As some of you will remember, back in the spring of 2005, I churned out five incomplete papers and finished the semi-final draft of a thesis. All my papers have now been graded (though I'm waiting on the final results on one of them). And today, I got word via email from the professor who stepped into the place vacated by my original thesis supervisor about the thesis:
Dear Clifton,I write with what I hope is the satisfying news that Dr ______ and I agree that your thesis satisfies [the seminary's] expectations relative to an MTS -- provided you clean up some copy-editorial loose ends.
My friend, Tripp sent me gracious congratulations and lamented his own slow progress on his thesis. To which I replied:
You, too, can take six years, just like me, to get 'er done.How, you ask, can I get an MTS program and thesis done in six years? Well, I tell you, it wasn't easy. It took a lot more goofing off than I thought. Really excruciating at times. Once I had to play thirty straight games of computer solitaire.
But I tell you this. I gotta give a shout out tuh thuh Lor'! I can do all things through him that strengtheneth me. It was all my peeps out there, prayin' it up to the Lord that got me through.
If I'm not mistaken, Tripp blew coffee out his nose at that.
Well, last night's class went well. It was overshadowed somewhat by the realization that the bookstore got one of my books--in my opinion the most important one--wrong. Instead of Joe Sachs' translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, they ordered the Sir David Ross translation. Which, if the bookstore is going to make a mistake, at least it provided a reputable alternative. But . . . Sir David's translations still perpetuates the problem of Latinate Aristotelianism, something Sachs' translation helps us to avoid. So, I'm making inquiries.
My talk on philosophy as a way of life went well, I suppose. My interpretation of the reactions of the students ranged from interested to mildly curious to incomprehension. That said, I did not sense that I had lost any of the class members' attention. It was, however, a big mistake to try to talk from a manuscript instead of from notes or memory (like I normally do). It did get a bit preachy, and toward the end I abandoned the text.
One interesting note: even though I expressly told them that none of the material I would be sharing with them would find its way to a quiz, and that they should be free to simply listen or to listen and take notes as they wished, nearly all of them took notes, and I got several clarificatory questions throughout the lecture.
Overall, though, I'm very pleased with it, and will revise it into note form. It may become my stock first day of class lecture for intro to philosophy and for ethics. (I should do it for my business ethics class just to confuse the puddin' out of 'em.)
Last night's class went well. I have to confess: I know I came off as cranky on going over the syllabus policy on grades and on academic integrity. But hopefully my delicious wit and stories about my daughters won them over. And there seemed some good attention and responsiveness to the lecture. It was a full class. If I recall correctly, I only had two absences, and it's possible that both those absences will show next week and/or I'll have late enrollees to take their place. Multiply each quiz and paper by 40. *sigh*
Tonight is my ethics class. I'm really happy with the changes I made in the course last semester and my efforts to sharpen things up this term. We'll still use the same basic texts, but I'm really looking forward to it. In fact, tonight I'll give them the "philosophy as a way of life" lecture (click on the "Continue reading . . . " link). It will probably be a lot different than what they're used to. I expect to be met with gen Y/millennial cynicism (there might even be some gen X/boomer cynicism in there)--at least initially. But if I keep the theme going all term, I think I can reasonably hope for good results at the end of term.
I'll let you know how it goes.
(And by the way, if the first 3/4 of the following lecture looks familiar to some of my readers, it should: I cribbed it from my posts this summer on philosophia as a way of life.)
Lecture: Philosophy as a Way of Life
(Instructor: Clifton D. Healy)
Philosophy is normally the English word that translates the Greek philosophia, which itself means "love of wisdom," or, better in this context, "friendship with wisdom." I have avoided using "philosophy," using instead the (transliterated) Greek equivalent, philosophia so as to also avoid the academic and professionalized connotations that latch on to "philosophy." For present day understandings of philosophy are generally those exhibited by first year undergraduates on the completion of their intro course: a bunch of opposing arguments on a whole lot of topics resulting in no definitive answer to questions that are largely irrelevant to my daily life.
