Author: Brian LePort

Religious Studies Instructor at TMI Episcopal (San Antonio, TX). PhD in Religion and Theology from the University of Bristol (Bristol, UK). Married to Miranda Perez. Human to a Cocker Spaniel named Frida. Fan of the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, and Golden State Warriors.
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The apocalyptic Jesus is Plato’s just man

I live with a form of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, I find Jesus of Nazareth to be the greatest moral exemplar, likely due to my upbringing, culture, and religion. On the other hand, I’m aware that his morality was shaped in a context very different from my own, most importantly as a first-century CE Jewish person living in Galilee and Judea, which was under Roman occupation, who held to an apocalyptic understanding of the world which from our perspective seems to have been somewhat misplaced. For this reason, mere parroting of Jesus’ ethics may not be wise for most of us, if such a thing is even possible. So, as a Christian, I try to ask myself what it means to live in some form of alignment with Jesus’ vision of the good, though a version of the vision that is applicable to the twenty-first century.

The tricky business here is that this kind of mindset often leads to Christianities that may as well abandon any affiliation with Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, I would say that most American Christianities function in complete independence from anything related to Jesus. His “Sermon on the Mount” is critiqued as “woke”. His ideas are rejected by Christians as impractical (should we really treat people who are poor that way?!). Therefore, the label “Christian” retains a cultural significance as one that secures some form of status but it has little to do with the person that “Christians” have called “Christ”.

There is a part of me that thinks that only certain radical groups, like Anabaptists/Mennonites (with their emphasis on non-violence and simplicity), or the Christianities practiced by the oppressed and marginalized, are worthy of being affiliated with Jesus. This would leave me on the outside looking in, sort of like Nicodemus in the first part of the Gospel of John. But this might not be a bad thing. It reminds me of the American author and poet, Maya Angelou. When she was asked if she was a Christian, she responded:

“I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‘I’m a Christian.’ I think, ‘Already? You already got it?’ I’m working at it, which means that I try to be as kind and fair and generous and respectful and courteous to every human being.”

The long history of Christianity has shown that the word can mean anything. Therefore, the label “Christian” can mean anything. Christians can support unjust imperial power. Christians can be violent. Christians can demonize people because of their ethnic identities (think of the centuries of persecution of the Jews). Christians can be as addicted to wealth (think of the Prosperity Gospel). Christians can be harmfully superstitious (think of the “Word of Faith” movement or popular forms of “spiritual warfare”). Many brush this off by saying something like “Christians aren’t perfect, only Christ is” but that’s an excuse for maintaining the cultural value of the label Christian without taking seriously the demand that this word should have upon our lives (think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship*).

I live in South Texas where being “Christian” is an important label. To respond as Maya Angelou did would earn you suspicion from many. But when I say I’m a Christian, I mean something like what she did: “I’m working at it”. And honestly, many of the people who quickly and definitively name themselves “Christian” are the type of people who make the word mostly meaningless. I think, “if you’re a Christian, then clearly being a Christian means nothing for the world”. But I also think this of myself: if I’m a Christian, then Christianity needs help. I guess the important difference is self-awareness.

This being said, I find that Jesus can remain a moral exemplar even if his apocalyptic vision of the Kingdom of God coming to earth seems to have missed the mark. (Whether there’s some eschatological truth to his vision is impossible to address because we can’t know that truth until the end of our lives or the end of human history, so I find that debate unhelpful except to give people a reason to maintain a certain form of Christianity, which is fine if that works for others.) Jesus remains the type of person who stood not only for the marginalized and oppressed but with them. He wanted to see people restored, healed, and whole. He wanted to see oppressors regain their humanity. And he refused to contribute to our cycle of violence when he was cornered. (Whether Jesus was ideologically pacifistic seems beside the point; that he refused to engage his enemies violently when it really mattered says what needs to be said.)

"The Death of Socrates" by Jacques-Louis David (1787)
“The Death of Socrates” by Jacques-Louis David (1787)

In Book II of The Republic, Plato’s Socrates is discussing the meaning of “justice” and what it means to be a “just person”. Is “justice” just a construct that the powerful use to justify themselves? Or is justice something objective that can be measured over against whether someone has power? Socrates says to his interlocutor Glaucon, that the truly just man will be just for justice’s sake, not for the appearance of justice since being just for the appearance of justice is being “just” in order to gain a reputation that can be used for selfish gain. Socrates proposes that the most just a person can be is “to be and not seem good” (p. 45 of Lee’s translation). He states:

“We must, indeed, not allow him to seem good, for if he does he will have all the reward and honours paid to the man who has a reputation for justice; and we shall not be able to tell whether his motive is love of justice or love of the rewards and honours.”

