The summer semester closes this week, and as always I believe it is prudent to reflect on my original plan, how well it was maintained, whether or not it was successful, and what changes I will make for the Fall semester.
Overall, I am very happy with the Summer Semester. At the end of Spring, I was troubled by the organization and record keeping methods I was currently using, and worked hard to change it for the summer. This is “behind the scenes” and I do not know if a student enrolled in both my spring and summer classes could tell the difference. However, I certainly could. I was in near panic mode for the last six weeks of Spring, where panic did not touch me in the summer. Of course, the summer semester is only half as long as the spring, and maybe that has something to do with it as well. Nevertheless, I will continue using my summer methods for grade keeping, attendance, and other record keeping.
But that is the boring stuff, the stuff that is only a tool for my higher goals. My higher goals are to get students to think more critically about their own views, to expose them to the alternate and sophisticated views of great philosophers, to engage them in conversation and improve their conversational skills, to make them better critical readers of difficult texts, and better presenters of their own ideas through written argumentative essays. To re-examine methods of thinking and be able to frame a question or problem which they intend to solve: the essence of self-directed thinking. Finally, it is to instill a tolerance of ambiguity, to break the habit of rushing to answers too quickly, and be a little bit more comfortable with the irritating sensation of doubt.
Did I achieve these goals? Did my students achieve these goals?
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I believe so. I believe that those students who participated, read the text, were willing to listen and trust in me, and
I believe that I was more successful in this project in my Introduction to Philosophy class than my Philosophy of Religion class. It is strange: the philosophy of religion is what originally compelled me into philosophy. I thought a lot about it, and had some of my most profound experiences of my late teens and early twenties in the context of religious experiences. And so I have always felt suitably equipped to show how fascinating these texts can be. Yet, something about these texts do not inspire me in the same way that the Introduction to Philosophy texts inspire me. There are some Philosophy of Religion (PoR) texts that are unparalleled in my love for them: sections from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling or Concluding Unscientific Postscript nearly move me to tears, and I can deliver it with meaning and passion in class. I swear I saw four or five students wiping tears from their eyes when I spoke about Kierkegaard’s notion of faith last week. And William James “Will to Believe” essay will always be near the top of my favorite essays of all time. Pascal’s “Wager” does not stimulate me, but it once did, and I can deliver it as though it still did. There were some contemporary analytical pieces that got me as well, but it is here where things became more spotty. Sometimes, I can simply find no deep value in these essays. They are too technical and too tangential. If this were a class preparing future scholars of philosophy, then I would happily include these and perhaps include more. But that is not my audience. My audience is concerned with the most human concerns regarding religion: what does it mean to me and my relationship to that higher entity. And concerning religion (and philosophy in general when dealt with to a general audience) that is a completely adequate and appropriate concern. I want to
My Introduction to Philosophy class can still be fine-tuned, but given its present mission, I am almost completely satisfied with the texts we use. I dallied too long on issues of human nature and ethics at the beginning of the semester: they are highly related topics, and focusing on them too long means we never had the chance to plunge into metaphysics, aesthetics, and political philosophy, all of which I believe to be important. Instead, we entered into Epistemology around week 5 and stayed there. The epistemology is the center of that class because it teaches a person how to think, if approached in the right way. I began with human nature and ethics, because these are more compelling subjects for most people (discussing how to act is far less subtle than discussing how to think) and so it gains the students’ interest and trust early in the semester. It also provides the raw material, or the common thinking project, that is very useful when we discuss epistemology: since epistemology is about thinking, it is useful to apply it to a thought-project that we have engaged in. Because it is useful, it is also more compelling. But here, epistemology is used in hindsight, and so I like to have stuff after the epistemology section so we know how to apply this while we are doing the reading on other topics. Especially when we get into political philosophy, because it is another form of practical philosophy and often builds on the previously covered topics of human nature and ethics, the student is going in a sort of productive circle throughout the semester and it creates a simulation of productive rumination, which is an incredibly difficult thing to teach, and which few people are in the habit of doing. So, if anything went wrong, it was that I took my time too much. This is a difficult thing to manage in the summer semester because of the time crunch, but nevertheless something that needs to be improved.
When planning for this semester, it was actually the Philosophy of Religion course into which I put more thought and planning. And although I picked topics that I thought would fit together, when I was in the thick of the semester, the connections did not manifest themselves like I had intended. My plan followed the following map:
Week 1: Introduction, Religious Experience: Focused primarily on student opinion and experience, but supported by Socratic dialog and a few light essays. The intent here is to immediately get students’ opinions on the floor by having them relate that material which is the whole purpose of the philosophy of religion. By getting some idea of what other people believe, and by articulating what the self believes, we now have something to think critically about.