But philosophia in the ancient world was something else altogether. There were, of course, competing arguments between and among the various schools on various topics. But all the schools shared at least the choice of a way of life centered around the pursuit of wisdom for the purpose of the transformation of the soul. Platonists might posit reality as the realm of ideas, while Epicureans might hold a naturalistic monism, but both held that one's beliefs and actions should be conformed to these realities. Aristotelians might posit a life of virtue in pursuit of the ultimate end of eudaimonia (i.e., happiness, or human flourishing, well-being), while Stoics might adhere to a vision of life in which the pursuit of quietude of soul, ataraxia, was gained by a ruthless search for conformity of the self to reality without illusions, but both sought a transformation of the soul. Though the Stoic conception of the Logos differed from the Platonic idea of the Good, they shared the conviction that there was an ordered principle pervasive through the cosmos. To be sure, there were convictions and arguments that put one at odds with one's own school. One could not hold to atomistic monism and claim to be a faithful Aristotelian, nor could one be convinced of and argue for Platonic ideas and be a Pyrrhonian skeptic. Some beliefs and practices put one at odds with one's school and called into question one's commitments. Even so, the various schools had their commitments attendant upon the choice to become a disciple of a particular school.
Broadly speaking, then, the ancient philosophiai shared these basic components: A pre-reflective choice for a particular way of life embodied in a particular school; a community engaged in that particular way of life which formed the fundamental institution of that philosophia; an orientation to a singular principle which ordered the cosmos (a Logos-orientation); the practice of dialogue, a body of shared doctrines, and, usually, a set of more or less standard texts that played a role supplementary to the practice of dialogue and the body of shared doctrine; and the search for the transformation of the soul through the practice of "soulish exercises" (or askeses) that furthered the communal structures and practices.
A potential Aristotelian disciple, for example, would happen by chance one day to go by the Lyceum and overhear a lecture or dialogue open to the public. There he would find a community of juniors and seniors (or disciples and masters) engaged in conversation over some matter of consideration--say the nature of pleasure. One might argue Speusippus' viewpoint, another Empedocles', but the community might settle on a position that rejects them both. These conversations would be based on, or perhaps captured in, a set of lecture notes written by Aristotle or another one of the community. But these texts, though later held in importance, were not the singular authority in the school, but shared in the authority of the community's own gathered deliberations.
The would-be disciple might first find himself somewhat lost among all the arguments, questions and counter-arguments, but would be attracted by the way of life exhibited by the community and reflected in their gathered search for wisdom. He would quickly see that the community was oriented around one particular principle of reality, and together engaged in communal and personal practices that both reinforced and furthered the first principles upon which community life was based and which also resulted in the personal transformation of the soul. These considerations would not at first be systematically ordered in the potential disciple's mind such that he objectively considered all these things and measured them against rival schools. Rather, he would find himself attracted to the way of life presented to him, choose to enter that way of life, and would subsequent to that choice reflectively order these considerations in his own mind. It was only from the place of conviction, not the nowhere of unaligned objectivity, that he would be able later to evaluate competing schools, but, even more importantly, would be able to engage reality in such a way so as to transform his soul. That is to say, the ancient philosopher knew that reality could not be engaged apart from pre-reflective convictions.
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When looking at the six historical schools of philosophy in antiquity--Platonism, Aristotelianism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism--one is quite impressed with the absence of a particular mental condition that one takes for granted today. Becoming a disciple of one or another of these ancient schools was not a matter of first calmly, rationally and unbiasedly weighing the merits of all of them and then settling on that one which had the most objectively rational claim to truth. Rather, becoming a disciple of one or another of these schools entailed first an existential choice, following which one's mind viewed reality through the philosophic lenses of one's respective school. Certainly each school argued, on the basis of reason and truth, for its superiority over the others. Certainly a disciple might become an adherent of one school, only to leave it later for another, or even several others, as did St. Justin the Philosopher (namely, Stoicism, Aristotelianism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism; cf. The Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 2). And just as certainly, one became a disciple, in part, on the basis of good reasons. But this quest for the view from nowhere, absent all presuppositions and preconceptions, was not part of the ancient disciple's mental framework. Rather, knowing that he came with presuppositions and preconceptions, the disciple sought to be transformed in his thinking and living by the way of life of a particular school so that he might more surely and more completely unite himself with wisdom. In other words, the ancient disciple came to a school not to judge it as true or not, but to first learn from it. If that school's way of life "lived well" for the disciple, he was apt to continue with it. If, for whatever reason, a particular way of life did not live well, or another beckoned more winsomely, a disciple would leave it for another, for that more beautiful way of life.