For Socrates, the only person who can be clearly just, is the one “we must strip…of everything except justice”. He continues:

“Our just man must have the worst of reputations for wrongdoing even though he has done no wrong, so that we can test his justice and see if it weakens in the face of unpopularity and all that goes with it; we shall give him an undeserved and life-long reputation for wickedness, and make him stick to his chosen course until death.”

It has been noted that Plato likely has Socrates in view. Socrates was charged by the Athenians for being “impious” and for “corrupting the youth”. In a sense, these charges were accurate but the question is whether or not Socrates’ “impiety” and “corruption” were clearly evils or just evils perceived by the misguided worldview of the Athenians. Plato’s views seem clear here.

Jesus was perceived by his followers in much the same way. In short, Jesus is presented as a just man who was unjustly condemned by an unjust society. In fact, Plato writes something that is hard for Christians to read without thinking about Jesus, even though it was written centuries before Jesus** (again, from Lee, p. 45):

“…the just man, as we have pictured him, will be scourged, tortured, and imprisoned, his eyes will be put out, and after enduring every humiliation he will be crucified (or “impaled” depending on the translation), and learn at last that one should want not to be, but to seem just”

With those words, Plato’s Socrates draws a line between true justice and seeming justice. Justice exists, though rare, in the form of people who are so just that they will die for justice rather than take the easy path. Now, in a sense, this helps me with the question of whether or not Jesus’ ethics are completely relativized by his apocalypticism. If we read Jesus’ actions through Plato, what matters is that this just man Jesus was not rescued by divine intervention but went to his grave refusing to muscle the “Kingdom of God” into existence, which would only contribute to the cycles of violence that consume us. He used what life he had to try to bring the “Kingdom of God” by means of healing, care, forgiveness, empowerment, etc.

From this perspective, people like Martin Luther King Jr. are Christians. On the other hand, I’m in a category with Maya Angelou: “I try to be as kind and fair and generous and respectful and courteous to every human being”. I fail but I try. And I think Jesus’ vision, as read through Plato, remains worth our effort even if, as Jesus’ crucifixion, Socrates’ trial, and Dr. King’s assassination (not to mention all the other innocents) teach us, most of us must settle with wanting to be just rather than achieving it. More precisely, we must settle with wanting to want to be just, since is Jesus, Socrates, King, etc., are the measure of a just person, I think many of us would prefer to never be truly tested.

*Sadly, the copy of this book that’s available on Amazon has a forward by Eric Metaxes, who embodies how worthless the label “Christian” can be.

**For those who are curious about how Plato’s ideas about justice have been read with Jesus in view, see the very thorough article by Mateusz Stróżyński titled “Plato the Prophet? The Crucified Just Man in Republic and the New Testament”.

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A reflective note on Stephen Mumford’s “A Philosopher Looks at Sport”

As I’ve been asking myself (1) how I, as a father, want to teach my child about thoughtfulness and (2) how I, as a teacher, want to educate my students, I’ve been coming around to the idea that one way to engage younger mind with subjects that we think they should study is to package that subject in an accessible manner. By this, I mean teach them (A) a subject with which they’re less familiar through (B) a subject with which they have greater, and maybe more natural, familiarity. As I mentioned in a recent post (see “Sports and non-dualistic education”), as I reflect upon the adolescent version of myself—who was a mediocre student, at best—I recognize that one of the best ways to have engaged me would have been by connecting what we were learning to sports. I was obsessed with sports but not Algebra, or U.S. history. Yet it was sports that led me to be learn about Jesse Owens embarrassing Hitler, or where Baltimore is on a map, or how to calculate a batting average. For this reason, as I think about the need to teach my students the skills that will help them evaluate the wave upon wave of information that comes their way—how to be critical, skeptical even, before embracing something just because Google found it or because someone said it on TikTok—a conclusion that I’m tentatively reaching is that, for example, if I were to teach a philosophy class at my school in the future, a philosophy of sport would be the way to go. It would start with (B) sport, which matters to a majority of high schoolers, and then guide them to (A) the skills that philosophy can provide them.

