themselves) that college has more to offer than job training. You’re a worker for only part of your life; you’re a human being, a creature with a powerful brain, throughout it…” —Jonathan Malesic

The time before, Aug ’22…

A new dawn is breaking on us CoPhilosophers… “Believing in philosophy myself devoutly, and believing also that a kind of new dawn is breaking upon us philosophers, I feel impelled, per fas aut nefas, to try to impart to you some news of the situation…” –WJ, Pragmatism

What I mean when I call myself an Epicurean happiness philosopher…

Epictetus’s Opening Day meditation: “Only begin“…

Every semester should begin with eagerness and zest…

A big message we’ll ponder this semester, espoused one way or another by all true philosophers, is: think for yourself… but not by yourself. We’re here to collaborate, communicate, talk and listen. We’re all individuals…

And we’re all a lot like Douglas Adams’s* whale…

So, shall we hit the ground running? And not say, like that jaded bowl of petunias, “Oh no, not again!”

*Also, speaking of HHGTG: “42” is not the answer to the ultimate question of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. But it is the uniform number of a great and courageous athlete. Extra credit to the first student in each section who can name him. 

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Another semester begins

One of these years I’ll greet Opening Day with a weary “not again”…but not this year. I still look forward to putting on that old Day 1 necktie and greeting the new kids. Class of ’27, born c.’05!

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“find some positive interest…”-Dewey

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“The hard-drinker who keeps thinking of not drinking is doing what he can to initiate the acts which lead to drinking. He is starting with the stimulus to his habit. To succeed he must find some positive interest or line of action which will inhibit the drinking series and which by instituting another course of action will bring him to his desired end. In short, the man’s true aim is to discover some course of action, having nothing to do with the habit of drink or standing erect, which will take him where he wants to go.”

“Human Nature and Conduct An introduction to social psychology” by John Dewey: https://a.co/2liQyO6

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A happy atheist

“I want to show people, look, the magic of life as evolved, that’s thrilling!" says philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. “You don’t need miracles.”

"…In his new memoir, I’ve Been Thinking, Dennett, a professor emeritus at Tufts University and author of multiple books for popular audiences, traces the development of his worldview, which he is keen to point out is no less full of awe or gratitude than that of those more inclined to the supernatural. 'I want people to see what a meaningful, happy life I’ve had with these beliefs,” says Dennett, who is 81. “I don’t need mystery…'” nyt

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The Glories of Wilderness

“It’s a spiritual experience to hike through the cathedral of wilderness, whether alone or with a family member or friend; the mountains and rivers generate a quasi-religious awe and put us humans in our place. I understand Spinoza best not in the library but in the mountains.”

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Hungry Mosquitoes, Irritable Bears and the Glories of Wilderness

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John Dewey

A close re-reading of “Human Nature and Conduct” has me reconsidering my distaste for his stolid style, and reaffirming my respect for his solid substance.

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John Lachs

He retired at 87, sooner than he wanted. But he’s still professing, and his legacy will endure.

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