I suppose this is simply the cost of still beginning my professional career: I have no time. Well, I have no time that also has energy. I waste time, but it’s usually because I’m drained more than anything else.
Over the past month and a half, I finished the Fall semester, traveled to Bemidji, MN for a week to see old friends and professors, and made it back to Chicago just in time to start two more classes for the summer semester. I needed the money, but I really hope to scrimp and save enough so that I don’t need to teach next summer. That’s not to say I regret teaching this summer. On the contrary, I spent a lot of time over my short break to re-evaluate my courses and how they are structured. By the time June 9 hit, I was eager to begin the courses to see if my changes would work. And so far, they have worked very well, at least from my perspective. I really want to strike a nice balance between a motivating rigidness and a feeling of openness that nurtures creativity and freedom of expression in class. I am trying to take the best of the lessons I have pulled from the Marine Corps, a legion of philosophers commenting on knowledge and human nature, the excellence and faults of all of my previous professors, the research and commentary of those who focus on teaching, and, of course, my own considerable teaching experience (Three years of teaching now! Can you believe it?). Every semester I try new things and am given the opportunity to learn something new (as well as making new mistakes). This semester is turning out nicely, and I feel as though, compared to last semester, I have hit my stride. The biggest issue is still managing my free time. I still “play” too much on the weekends and evening time…although it may not be a productive form of play. Instead of buying a bottle of wine and drinking the whole thing while staring out the window (as a philosopher, I’ll still count this as professional development, so back off!) I would benefit more from reading more books and getting to bed at a decent time, so I have more time to hit the gym in the morning. Still, I’m better than I was, and hopefully not as good as I will be. In short, although I often don’t feel like I’m maturing, when I compare my behavior now to, say, three years ago, the growth is plain to see, and exciting
Anyway, I am rambling now. I’ve realized over the past weeks that this blog has sort of gone astray from its original paradigm of the “natural causes” of the mind. I”ll try to get back to that in the future.
For now, an update of my reading lists:
1. I’m still plodding away at “Freedom Just Around the Corner.” During my last post, I was making decent progress at one chapter per day (roughly 30 pages). That has slowed to half a chapter per week. I am currently just past the halfway point. Still excellent, just not enough time. Things related to class, and especially philosophy and teaching, become the priority. American History will need to be patient.
2. A long time ago, I posted an excerpt from “Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750,” by Jonathan Israel, which makes the case that Spinoza was far more of a central figure in the enlightenment than he’s usually given credit for. Of course, as is well known, philosophers of his age and through Kant make virtually no reference to Spinoza. But, according to Israel, this is primarily because of two things. One, which is the obvious reason: he’s a Jew, and the European attitude of the time was strongly anti-semitic. Even the enlightened, open-minded ones were aware what affect their writings would have on popular opinion if they spoke favorably of a heretical Jew. They didn’t want their ideas to be distracted by other issues. Second, is that Spinoza’s ideas were incredibly radical on their own: necessary determinism, a stark materialism (yes, mind-body aspect, but nothing non-physical can interfere with the the physical, abolishing all supernatural, divine, and mind-interaction explanations, so it is, in scientific practice, a strict materialism), revolutionary ideas on biblical interpretation (see next entry), and an early advocate of democracy, freedom of speech, and tolerance. With these incredibly radical ideas (for the time), it is not just that he was a Jew that made him unpopular. Israel argues, by going through legions of less-famous thinkers, that the ideas and writings of Spinoza were indeed powerful and respected: they simply spread through social circles, letter-writing, and lay hidden in the paradigms of lecturing professors. Over time, Spinoza’s ideas had changed the scene of European thinkers, and by the time Hegel comes on the scene (close on the heals of Kant, who only mentioned Spinoza once, and in a very disparaging way), Hegel declares that “one must first be a Spinozist before one can be a philosopher.” Or something like that. That’s not a direct quote.