As I’ve been reading on the philosophy of sport, one book that I finished recently is Stephen Mumford‘s A Philosopher Looks at Sport. It’s a small book (at 5 x 0.5 x 7.5 inches) and a short one (at about 133 pp. of content) but it’s very good. It built around six topics: physicality, competition, definition (of sport), spectacle, ethics, and inclusion. One of this main points is that we find joy in developing an ability and in displaying that ability. Sport is a venue for that development/display but it adds competition. Competition can be a negative thing but Mumford sees athletic competition as a sort of bubble where we can put forth a certain level of effort without the negative effects because ultimately, the goals are themselves “unimportant”. For example, if I were wrestling for a high school state title, it would matter to me, it would be important, but not in the same way as if I were wrestling a potential mugger or a wild animal that I encountered on a walk. The latter has my very life and well-being at stake in a way that sport doesn’t…or shouldn’t.

Once Mumford provides a working definition of sport, he addresses why we enjoy the spectacle of it all (which is very relevant right now as the Summer Olympics are in full swing) and he asks questions about the ethics of sport. Both of these topics are fascinating. I’ve long wondered to myself why I can spend a Sunday watching three or four NFL games and enjoy it. And the ethics section had me thinking about why we allow for certain things in sport (e.g. boxers pummeling each other) that we wouldn’t allow in general (boxing on the street is assault). Mumford addresses whether there is an “internalist” ethic that differs from the outside world or if the line between sport/not-sport is more porous.

Finally, his section on inclusion felt very relevant because as I was reading it, the ugly debate over Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif’s eligibility was reminding me that the Internet really does bring out some of our worst characteristics. We need to calmly and thoughtfully ponder the relationship between sport and gender and transgender athletes in a world that wants us to be reactionary and vitriolic. And with the Paralympics beginning, we should be cognizant of our thoughts around ability/disability and sport. Mumford addresses topics like these and this reinforces my first point. Sport may not be as high stakes as some things (e.g. the wars in Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine) but sport is a place where many high-stakes debates are magnified, including things like gender, ability, bodily objectification, fairness in pay, etc. These topics may be intimidating in themselves but studying them through the lens of sports can provide students with an otherwise unattainable accessibility and books like this one go a long way toward helping us in this endeavor.

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Philosophical Parenting: Tom Whyman’s “Infinitely Full of Hope”

I know that every generation worries about the world into which they are bringing children. When I was born in 1982, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were still in the Cold War, so the threat of nuclear holocaust loomed over the planet. I’m sure that this worried my parents. (That threat remains. If you’ve not thought about it recently, listen to the episode “The world after nuclear war” on “The Gray Area” with Sean Illing.) As I prepare to become a father for the first time, four decades later, we can add climate change, the rise of right-wing populism including “Trumpism” where I live, the unregulated race to develop Artificial Intelligence, etc. I’m aware of all of the reasons to not reproduce. But my wife and I chose to become parents, later in life, even with these risks in view. (See my post “Philosophical Parents: Mara van der Lugt’s ‘Begetting'” for a look at a book that has helped me process this decision.) Since the decision has been made, I need hope in the face of these threats.

If you’re in a similar boat, I recommend Tom Whyman’s Infinitely Full of Hope: Fatherhood and the Future in an Age of Crisis. Whyman takes a philosophical look at what hope is. He chooses to avoid religious definitions of hope. (Sorry, St. Paul!) Hope is defined as (1) “a recognition of the possibility of the better. (2) An active desire for the better to occur” (p. 46, emphasis his). He contrasts hope with cynicism, resignation, and despair.

Whyman has chapters addressing whether or not we’re, in reality, hopeless. What hope can accomplish. How we can “hope better”. What we can hope “for”. The book has memoiric elements but it’s also definitely a book of philosophy filled with a lot of critical theory. Whyman interacts with the work of Soren Kierkegaard, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Mark Fisher, and others. This isn’t a book review, just a note and a recommendation for people who may have similar interests and curiosities, so if you’re a parent, about the become one, or thinking of becoming one, but you’re unnerved by some of the existential threats we face, and you don’t find the jump to religious hope to be an easy one to make, then this book is a must read.

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Experiencing Olympic triumph vicariously

Recently, I’ve been wondering to myself, “What is it that causes us to enjoy watching sports?” The TED Radio Hour episode a couple of weeks ago tackled this question (see “Why we love watching sports”), so I know I’m not alone in my curiosity. Clearly, there isn’t a single answer to this question, nor should we expect one. In his book, A Philosopher Looks at Sport, Stephen Mumford provides several reasons for why we enjoy watching sports: (1) sports, when done well, are like theater in that they break us free from the mundane (“the exceptional makes a greater impression on us than mundane, everyday experiences”); (2) there’s a “social aspect” as “groups of people” gather “together for a shared experience”; (3) as he argues in the first chapter, we enjoy exercising our own physical capabilities (it feels good to jump high or lift a lot of weight or hit a baseball far), so maybe it’s pleasurable to see others do the same (pp. 69-70).

