I’m returning here to the original purpose of my blog to list some recent things I’ve been reading and listening to.
I just listened to a lecture by Peter Ewells on education and assessment, which was excellent. It was rich with content and provided an overview of major issues facing educators, especially issues of concern to policy makers. It may be an ominous sign that I am so interested in aspects of administration, pedagogy, etc., as such people seem to get roped into committees, etc. But, since I am a graduate student, no such risk yet obtains.
Also on a pedagogical and educational note, I’ve read some recent articles, one of which was in the Atlantic, on teaching, and it seems that certain false but enormously influential strains of thought about pedagogy are finally being overturned by evidence, especially from charter schools and programs like KIPP. All of that has been encouraging to my outlook on the future of K-12 and higher education.
Besides all my readings for class, which include lots of Kierkegaard, Tillich, Barth, Raher, McFague, Althaus-Reid, medieval theologians, I’ve been rereading Augustine’s Confessions and also intend to read a couple of his other major works. I’m planning on writing my Medieval paper on Augustine, Scotus, Aquinas, or Ockham, in descending order of probability. I think I need to just stay with Augustine, as I don’t want to begin in depth study of Aquinas and other later Medieval thinkers until I have an very strong foundation in Augustine’s major texts (Confessions, Trinity, City of God, etc.). So, I’ve been poking around in a lot of stuff by Chenu, Richard Cross, Gorden Leff, Marilyn Adams, and other scholastic experts.
Turner gives recommended reading lists in his syllabus, and I’ve been reading a number of books on those lists. I read Louth’s work on Mysticism, which was good, and I’m reading both of Turner’s books on Medieval theology, although with less urgency than some of the other material I’ve been reading. I’m also reading Leclercq’s The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture as well as Smalley’s The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, both of which are recommended highly be Turner. Turner’s Eros and Allegory, as well as both of the preceding books, have caused me to reflect more than usual on questions of reading, in a deep, not modern, sense. In particular, I’ve been increasingly suspicious of standard criticisms of Patristic and Medieval hermeneutics due to historical, not primarily theological, considerations. We’ll see if of my suspicious work into my paper.
For Kierkegaard all the texts, save one, that Hare assigns I’ve read at least once, some multiple times, so I am really getting a lot out of the rereading process. I’m also using the course to read some classic secondary sources I had not gotten to, most of which are relatively old. There are a number of topics I could write on, but I am still leaning towards a paper on The Sickness Unto Death, this time moving past the first six paragraphs, which, in a sense, I have spent the last three years studying. But I am also strongly leaning towards a project that deals with Jacobi’s influence on SK, especially drawing on Paul Franks work on German Idealism and some of Bernard Williams’ work on ethics. If I start the Jacobi project, my goal will be to revise it and rewrite it over my year in Heidelberg, incorporating a lot more of Jacobi than is in English and drawing on more German scholarship. Since I’ll have German down before I turn to the relevant Scandinavian languages, I’m trying to structure my major projects so that they lean heavily towards work I can do responsibly in German, and thus work focusing either wholly on Idealism, Jacobi, Romanticism and Hamann or those topics and thinkers in relation to Kierkegaard.
I am more and more coming to grasp structural components of Kierkegaard’s thought that eluded me in my first trip through the major pseudonymous writings, and I think The Sickness Unto Death plays a more central role in understanding SK’s authorship than has been widely recognized. Indeed, I think one of the many fruits of the work I’m currently doing is that I’m going to be able to explain a pedagogical or interpretive point: why Kierkegaard is so badly understood. A lot of famous thinkers are badly understood, even by people who’ve bothered to read some of their major work, but SK is particularly badly understood, even by many Kierkegaard scholars, and it’s becoming increasingly clear to me, in some cases at least, why that is.
Naturally, besides all my class related material, I’ve been reading some things here and there on the side. Among my bedside books are Noll’s The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, which strikes me as an important book for any Christian, but especially theologians and historians. I recently read Marsden’s Reforming Fundamentalism, which was a sobering and enlightening history of one part of my heritage as an American Fundamentalist/Evangelical. I also have some books by Scruton by my bed, which I read as time permits and inclination suggests. Some other books, not necessarily restricted to my bedside, are Robinson’s The Death of Adam, which is proving thoroughly enjoyable and rich with insight. I’m not sure I always trust Robinson’s historical sense, but that does not detract from my admiration for her writing. I’ve also been reading some McCabe, in this case God Matters, which goes along nicely with Turner’s class.
One book that is leaving a major impression on me is David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous, which so far is brilliant and powerfully reorienting. I first heard of it from a Tolkien scholar, Patrick Curry (he has a fantastic book on Tolkien and ecology), and, thanks to Tolkien, I am very open to the kind of work Abram is doing, work that I would have find bizarre four years ago. Ever since my Tolkien class as an undergraduate, I’ve considered myself a treehugger of sorts and have been receptive to ecological work, although some stuff I’ve read, like McFague in theology, is unappealing. Abram’s provides an remarkable analysis, based especially on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, of the Lebenswelt that we naturally inhabit, arguing that, in spite of what we consciously think, the Lebenswelt is actually well described by categories and frameworks we typically describe as animistic. I would have found this thesis highly suspicious 4 years ago, but after Tolkien and especially Barfield, I’m actually quite sympathetic to what Abram is doing. I will continue to reflect on his work as I’m reading.
There are other interesting things I’m reading, especially some material I’m getting into on resurrection (a topic on which I want to do some serious theological work) and atonement, but I can’t think of a lot of it and this post is already lengthy.