For the "friend of wisdom," becoming a disciple of a particular philosophia naturally and logically entailed transformation of the soul and the rigorous asketical demands a particular philosophia made on one's own choices and behaviors. It was not a matter of seeking comfort or confirmation of one's present way of living. The disciple intuitively, if not consciously, grasped that if he had the truth, if wisdom was his, then he wouldn't be seeking out this particular philosophia. Rather, conscious of his own lack of wisdom, conscious of his need of inner transformation, the philosophic disciple came to the Academy, or the Lyceum, or the Garden, or the Stoa, ready not to judge but to listen, ready not to demand but to submit to demand, ready to find not the fulfillment of personal desires but the remaking from the inside-out that wisdom, Sophia, brought to those ready to learn and live.
The ancient disciple knew, too, that even if the greatest happiness, as in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics X.7, was in the act of intellectual contemplation, of union with the divine intellect, such happiness was gained by way of rigorous and life-long askeses, soulish disciplines that made one ever more capable of both receiving wisdom and maintaining the transformation that wisdom brought. What were these askeses, these disciplines of the soul, differed from school to school. But each was a daily and lifelong practice that brought home the principle dogmas of the particular school in such a way that one's behavior and thinking were united in the transforming center of wisdom. For Aristotle, this was the habitual practice of the virtues and of close attention to reality. For the Stoics this was the daily practice of divesting oneself of illusion so as to conform oneself with that which is (as can been seen in the journaling left to us in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations). For the Platonists and Pythagoreans it was a paedegogy, inculcated from youth, that trained body for death and the soul for union with the One, or the Good, in the contemplation of the One, or number. And so forth.
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The transmission of a philosophia from one generation to the next was, of necessity, fundamentally personal. One did not need to study texts to gather the requisite knowledge on how to live one's philosophia, one just simply imitated one's teacher or master. The genuine transmission of the tradition of a philosophia was not accomplished by exegesis, but by dialogue and common life. Very few of the originators of various schools left any substantive writings. Socrates did not. We have nothing Zeno wrote initiating Stoicism. So, too, for Pyrrho of Ellis. If the tradition of a philosophia was the whole of a way of living, including beliefs and the understanding of sacred texts, then the transmission of that tradition could have only taken place personally in an unbroken, and thus living, chain of relation.
The ancient Hellenic philosophiai understood this, and this is why Plato's Academy, as a primary example, was in existence for more than a millennium (from 387 B.C. until A.D. 529 when Justinian closed down the schools). The leadership of the Academy--aside from practical matters such as organization and funding--was passed down personally (though voted on, it seems, by the members of the Academy): from Plato to his nephew Speusipus (which some speculate was the reason for Aristotle opening his own school in the Lyceum) to Xenocrates and so forth. Indeed, even though the beliefs and doctrines of the Academy changed over that millennium (thus reflected into the various "eras" of the Academy: Old, Middle and New), the continuity from Plato to A.D. 529 was maintained via the personal way of life passed down from one generation of Socrates' disciples to the next. In fact, Plato's followers, such as Aristotle, and others, have made references to Plato's teachings such that there seems to have been not only Plato's published works but certain so-called "unwritten doctrines" that one would know only from personal contact with Plato and his school. This is bolstered by the reference in the Seventh Letter (341c), which is generally thought to have been penned by Plato himself, though not all scholars agree on this, where he states,
There is no writing of mine about these matters [which Plato taught Dion], nor will there ever be one. For this knowledge is not something that can be put into words like other sciences; but after long-continued intercourse between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject, suddenly, like light flashing forth when a fire is kindled, it is born in the soul and straightway nourishes itself. [tr. by Glenn R. Morrow, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. by John M. Cooper, (Hackett: 1997)]
Admittedly, the notion of Plato's unwritten doctrines is viewed askance by modern scholarship, in part because it seems "unwritten doctrines" is a phrase pregnant enough to generate dozens of theories. But that this was a fairly broad belief in the ancient world is likewise true. Still, even if various theories regarding Plato's unwritten doctrines founder, the notion of personal transmission of a philosophia remains. In other words, the philosophia Plato had received from his teacher, Socrates, could not be passed on merely in texts. It could only be done so personally, in the teacher-student relationship. Not that there weren't texts. There most definitely were. But even Plato's texts are dialogues, not treatises, in which the various characters personally spur one another toward wisdom and embody this as a way of life.