I’m interested in his focus on (3) because he explores why it is that we may enjoy watching others do what we used to be able to do/dream of doing/wish we could do/never could do. But he dives further into what might lead to our committed fandom. It’s true that for some people, it’s easy to admire the skill of other humans no matter who is performing (p. 72). I can imagine someone like Joe Buck, a broadcaster who is the son of a broadcaster, enjoying baseball as baseball or football as football, but I wonder if Troy Aikman feels the same “objectivity” when they call a Dallas Cowboys game together, being that Aikman was a Super Bowl winning quarterback for the Cowboys. He has an intimate connection to that team in a way that Buck doesn’t.

For many (most!) of us, we’re inspired by people with which we identify in some way. Mumford writes about how sports provide us with “vicarious experiences”. He says, “It can be easier to have vicarious experiences when one is able to identify with the person undergoing the original experience (p. 71).” “One can sometimes feel a part of the victory if one identifies in some way with the winner (p. 73).” I know this is true. I can watch the World Series or the Super Bowl with enjoyment if my team isn’t in it but it’s a lot more interesting when they are! And I don’t know how others feel but it’s difficult to enjoy these events when it seems like a rival might win. I don’t enjoy a World Series where the Los Angeles Dodgers (the archival to my San Francisco Giants) seem poised to win or a Super Bowl where the Dallas Cowboys or Seattle Seahawks or Los Angeles Rams (rivals of my San Francisco 49ers) have a chance.

I was thinking about this dynamic during the Opening Ceremonies of this year’s Olympic Games in Paris. While there was plenty of drama around those ceremonies, my brain was stuck on the quasi-tradition of singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”. This year it was Sofiane Pamart but it’s also was sung at games in 1996, 2006, 2012, 2018, 2020, and 2022. The lyrics that have inspired this tradition are the following:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace

In some sense, this is a weird choice for the Olympics. We divide Olympic teams by nation. I’ve played this song for my religious studies classes and asked them to critically consider the claim because I’m not sure that the Olympics would be better without nations or even that the world is necessarily better without religions and nations. Yes, nationalism and sectarian religion can be dangerous. But there seems to be something quite naive about claiming that there would be “nothing to kill or die for” if there were no countries or religions. Humans have killed each other since long before the establishment of the nation-state or established, institutionalized religion. The nation-state and institutionalized religion can be/have been used as tools of violence but humans find rationale for their violence anywhere. Personally, I think the difference put on display during that parade down the Seine offers us something better than the erasure of nations and religions.

Identifying universally with humanity has its idealistic worth but I’m not convinced that this demands something like rooting for each athlete equally, as I saw someone on Threads say recently. There seems to be something to (1) relating in a special, responsible way to people who are closer to you, whether than be because they’re family (biological or chosen), co-religionist, political allies, or even because they share a geographical space and (2) embracing a sort of yin-yang understanding of the “opposition” that recognizes their essential place in our lives not in spite of their difference but because of it.

I mentioned above how much I disdain the Dodgers and Cowboys but paradoxically I appreciate these teams and their fanbases because Giants/Niners fandom is improved by Dodgers/Cowboys fandom. While these rivalries can spill over into violence, Giants-Dodgers and Niners-Cowboys “disdain” is a soft disdain, usually. I’ve gone to Giants games with friends who are Dodgers fans. During the game, there’s a “dislike” but it’s contextual and doesn’t really suspend a friendship. But for the few hours that we’re at the game, my friend who is a Dodgers fan is the opponent and all of the strangers wearing Giants hats are my people. Similarly, as I watch Simone Biles perform feats beyond anything I could imagine doing, I root for her as an American because her victory gives all of us Americans a vicarious sense of accomplishment and joy since we relate to her as Americans. This doesn’t follow that I must dislike the gymnasts from other nations though. I can appreciate them as necessary opposition without which there would be no sports to bring us together.

This is the difference between something like the Olympics and a war (Mumford says a bit about this in his book, so maybe I’ll do another post on that topic). When you’re at war with another nation, the goal is different and the opposition is seen as an existential threat. The stakes are higher. It could be argued (and has been) that sports serves us in a way similar to a vaccine in that we taste a little bit of something that can be dangerous (rivalry, difference, othering, competition) in a way that will hopefully prevent us from engaging in the full-blown, life-harming and threatening version of these aspects of our nature.

