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What Children Can Do: a Polycultural Garden Theory of Development for Education
No full textLimitation theories in developmental psychology have had a profound effect on educational practice; namely, theories that have been widely used to define what is developmentally inappropriate for children to do. Current research is presented to suggest new ways to think about the abilities of children and to challenge the popular applications of limitation theories. Modal theory as understood by reformed Christian philosophies is presented in a framework to view human development. The result is a new polycultural (cosmonomically diverse) theory of human development. Holistic education is investigated as a possible ally by comparing and contrasting it to the proposed theory and its application to education. Finally, the image and metaphor of a garden are introduced to enhance this polycultural theory and to offer application with suggestions for further study
Meditations on Life, Death, and Technology in the Style of a Japanese Poet
Full text linkIn this paper, I will attempt to resurrect the essence of this poetry in the form of a philosophic essay, in response to the riddle “Still Life?”, already initiated with a brief reflection on the history of Japanese renga, carried forward through a series of reflections on the relationship between language and the world, language and death, and concluded with a surprising hypothesis on the relationship between language and life, written in the context of the ecological disaster threatening humanity with extinction
Working Through the Trauma of Evil: An Interview With Richard Kearney
No full textIn this interview, the Irish philosopher Richard Kearney explores the human experience of evil and the role of the human imagination in responding to this evil. Kearney focuses on the healing steps people may take in order to "work through" traumatic experience, steps that include remembering, narrative retelling, and mourning. Such working through, he says, can turn melancholia to mourning, thus allowing those who have experienced suffering and loss to "give a future to their past" and, in so doing, to "go on.
Democracy Without Secularism: A Pragmatist Critique of Habermas
No full textJürgen Habermas has argued that democracy depends on all citizens recognizing the legitimacy of the law. Therefore, political argument must appeal only to public reason which is secular. Religious citizens must translate their reasons into a secular language accessible to the public. This dissertation argues that religious arguments are justified in public discourse if they refrain from dogmatism. Moreover, there is nothing inherent in secular reasons that make them publicly accessible or likely to generate consensus among members of a pluralistic society. If we treat religious arguments as simply arguments with controversial premises, it becomes less clear why religious arguments are singled out as particularly problematic for liberal democracies, since many secular political arguments share this feature. Granted, religious reasons are unlikely to secure consensus, but this does not count against them if consensus is not the goal of democratic discourse. This dissertation makes the case that Habermas, and other liberal theorists such as Rawls, have placed too much emphasis on consensus as the goal of democracy. Moreover, what they refer to is not practical consensus achieved pragmatically through compromise, but an idealized consensus that is the achievement of secular reason. This is problematic for two main reasons: there is no normative reason to think we ought to attain such consensus and such consensus is unlikely to be achieved in practice. Thus, there seems to be no normative force to the claim that religious citizens out to translate their arguments in secular language
Towards a Christian Philosophy
No full textAuthor did not sign the LAC Non-Exclusive License form.The relationship between philosophy and Christianity has, of course, a long history, as do the discussions of that relationship. My own position is not dissimilar to that of many of the early Church Fathers, though of course that position must be elaborated differently for various historical and personal reasons, and hopefully enriched by attention to the history of Western philosophy. As with all such relations, one's understanding of this relation has a lot to do with one's understanding of the terms involved. To promote the possibility of "Christian philosophy" is also to comment on that "and" which might be understood to relate two otherwise distinct and irreconcilable terms. In the end I claim this "and" must be understood as that "love" which defines philosophy as the "love of wisdom" (and finally, the wisdom of love), and does so in terms which (almost) merge-with the surprising assistance of such thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Ricoeur-with those of the Church Fathers cited. On the one hand, I intend nothing but the historical, orthodox, and catholic understanding of Christianity, especially with regard to the central figure of Jesus the Christ, the Trinitarian God whom He embodies, represents, and reveals, and the Scriptures given as The Bible. On the other hand, I present the specifically philosophical pertinence of this unique Person as such emerges from the texts of the "philosophers" considered, and in a manner which I claim does not force the issue by reading into their texts what is not there. Attending to a (Christian) philosophical reflection on (Christian) philosophy also offers elaborations of inherited doctrines, both Christian and philosophical, including a way to read and think unique to the outcome. Such is the adventure of this current work
Speaking Bodies: Communication and Freedom in Fichte and Merleau-Ponty
No full textDrawing on the ideas of J.G. Fichte and M. Merleau-Ponty, I argue that experience and freedom are intersubjective, linguistic, and bodily. In the first chapter, I take up Fichte's three "fundamental principles" from the Science of Knowledge alongside his ideas of embodiment and intersubjectivity from the Foundations of Natural Right to show that all experience is an indefinite mixture of self and not-self, and, therefore, that both the experiences of self-consciousness and its freedom must also be accomplished with reference to the not-self, and particularly others. The second chapter is an examination of Merleau-Ponty's account of expression in his Phenomenology of Perception. The key insight I pursue here is that the medium of expression, which makes possible all significance, is bodily and intersubjective, and that any expressive act is therefore both self-opaque and soliciting cooperation. In the end, I turn to how this cooperation, i.e. freedom, should be enacted
Ron Kuipers' Address at the Book Launch for "Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith and Community"
No full textRonald A. Kuipers' response to "Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith and Community" by Hendrick Hart and William Sweet
The Risk of Hospitality: Selfhood, Otherness, and Ethics in Deconstruction and Phenomenological Hermeneutics
No full textThis thesis argues that attitudes of inhospitality operate subtly in our politics, in our religious beliefs and practices, and in our understandings of who we are. Consequently, the question of hospitality - what it is and what it signifies - is an urgent one for us to address. In this thesis I examine and outline the hermeneutics-deconstruction debate over the experience of otherness and what it means to respond to others ethically (or hospitably). In the first two chapters I defend the importance of properly understanding the ethics of both Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Against the concerns of Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney, I maintain that a Levinasian and Derridean insistence on answering to the call of an unconditional hospitality is the best way forward in our attempt to respond with justice to strangers. Next, by engaging Martin Hagglund's objection to an ethical reading of Derridean unconditionality, I give attention to the theme of negotiation in Derrida's later work, a theme which I take to be the central feature of his account of hospitality. I conclude by proposing five theses concerning hospitality. These theses provide an overview of the main themes discussed in this thesis and once more address the various tensions internal to the concept of hospitality