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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Youth, Seminary, and the Controversy at Lourdes
No full textThis study centers upon Teilhard de Chardin’s early formation as a Jesuit priest, trained in theology and trained in the sciences. Each of these areas contributed to Teilhard’s particular worldview, which placed God concretely at work in the natural order. Near the conclusion of his seminary training, Teilhard expressed this view in his published article on the healings at Lourdes. In this article, Teilhard confronted the prevailing scientific view regarding miraculous healing, proposed by the French medical doctor, Jean-Martin Charcot, with the countervailing position of the Roman Catholic church on the Lourdes’ healings. This opportunity to research and write on Lourdes provided him an entry to contemporary discussions regarding science and religion, in this case, miraculous healings. Teilhard’s thinking on the controversy at Lourdes revealed his assimilation of the scholarly exchange of professors and seminarians at Ore Place, Hastings, England—his last stage of theological training. The community at Ore Place represented a key stage in Teilhard’s developing theology. In this dissertation, I will delineate the factors of Teilhard’s early life which contributed to his formation as a person of faith and as a scientist, up until 1909—the year he completed his article on Lourdes. To this end, I will discuss his familial upbringing and early schooling (Chapters 2, 3 and 7), the terrain of his geographical birthplace (Chapters 5 and 6), the specific context of Teilhard’s seminary training (Chapters 4, 8, and 11), the related secularizing policies of the French government in nineteenth and early twentieth-century France and some of the prevailing philosophical theories (Chapter 9), the responses of the Roman Catholic clergy to an increasingly secular Western society (Chapter 10), the prominent medical practice of Charcot, and the development of Lourdes as a site for miraculous healings (Chapters 12 through 16). In Chapters 17 through 18, I present a translation and explanation of Teilhard’s article on Lourdes which demonstrates an integration of his scientific studies and field work with his theological studies. In chapter 18, I identify an Ignatian perspective in Teilhard’s Lourdes’ discussion, derived from the Spiritual Exercises, as well as, connect his Lourdes discussion with Les Yeux de la Foix by his Ore Place peer, Pierre Rousselot. I conclude with a summary of Teilhard’s interpretation regarding the perspective of the Church and official science on the occurrences at Lourdes
Automation, Jobs, and Employment
Get PDFTechnology has advanced many aspects of the workforce and many employees will need to increase skills (Jahn, 2017) but who will ensure that current workers get this new knowledge? This paper reviews the impact of recent technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) that is anticipated to cause massive unemployment for the under-skilled and even threatens some white-collared workers (West, 2017). Alternatively, improved technologies can offer new opportunities. Automation can allow workers to have enriched lives and charge organizations with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to prepare workers for new methods. A survey of students’ anxieties about job displacements and expectations
Editor\u27s Note
Get PDFThis issue contains narratives about two Newport men “on the outs.” One, Martin Howard, a prominent citizen who was outspoken in his adherence to the British throne, was reviled and driven into exile from Newport in 1765.The other, William Claggett, a skilled craftsman, was excommunicated from the Second Baptist Church only a few years after his arrival in the town. Claggett then published a scathing account in his defense, A Looking-Glass for Elder Clarke and Elder Wightman, And the Church Under Their Care (1721)
The Use of Literature, and in Particular, an Original Novel Entitled Ariachne\u27s Thread, as a Vehicle for the Expression of Philosophical Ideas Concerning Authenticity at the Margins of Society
No full textThis dissertation argues for the possibility of literature, and in particular the novel, as philosophy. It recognizes the distinction between the two but argues that the novel form, with its inherent play of language—its use of tropes, its polylogogical stance, punning, polysemy, catachreses, aporias, equivocations, etc. within a fluid daedalic narrative leads inevitably to an ironic stance, questioning the very ground on which we stand; that is, a visceral understanding of ever changing vocabularies in which no one sees his or her vocabulary as fixed or ontological but rather contextual, ironic and ever changing; one in which no one vocabulary holds a ‘true’ view of infinite vision; what Donna Haraway refers to as the “god trick,” the “conquering gaze from nowhere” (Haraway, “Situational Knowledges,” 581–590) and thus offers a more open-ended, de-ontological perspective than philosophy proper. The dissertation argues that fiction asks for the language to be deconstructed, re-made, re-contextualized, remaining fluid, slippery and vital. “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock,” says J. Hillis Miller. The dissertation first presents the theory behind and within the defense of the novel as philosophy. It sets the stage for the thesis by playing off of the dominant and at times dominating, modern linguistic theories, particularly deconstruction, and argues that literature has always been modern as far back as the ancient Greeks. By taking a de-constructive approach, language becomes more expansive and less able to be pinned down, thus negating the metaphysical pre-Nietzschean in favor of the modern. There are greater possibilities for uncovering the truths that are hidden in the language of the text. The dissertation moves from the linguistic to the narrative elements that make up the text of the novel. It argues that not only does the author slip away, negating himself in the fluid nature of the narrative, but that a monological text in the sense of coming from one mind is in itself an impossibility. There is rather “an implicit multiplying of the authorizing source of a story,” what J. Hillis Miller refers to as polylogology. Intentionality becomes secondary as language and narrative become predominant. The narrative becomes neither writer nor text but hybrid in which the actor/actant relationship to the agent/goal as described by Bruno Latour is in this dissertation conflated with the writer/text relationship as described by J. Hillis Miller to create a multi-contextual, ironic text. The dissertation argues that in fiction, Richard Rorty’s ironic stance is a kind of permanent parabasis. In narrative, it stands outside of itself, refers back to itself as in an allegorique de lui même, commenting on itself, questioning itself, always at odds with what it is saying, calling attention to its alterior meaning at all times. Never at home, constantly shifting its vocabularies, its contingent truths, through the paradigmatic associations embedded in its signs. The dissertation’s defense substantiates its theoretical claim regarding the value of literature in uncovering or discovering philosophy in the postmodern age by applying it in the completion of Ariachne’s Thread, an original novel that speaks directly to these issues, using them within the novel form itself. Thus, I will have a theory and a proof of that theory
The Slug of Modernity: Economic and Cultural Entanglement on Pohnpei, 1844-2019
No full textTwo stories: in one, the author opens a small store on the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia at the turn of the 20th century. In the other, a trader in the 1840s, Shetlander Andrew Cheyne, attempts to build a sea cucumber curing station on the same island. The connections between these stories serve as frames through which to investigate the meaning of modernity and how it changes, or doesn\u27t, traditional cultures. Using anthropology, economics, philosophy, and history, The Slug of Modernity describes the gift-based traditional culture of Pohnpei and its centuries-long clash with the technology of capitalism. Heidegger\u27s ideas regarding technology and its toll on human freedom serve as a means of understanding the consequences of this entanglement of cultures and economies. The study uses narrative to describe the social reality of what it was like to be on Pohnpei in the 19th and 20th centuries. What did it mean to be sea-cucumber trader Capt. Andrew Cheyne in 1843? To be a Pohnpeian when his ship sailed to your harbor? What happened in the moment before sea cucumber and human alike became commodities, when cultures and economies met and mixed? The logbooks of Capt. Cheyne, Pohnpeian folklore, Shetland island history, and the United States\u27 approach to governing Micronesia after World War II combine to paint a complex picture of very different ways of organizing society and show how this conversation between cultures, between ways of being human, has continued from 1844 to the present day