My problem then with Lennon’s “Imagine” is that it falls short of the ideal as I understand it. I shouldn’t have to reject my affinity for American athletes in order to appreciate the athletes of other nations. Even as I root for the United States, it was wonderful seeing all the athletes from all the different countries and it was worth celebrating them as an American because they contribute to the joy of sport and the joy is deepened, for someone like me, in having a specific team (here the U.S. Olympians) with which to identify. A healthy pluralism doesn’t means a faux unity, complete conformity, or the denial of difference. Instead, sports, as the Olympics are showing us, allow for us to imagine pluralism that recognizes difference but demands that there are limits to our understanding of the “opposition” and to our “othering”. I don’t think that it’s in most of our natures to blandly relate to every single person we encounter without there being some hierarchy of value (e.g. I’m closer to my wife than to some random person I meet on the street or even to coworkers with whom I share much of my day). We are not capable of seeing from a universal vantage point most of the time and I fear that such bland universalizing wouldn’t make us close to everybody but instead close to no one—no one would really matter to us. I’m going to root for the U.S. Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams against other countries because I’m an American and this socially constructed aspect of my identity shapes me but I’m going to do so realizing that our basketball teams need all of those other teams for the whole thing to work. Erasing difference isn’t the answer; embracing it’s necessity seems like it might be.

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My favorite definitions of “philosophy”

If my memory serves me correctly, it’s the hosts of The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast who ask their guests the question, “What is philosophy?” It’s fun to hear the responses of philosophers who must articulate a definition of their discipline. Like many words, we “know” what something means until we’re asked to provide a concrete definition. Words like “religion” or “philosophy” mean a lot of different things to many people. As I’ve pondered the question “what is philosophy?” I haven’t created my own answer but I’ve found a few that I like from others:

  1. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Logical Clarification of Thoughts” Definition (from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 4.112): “The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory, but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions,’ but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.”
  2. Raymond Geuss’ “Systematic Spirit Without…a System” Definition (from David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton, Philosophy Bites, p. xvi): “I’m afraid I have a very unhelpful answer to that, because it’s only a negative answer. It’s the answer that Friedrich Schlegel gave in his Athenaeum Fragments: philosophy is a way of trying to be a systematic spirit without having a system.”
  3. Clare Carlisle’s “Making Sense of All This” Definition (from David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton, Philosophy Bites, p. xv): “Most simply put it’s about making sense of all this…We find ourselves in a world that we haven’t chosen. There are all sorts of possible ways of interpreting it and finding meaning in the world and in the lives that we live. So philosophy is about making sense of that situation we find ourselves in.”
  4. Wilfrid Sellar’s “How Things Hang Together” Definition (from Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man): “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Under ‘things in the broadest possible sense’ I include such radically different items as not only ‘cabbages and kings’, but numbers and duties, possibilities and finger snaps, aesthetic experience and death. To achieve success in philosophy would be, to use a contemporary turn of phrase, to ‘know one’s way around’ with respect to all these things, not in that unreflective way in which the centipede of the story knew its way around before it faced the question, ‘how do I walk?’, but in that reflective way which means that no intellectual holds are barred.”
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Sports and non-dualistic education?

I have a confession to make. As much as I enjoy sports—more watching than playing them at this stage in my life—I’ve had a love/hate relationship with high school athletics. There are two reasons for this: (1) it seems that many student-athletes are making the “student” part carry more of the adjectival weight than ever, so that we have athletes who happen to be students rather than students who happen to be athletes and (2) athletics can make it difficult for teachers to plan lessons and assessments with the whole class in mind. Let me explain both further.

With regard to (1), most students won’t be D-1 athletes, let alone professional athletes. Their studies seem to matter more for their long-term success than their participation in athletics. Even though I value athletics, I’ve worried about how much emotion and attention my students put into sports compared to the subjects that may have something to do with their future professions or actions as citizens in a functioning democracy.

With regard to (2), it can be a pain to chase down student-athletes who miss class, especially when they miss a lot of class. I’ve seen student-athletes who seem completely lost at times because they (a) missed class where I’m present to teach/explain concepts and then (b) rush through the supplementary homework, aiming to complete it in a hurry rather than taking the time to learn the content. Because they miss several classes on, for example, days when they have to travel, this can cause the missed work to pile up on the student so that their concern is to simply do what has to be done to maintain a good grade. This leads to frustration in the classroom. I’m frustrated because I know they’re doing the minimum; they’re frustrated because they can’t keep up with the conversations or understand the assignments that were created with their presence in mind.