3. “How to Read the Bible,” by James Kugel. This isn’t something new-age or evangelical Christian bull. Kugel was a professor of Hebrew studies at Harvard, and this book is the result of a lifetime of scholarly research. It is a book on the history and practice of Biblical interpretation, from the ancients to the modern era. It is interesting in that (A) he shows the different ways in which the “metaphorical” vs. “literal” interpretations have played out, (B) he focuses entirely on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, (C) discusses the various unwritten assumptions that have worked on the minds of various interpretative models, (D) spends about 40 pages going over the history and these interpretive notes, before (E) spending the next 600 pages going over each story of the bible individually, and showing how different interpretive models have read each story, explaining why along the way.
One interesting surprise was an important nod to Hobbes and Spinoza, who both wrote about Biblical intepretation (ironic, considering how they are both often considered to be atheists, and both certainly believe that common notions of God have more to do with the imagination of humans than truth). I had no idea that was coming, but it was cool. Kugel notes Hobbes’ revolutionary assertion that, “It is therefore sufficiently evident that the five books of Moses were written after his time, though how long after it be not so manifest.” Kugel goes on to say, “WHile both these thinkers contributed significantly to the seventeeth century’s wrestling with the Bible, it was Spinoza who ultimately had the greater influence on biblical scholars themselves. In a few pages of his remarkable little book the Tractatus Theologo-Politicus, Spinoza outlined a new proposal for how the Bible was to be read, and this program became the marching orders of biblical scholars for the next three centuries.” These proposals can be summarized to five main points (according to Kugel, and I’m summarizing his points):
a. “Scripture is to be understood by scripture alone.” One can never interpret the bible according to traditional interpretations.
b. “In order to understand Scripture, we must understand all the peculiarities of its language and its world of ideas, and not impose on it our own, later conceptions… We should thus ‘take every precaution against the undue influence not only of our own prejudices, but of our faculty of reason.’ ”
c. We accept what the scripture means what it says–even when it disagrees with what we think it should say– except when the bible contradicts itself. For example, Moses describes God as a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24) and elsewhere as having no likeness (Spinoza’s interpretation of Exod 20:4). We WOULD accept that God resembles a consuming fire, but since it contradicts the other statement we take “fire” to be metaphorical. However, Moses also says that God is a jealous God (Exod 20:5) and nowhere contradicts that statement. Ergo…
d. The books themselves must be investigated, understood how they were put together, the lives of the author, their personality traits, etc., in order to understand what the author intended.
e. We must recognize that the prophets frequently contradict one another. We must therefore concentrate on what they do agree with.
I do not think that all of this says that Spinoza therefore believes the bible to be “true,” given everything I’ve read by and about Spinoza. However, Spinoza is frequently skeptical of how people’s minds lead us astray, and like Bacon and Descartes before him, is interested in devising methods to avoid the prejudices of our minds. Keep in mind, of course, that Spinoza is writing at the dawn of the scientific era, a few decades after Galileo’s discovery, and contemporary with Isaac Newton. That there should be methods that help us acquire objectivity, and the creation of such methods, was a central concern and attribute of the Enlightenment.
4, “Mechanics: From Aristotle to Einstein,” by Michael Crowe. Both a history and philosophy of science book, this goes through the scientific revolutions concerning theories of mechanics over the ages. Very interesting, but it involves a lot of mathematics and science, subjects in which I am very rusty. I’m reading it to supplement my readings for the Enlightenment class, but also to help me understand the philosophy of science. He describes mechanics as “that area of knowledge that treats of motions and tendencies to motions in material bodies. Practitioners of this form of mechanics deal with such topics as how or why falling bodies or thrown baseballs or launched rockets move as they do, or cease moving.” (he also gives the ‘common’ definition concerning machines, for which the practitioner is a mechanic, not a scientist or philosopher, but notes that is not the subject of this book, of course). Interesting, but I feel it is too narrow. I’d like to explore this later (since I really need to get back to work), but when Hobbes and Spinoza breakdown emotions into a very small set of distinct emotional forces (appetite and aversion, coupled with an idea, for example), the anatomy of emotions very much seems to capture something essential to mechanics. Push and pull, coupled with a physical body, for example.
5. Finally, I’m reading Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series, a classic of sci-fi. It’s fun. It’s smart, but I refuse to say anything else about it. Some forms of fun should just be fun without thought.
Gosh dernit. Now I’m talking about how it’s sometimes important to not talk about things. Bye.
Natural Causes 