As promised, this is a post on my reading involving education and the Christian. This post comes by way of the book I am currently reading, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling. It is authored by James Sire.
The portion of this book that struck a chord in my mind is under a heading labeled, The Intellect as Battlefield. Sire claims that Intellectuals "watch ideas clash, pick up the pieces and start over again." Now, let it be known initially that Sire notes the difference between those who are intellectuals seeking after ideas compared to those who are intellectuals seeking after truth. This should clarify the inherent purpose that each category reflects.
What I like about this section is that Sire denotes that ideas, and the apprehension of those ideas in the university, are flawed and even re-worked. They are not absolute, like say, truth. They are more flexible, like butter spread over too much bread. There is plenty to go around, but the farther it goes, the more shallow and less rich it becomes. To prove this point, listen to Sire's point. His comment will end the blog for today.
"Philosophies lie like dying soldiers on the pages of history. Aristotle bests Plato; Plotinus leapfrogs Aristotle to save Plato by transforming him. Augustine raids the neo-Platonic Plotinus and Manicheans, then rejects the latter and transforms the former. Aquinas raids Aristotle and transforms his philosophy. These are not the sounds of ignorant armies clashing by night; they are the sounds of ideas launched by bows and cannons and missile launchers, fended off by shields and bucklers and pillboxes, or detected by radar and destroyed midair. The intellectual battlefield is strewn with corpses. Then out of the barracks of the universities come new heroes, young intellectuals. Each one surveys the filed, spies a corpse or perhaps a battalion of corpses, breathes new life into the bodies, and a new army forms. So arise the neo-Aristotelians, the neo-neo-Platonists, the neo-gnostics, the neo-scholastics. Freedom fighters or guerrillas - take your pick - from the ranks of the pseudo-intellectuals join the fray - the deconstructionists, the mere sociologists of knowledge, the postmodern brokers of power."
Thus, ideas are shaped and changed, usually by those who received their education in the university. But who cares, right? We will always have the butter of different ideas. To that I say you may be right. But be careful! Your excitement over the butter may leave you with little, or no, bread. And, by the way, no one can live on butter forever.
Think on That!
BTW: A big thanks to Bilbo Baggins for the butter and bread illustration.
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2 comments:
Okay, so this may sound ridiculous, but here goes...
Wouldn't you say that all of these philosophers continually seek after their philosophies because they are seeking truth? I mean, if you think about it, they each say that his/her philosophy is the correct way to live.
Amber (and Chad),
I think you're right. But even more than that, they each say that his/her philosophy is the correct way to THINK.
Though many people (preachers included!) tell people how they ought to live, many, many people are a conundrum unto themselves, not LIVING out the manner in which they THINK. It is clearly hypocrisy (though I'm not using that term as harsh as it may seem). Simply put, many people claim to THINK one way, but by their actions they LIVE another.
I particularly liked the way in which the author said many people in history (e.g. Augustine) reformulated the opinions of another. He's right. And we all do it in varying degrees even today. There are things about Plato and Aristotle that I admire, but I cannot choose between the two. So, I take a little bit of Plato, a little bit of Aristotle, a lot of Boethius, sprinkle Aquinas, and baptize it all in Arminius, and voila!, I have a worldview.
And still, my worldview is also influenced (though not dominated) by my culture (whether or not I realize it). But one thing is for certain, I am content to count myself among the THINKERS of history, instead of roaming aimlessly through life borrowing ONE man's philosophy. And I must always remind myself that, quite possibly, I could also influence other people, thus I must be careful how I THINK and how I LIVE.
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