As NIL rights have come to dominate college athletics, I’m sure that many of my colleagues in higher ed are feeling some of this pressure. College athletics has become a profession. College athletes are athletes first; students second, much (most?) of the time. But at the collegiate level, most students aren’t participating in the athletics programs. (In fall 2021, there were 15.44 million undergraduate students in the U.S. and 520,000 NCAA student-athletes.) For many high school teachers, most of our students play at least one team sport, maybe more. According to EducationWeek, between 1991-2019, 57.4% of high school students “played on at least one school or community sports team in the past year”. It seems like there may be a decline in youth sports participation but in small schools like mine where students have an easier time making a roster, it often feels like students are playing sports all the time.

A couple of books that I’ve been reading have caused me to pause and rethink my intuitions/criticisms. First, in Emily Ryall’s Philosophy of Sports: Key Questions, there’s a chapter titled, “Is the Body Just Another Tool in Sport?” In the first paragraph, Ryall comments (on p. 67),

“Traditionally, and certainly in academia, the body is reduced to secondary consideration. It is the mind or soul that is of primary importance and of greater worth; the body is often considered an imperfect vehicle that contains these elements. Indeed, those who spend time perfecting their bodily appearance, whether through cosmetic surgery, steroids or pumping weights are often denigrated by the learned elite. Spending time on your body is considered vain and shallow, spending time on developing your mind by contrast is not.

Ryall notes that in Ancient Greece, “a common view was that the body and soul were inter-dependent and inseparable (p. 67).” In Greek thought, “A body without a soul was simply a corpse. As such, physical education was a much more holistic practice; training the body was also considered to be training the soul (p. 68).” Ryall reminds us that one of the founding fathers of western philosophy, Plato, was a “competitive wrestler” so that “one of the most renowned ancient Greek philosophers, and the first person to establish a higher-education academy,” happened to be an athlete (p. 68)

For Ryall, it’s the mind-body dualism of René Descartes that may be most to blame for our current dichotomy between training the mind and training the body. Anyone who knows about Descartes program of “extreme skepticism” knows that Descartes determined the one thing that he can’t doubt is that he is a thinking reality: “I think therefore I am.” Since the existence of physical matter could be doubted, but Descartes own thinking mind was necessary for him to even doubt, the physical and the mental had to be separated with the mental being something more real than the physical (pp. 68-69).

In A Philosopher Looks at Sport, Stephen Mumford makes the same connection. He observes that “Philosophers spend much time considering the nature of the mental and frequently ignore the significance of physical activity (p. 8).” But this is a mistake: “we are bodied beings, able to take pleasure in what we can do with our physical existence (p. 8).” Mumford “credits” Descartes with this the preeminence of this view, one he rejects. He states, “…we are essentially physical beings and this is a fact upon which the pleasure of exercising physical capacities to a degree rests (p. 9).”

For Mumford, we should prefer philosophers like Maurice Merleau-Ponty who emphasize embodiedness. He rejects the Cartesian idea that we are “essentially a thinking thing”. In fact, Mumford is so committed to this point that he writes, “I am slightly nervous about use of the term ’embodied'” because this implies “that there is a thing, in the body, which has become embodied” which means it exists before a body is given to it (p. 9).

Mumford prefers to say we’re simply “bodied”. He comments, “Everything that I learn, of that stimulates my senses, has come originally through my body (p. 10).” Borrowing from Wittgenstein’s comment “if a lion could talk, we would not be able to understand it” (Philosophical Investigations, section 326), Mumford argues that “if a disembodied soul could talk, we would not be able to understand it (p. 11).” Like Thomas Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” the claim here is that being bodied as humans is how we know the world. Even if we somehow outlive our bodies as “mind,” the experience would be radically different than our current one: “There would be nothing recognisably us in this disembodied thing.” Why? “To be human is to have a body…” (p. 11).

Even if we were to reject this view as being too reductively materialist, the basic points are sound. We are bodied. If mind can remain after the death of the body, it seems to be an emergent property of the body that somehow continues after it’s source has passed (unless we embrace a concept like pre-existent souls and/or some form of strong mind-body dualism or maybe panpsychist ideas). But we don’t experience that form of existence until we die. As long as we’re living, we’re bodied. If this is correct, then our education is bodied. While sitting in a classroom learning Algebra is bodied, so is running drills in practice to help students learn the playbook. Both are ways of learning. Both are forms of education. So, as an educator, I should try to see my teaching as one way of contributing to student learning, but not the only way and not in a way that is inherently superior to athletics.