Week 2: Religious Diversity. Deals with the problem of multiple religions claiming authority on truth. This is both an academic and practical problem. It is practical because many of us have faced religious bigotry and dogmatism, and at the same time, we often feel compelled to believe in something. Many of my city students are compelled to take a relativistic stance, because with that it is easier to navigate differences of opinion in close communities (well, that is my theory on why my students are usually relativistic). Because of the emotionally charged subject, students are more compelled to invest effort into the academic essays, which invariably gives them practice on reading difficult essays later, even if those essays are not as compelling. Finally, getting the mental equipment on these theories makes it much easier to deal with any religious conflict that might arise between students. Instead of just saying “knock it off!” I can simply go back to the rational argument provided by one of our essayists, thus showing the utility of philosophy. Of course, that doesn’t always work!
Week 3: Divine Attributes: I avoid the questions of “Is there a God?” because frankly, the cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments aren’t compelling to enough students. This might be a mistake on my part, but it’s something that I still need to think about. With Divine Attributes, however, we are dealing with the question of “What would God or the higher power be?” The idea is that this sets down the ground work for further discussions about God throughout the rest of the semester. We can’t really dig our teeth into the question of, “what sort of morality would God create,” before we ask the question, “Is God an all-loving being, and if so, what does that mean?” and “Does God know what we are going to do before we do it?” However, upon reflection, this may have been the first topic that we sped through too quickly, thereby giving us an inadequate knowledge of God’s potential attributes. One week of condensed classes proved to be insufficient time for this. Given the same amount of time in a regular semester (two and a half weeks) I can assign more texts to read and it gives us more time to ruminate. But I did not adjust correctly for the summer semester.
Week 4: Divine Ethics: This is timed to be the topic for the second of three argumentative essays. It is also placed because it is useful to think of Ethics before examining the Problem of Evil, and it is necessary to discuss Divine Attributes before the Problem of Evil. And so we dealt with this topic, but the essays in our book just did not do it for me, or for my students, I believe. I need to really re-examine which essays I use for this unit. Upon reflection, this section may have changed the tone of the class the most. Because the Attributes section was not as robust as it needed to be, and because I had to cut out Evil in the interest of time, Ethics did not serve the purpose or fit in like I originally intended it to.
Week 5: The Problem of Evil: This is a very compelling problem, with a lot of interesting answers. The problem is classic, and basically states: if God is all loving, all powerful, and all knowing, how there be evil in the world? After all, God would want to protect God’s creations, would have the power to protect God’s creations, and would always be aware of when God’s creations were in trouble. Students often believe that the answer is obvious: either Free-Will solves the the problem, or the problem shows that this kind of God doesn’t exist. However, neither answer really satisfies when examined critically. Because of the fact that (A) students believe the answer to be obvious, (B) there is a very clear contention in every class, and (C) there are a number of ways in which the problem can be phrased, answered, and critiqued, the problem has the opportunity for really showing the power of philosophy to explore questions and to raise doubt. Sure, this opportunity arises in earlier topics as well, but I feel like this does it better. Or maybe I’m biased.
Week 6 and 7: Faith: I believe this section was a great victory this semester This presents a radical shift in topic that is not really building on the previous three units. However, the essays here are characteristically difficult, profound, and emotional. It is perhaps the climax of the semester. I believe, however, that by working on the myriad of other subjects before hand, and getting comfortable and proficient in the philosophical method of approaching problems, really lets this section shine. Reading Kierkegaard is just not possible before one has an understanding of how philosophers think and use hypotheticals to make points. Kierkegaard does not often write in the style of most philosophers, and his essays are infused with irony. But by now, that should be the only new rhetorical device that students need to deal with. Meanwhile, the exceptionally emotional nature of this subject really cannot be handled well in a philosophy class before the students have tempered their emotional beliefs about religion with the rational criticism practiced in earlier essays.
Week 8: Immortality. My original intent was to leave this semester discussing something that is appropriate for the end of things: survival after death. It is a melancholy subject that is prone to induce reflective thinking, but nevertheless an apt way to close a semester. However, for some reason that I cannot now recall, I decided a few weeks ago that it would be better to include a section on how language affects our ways of thinking. I think my belief at the time was that it would be a subject that is not only provocative in itself, but that would also help us think more about how we use language in our essays. However, again, the essays that we used were simply not as compelling as I thought they would be. It is something that I have come to learn: an essay can be fascinating to me when I’m reading it to myself, but I can’t always predict whether or not it will be compelling to the students too. Philosophy is not a strictly practical class, and so it doesn’t matter to me whether they learn about the religious use of language or the issues related to immortality: what matter to me as that they are thinking well. And the the more compelling an essay is, the more inclined they are to devote energy into their thinking. Anyway, I think there were some interesting ideas presented in the language essays, but perhaps they would serve better if presented earlier in the semester, and only given a day’s or two’s attention.
After reflecting back on my original plan, I have to admit that I still really like it. The problem, I believe, comes in changing some of the text. I believe that many students still got a lot from the course, because many of them went out of their way to tell me so. Heck, I even got a couple of thank you letters. But I believe the class could even be better. I will spend as much time as I can afford in August considering texts for these sections and try a similar overall plan again this fall, where I will be teaching two Philosophy of Religion classes and have a much better opportunity to observe and experiment.
Natural Causes 