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You may have taken this class simply to fulfill a course requirement. You may have taken this class because it was the least bad of your available options. More positively, you may have taken this course because you have an interest in the subject matter specifically or a curiosity about philosophy more generally. You may not have taken this course realizing that you would be forced to examine your own life. This is, after all, a college course, not a tent revival or the taping of a Dr. Phil show. We don't do that sort of thing here. No, we're simply here to get a particular grade so we can get our degree and get on with our real life after we graduate. We only read these dusty, musty old dead thinkers' books because it's required to get the sort of grade we want (and if we can still get that grade by not reading any of the books, so much the better!).
You might very well still succeed in keeping this class on that level. But I will do my best to disabuse you of that simplistic and, ultimately, subhuman way of looking at yourself. And looking squarely at yourself is what I'm going to do my best to foster. It is my intent that by encountering the authors and ideas that we will read and read about, and through our discussing these things together in this class, that minimally you will leave my class feeling restless about the current state of your life, but hopefully also with the intense curiosity to learn more, to discover what's really real, and to conform your life to that ultimate reality.
That sounds rather preachy, I know. Relax. We won't have an altar call, we won't require a profession of any pillars of faith, nor will we be ordering song books. No, I simply hope to change the direction of your gaze from the dancing shadows on the cave wall to the dimly perceived light causing those shadows. That is to say, I want to turn your heads. From there, it is my conviction that, the light will be enough to draw your gaze, and having captured your attention, such light will inform and transform your soul.
Ours is a society full of those dancing shadows. We are a society of shallow individuals. We talk about clothes for the body, but we do not talk about disciplines for the soul. We talk about bling, but we do not talk about light. We talk about "living the good life" but fail to think very hard about what that good life is and about whether our conception of the good life is merely an illusion, a dancing shadow. We talk about being our own man or woman, but we have very little idea even what it means to be human. Our society's attention is almost exclusively focused on the body. We rarely talk about the soul. And when we do, it is shallow and mostly useless salon chatter.
In this class you will be forced--unless I am a very poor instructor--to question nearly everything our society says. I hope even to force you to confront your own personal beliefs. You will, in your struggle to understand the thinkers we will confront, learn to recognize what is illusion and shadow, even if we will not come to a final definition of what is light and real. And that is the first step toward wisdom. Socrates was accounted by the Oracle at Delphi as the wisest of men. Not because he knew more than any other man about reality. Rather he was wisest of all because he knew that he was ignorant. By removing illusion and shadow we can begin to recognize we don't know very much. And finally realizing our ignorance, we can become receptive to true Sophia, true Wisdom.
So, if we can learn to discover our own ignorance, if we can learn to pay attention, to be fully conscious human beings, to be receptive to true Wisdom, we will have gone a long way to learning what it means to be human. And in a sociopolitical world of consumption, domination, automation, and soullessness, that is no small thing at all.
Today the Spring 2006 semester starts officially for me at 7:00pm as I open up with my class on "being human" (the class formerly known as "introduction to philosophy"--I still call it my "120" class when it is now a 180 level class). Tonight we'll go over the syllabus. I'll answer questions and attempt to be charming. Then we dive into chapter one of Stevenson and Haberman's Ten Theories on Human Nature, on Confucianism. We'll still probably not take the entire allotted time and will dismiss before 9:30. I'll be missing having dinner with my wife and daughters, and putting the girls to bed. *Sigh* Sixteen more Wednesday's of such missing out.
Tomorrow night it's my ethics class, which will look a heckuva lot like last semester's ethics class, though taken at a much more leisurely sixteen-week pace, instead of eight. Hopefully I'll have ironed out most of the wrinkles. (And that's another sixteen Thursday nights of missing out on dinner and bedtime.)
And then next Monday I begin yet another semester of teaching logic. Whee. Whoopie. I decided to try to get myself excited about it by revising the syllabus and cutting out some chapters. But once the excitement wore off, I realized I'd have to write three more lectures than I otherwise would have. *Sigh* redux. (And let's add yet another sixteen Monday nights of missing dinner and bedtimes. That's a bit more than a month and a half all told. That's a bunch of missing dinners and bedtimes.)