On a related note, if I’m honest, when I was in high school, sports was everything. Like most kids, I didn’t dream of getting a PhD in “Religion and Theology” but instead of playing left-field for the San Francisco Giants or cornerback for the 49ers. As I aged and realized that I didn’t have the necessary skills or size, I imagined being the next Bob Costas or Dan Patrick. I hated reading, except for Sports Illustrated or ESPN the Magazine. I hated math, except sports statistics. I learned American geography by looking on a map to see where the Chicago Bulls were located and I learned about international geography through events like the Summer Olympics. While I have no intent on throwing shade at the adults in my life at that time, I can imagine that if someone could’ve connected the subjects that I hated to athletics in a clear way, it may have peaked my interest! As a high school teacher, I find myself asking how I can connect what I teach to what already matters to my students. Sometimes this is difficult. Sometimes, I’m successful in showing the value of religious studies to students who will one day major in business, or economics, etc. Sometimes, students who are religious already or who appreciate literature will be excited about my biblical studies classes. But I find myself working to create and hopefully get approved classes like “Philosophy, Religion, and Sports” (which I’d like to start teaching in fall ’25 if I get approval) because I want to bring the educational skills that matter to me, and that I believe with benefit my students, to where they’re at already. (Obviously, many students aren’t interested in sports, but many are!)

This doesn’t erase the two concerns that I mentioned earlier though. Maybe schools need a full-time student-athlete czar that’s not the school’s athletic director. We have roles for school psychologists, for accommodations oversights, etc., but there may be a temptation to leave things to the student-athletes, or expect coaches to play the role of a go-between for students, athletes, and their families. A student-athlete czar would be responsible for coordinating schedules, assignments, etc., overlooking the academic performance of all active student-athletes while insuring communication on homework, missing assignments, key assessments, and so forth. What we don’t want is a dualism that goes the other way: a type of mindlessness. Athletes need to cultivate their minds. We admire athletes who combine their physical prowess with an intellectualizing of the game: think Peyton Manning reading defenses, Michael Jordan learning how to use the fadeaway jumper as he aged, catchers with a grasp of analytics, or former players like Greg Olsen who can explain the game to viewers from an insider’s perspective. Analytical and communication skills should be formed in athletes and pairs quite naturally with their athletic goals. I’d like to imagine that a “philosophy of sports” class would contribute to the holistic education of student-athletes.

Now, a final thing should be noted: sports aren’t the only path the non-dualistic education. Dance is bodied. Theater is bodied. A variety of fine arts classes are bodied. While it’s difficult to make a topic like religious studies bodied, some lessons can included bodied activities. But in the ecosystem of a school, physical education makes sure that the overall education of most of our student is a non-dualistic one, and I can appreciate that.

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Be cautious with “calling” language

I want to state up front that this post isn’t addressing whether or not people are “called” to a “vocation” or not (e.g. a clergy person being called by God). Instead, it’s just a reminder that this language can be dangerous. As someone who was raised in Pentecostal circles where there was a lot of talk about “discovering God’s calling” or “knowing God’s will for your life,” I know that it can be discombobulating. It’s like you’re invited into a weird cosmic game show where the prize is meaning and purpose but if you lose there could be some sort of divine judgment/disapproval awaiting you or, at best, a sense of lostness and meaninglessness.

It wasn’t until late in adulthood when I was told that I should read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning that I encountered something like an existentialist worldview where instead of finding the singular meaning to which I was “called,” I instead was invited to create meaningfulness for myself. It was at that point that I made the theological move in my mind that if there’s a God who wants things for us, this God created us to be creators who have the responsibility to shape our meaning and many different meanings are welcomed. There isn’t one meaning/one calling. It was sort of like if Jean-Paul Sartre wasn’t an atheist. And it helped me move away from the idea that I had missed some grand purpose for my life. Instead, I could determine what I wanted my life to be (to the degree that we’re “free” to do so).

In my late teens and twenties, I wrestled with whether or not I was called to be a clergy person. I had some people tell me that I was. I had others act as if I wasn’t. I’m glad that I didn’t pursue that path. For many, it becomes a life-time “vocation”. I’ve know pastor/preacher-types who are quite miserable in “ministry” but feel that it’s was they’re “called” to do.

For about a year, I spent time with a Mennonite community. Their view of clergy was very different from what I knew. Pastors could serve for some time but then go back to another career in the future. Or they could be “dual-vocation” where they served their local church in that particular capacity while still working a 9-5 elsewhere during the week. “Pastor” was part of their identity; it wasn’t their entire identity. I think this is a healthier view than that of branches within Christianity that imply that a “calling” is for a lifetime.