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On another front--i.e., my dissertation proposal--I've taken a much more focused and concerted stance toward gettin' thuh dern thing dun!
Back in the spring (March-May to be exact), I hunkered down and cranked out five incomplete papers and one incomplete master's thesis. (The quality was not quite up to respectable standards--though I got a surprising B+ on my Hegel paper, and another surprising A for my directed reading on ancient skepticism.) Very minimal planning went into that multi-project effort. I had a deadline (a fluid due-date for Delaina's birth), and a simple daily method (rise at 3am and type till Sofie gets up). In the end I wrote the better part of more than a hundred pages, and got everything done and turned in before Anna even had hints of labor.
Stoked by my success, I thought that it would be a relatively simple task (if nonetheless filled with hard work) to repeat those efforts this time on my dissertation proposal. I considered that the length of the proposal couldn't be any longer than one of my seminar papers. It would simply be a matter of crafting a good proposal and discussing it with the two professors I had in mind (one of whom would end up chairing my dissertation committe).
Funny how having an infant daughter changes the dynamics of one's early mornings! Sofie continued to sleep to five-thirty or six, but a newborn doesn't accomplish that trick. Sleep deprivation really put the kibbosh on my repeating the successful methods of the spring. End result: no dissertation proposal written; no ABD designation.
So I have rediscovered my daily planner. My planner has been with me since the spring of 1994 when I began working as a territorial sales rep for MCI's Small Business group. Me and door-to-door business sales were not in any way shape or form a match (gee ya think?), so MCI and I parted ways. But I kept the planner.
Unfortunately, my disciplined use of that planner has waxed and waned over the last decade. As a local church minister and grad student, for about two years it was my anchor. But after leaving the local church, I hit a tough spot (emotionally, spiritually and financially), and I did more reading about planning than I did planning and implementing it. And except for various periods of two or three months at a time over the next years, that was pretty much the state of affairs for me and my daily planner.
But, having experienced my dissertation proposal project failure of last semester, and realizing that a dissertation proposal is not exactly like having multiple unrelated writing projects, and furthermore, remembering I shell out about thirty bucks a year to maintain my infrequent use of that planner--I decided that I would get my, ahem, crap together and not only get more value out of my planner expenses, but get this dissertation proposal thing done forthwith.
They (whoever they is) say that if you do something every day for twenty-one days that on the twenty-second day it will be harder not to do it than to do it. That is to say, the beginnings of a habit will have been formed. By the end of this week I will have hit that three-week mark with regard to using a daily planner, but I can already say that it is much easier to refer to my planner first thing in the morning as well as throughout the day than it was on 30 December 2005.
I can also say that this discipline is proving useful in breaking down such a large project as even writing a dissertation proposal into smaller steps, each with deadlines. Already, I am further ahead, just in planning out my proposal project, than I was even a couple of weeks ago.
There have been side benefits as well (small household tasks Anna has been driven to distraction reminding me over now accomplished; a lot more reading accomplished, and a lot more of it relevant to both dissertation and personal curiosity).
But don't mistake me. I'm not a one-man seminar, let alone advocate, of using a planner. Only geeky nerds, one-time of the corporate world, like me would ever even fixate on such a thing as I've done. But, hey, if it works . . . even if only long enough to get my proposal done . . . well, that ain't small taters.
I've been diving into Writing the Doctoral Dissertation 2e as a motivational tool.
Here's some encouraging news:
Considering I just wrote 170 pages in two months (granted, it was on six different writing projects), this is good, good news!
Want some more? 'Kay.
All of which lends some credibility to this extremely attractive title: Completing Your Doctoral Dissertation or Master's Thesis in Two Semesters or Less, or, as the blurb puts it, "during two semesters, in fifty workdays or less." In fact, chapter 6 is entitled "Writing the Dissertation -- Twenty Workdays to go!"
After yesterday's panic attack, I got all focused and excited last night as I organized and planned out my literature review. I've got exactly sixteen items thus far (though a handful of tangential articles). More to get, of course, but that doesn't include the five ancient commentators I did a paper on last month, and it lays a pretty solid foundation.
I definitely feel better today.