This language isn’t limited to religious settings. In education, it’s very prevalent. I know of plenty of teachers who feel that they should spend their already too low income on school supplies because their job is a “calling” and their work is a “vocation”. Instead of recognizing that our education system is broken, they take personal responsibility to “save the kids,” putting their own health on the line, and stressing their finances. Calling/vocation language can be used to pressure teachers into accepting low pay, into working extra unpaid hours, into being mistreated and dehumanized. As I’ve said, “for the kids” language is often manipulative. It aims to guilt teachers into sacrificing themselves for education systems that won’t change. In the process, teachers raise young people who themselves are being taught to forsake their own life-work balance in the future. This cycle of guilting in the name of calling/vocation serves only the purposes of those our society most benefits, which, surprise, surprise, is rarely people who work in education. Many of the administrators who use these guilting techniques had them used on them when they were teachers and now that they feel the pressure to make sure that their schools do more with less, they parrot these lines.

The fact of the matter is that if teaching is a “calling” (however we may interpret that word) it’s also a “profession”; as much as teaching is a “vocation” it’s also a “career”. When we abandon professional/career language for calling/vocation language, we put ourselves at risk of being dumped into some sort of caste system where we’ve been born to do a task for our society that is our predetermined role and that any hope of more respect, better pay and benefits, etc., is failing to recognize our “place”.

I get the therapeutic value of “calling/vocation” language. It helps clergy, teachers, and others finding meaning outside of pay, benefits, resources, etc. But it also can be a form of self-harm that allow others to justify their mistreatment of us. For that reason, be cautious with “calling” language in a culture looking for reasons to exploit.

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Why do I enjoy the Home Run Derby still but not the Dunk Contest?

This morning, I thought to myself, “Why did I tune into Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby this year but I haven’t watched the National Basketball Association’s Dunk Contest in years?!” I have a guess as to personal reasons. In general, I like baseball more than basketball. But I wasn’t alone in my viewing choice. According to Austin Karp reporting for the Sports Business Journal, “MLB Home Run Derby draws lowest audience since 2014” yet it was viewed by more people than the NBA’s “All Star Saturday Night” and the NFL’s “Pro Bowl Skills Competition”:

Americans loves (American) football. The “Pro Bowl Skills Competition” took place the weekend before the Super Bowl, when the NFL is dominating America’s sports media’s attention. Both the Home Run Derby and Pro Bowl Skills Competition are on ESPN. So, this is intriguing to me. Maybe the Pro Bowl Skills Competition is too new and the average football fan is still bemoaning the decline in the Pro Bowl’s overall contribution to football fandom?

The NBA’s equivalent was on TNT/truTV. Did that have an impact? For example, I have ESPN/ESPN 2 but not TNT/truTV. I don’t know if ESPN outdraws TNT on average. But even if I had TNT/truTV, I wouldn’t have turned in to watch the Dunk Contest because, really, can anyone do anything that MJ, Dominique, Vince Carter, and a few other dunkers haven’t done already?

The NBA did appear to match the Home Run Derby during a 15-minute span: the “Stephan v. Sabrina 3-Point Challenge” where Steph Curry of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors edged Sabrina Ionescu of the WNBA’s New York Liberty. This indicates the the 3-Point Challenge has a similar draw to the Home Run Derby. Like the Slam Dunk Contest, there’s little room for novelty with the 3-Point Challenge and the Home Run Derby. There can be small rule changes but the goal of the Home Run Derby is to hit as many home runs as possible based on a limit of time/pitches. The 3-Point Challenge requires the same thing for shooting 3-Pointers: limited time/balls to shoot. There’s pageantry but it’s not primarily pageantry. The Slam Dunk Contest is. The scoring is very subjective. It may be that redundancy is welcomed when it’s built into the contest (hit home runs; shoot 3-pointers) but not when novelty is what’s demanded. It’s really difficult to do something new during the Slam Dunk Contest and this is precisely what this challenge requires!

I like redundancy and predictability, personally. My TV binges this summer have includes rewatches of Monk, Suits, and Ugly Betty—three series that I’ve seen already. The only “new” show I’ve watched in recent weeks has been Cobra Kai. Is this normal? And does the predictability and familiarity that these shows offer me, mixed with nostalgia, also appear in familiar, repetitive contests like the Home Run Derby and the 3-Point Challenge? I doubt people rewatch “Reality TV” which has an immediacy to it, a novelty that once it’s been seen becomes old. I could be wrong there but if I’m not then this offers us an interesting look into what entertains us and keeps our attention over time.

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A few comments on “Spinoza’s Religion” by Clare Carlisle

A couple of years ago, I found myself becoming curious about the philosophy and theology of Benedict De Spinoza. The main attraction was his seeming refusal to separate “God” from the material world. I’m bothered by cosmic dualisms that suppose “God” to be so radically separate from the natural world that it’s difficult to understand how there could be any interaction. It’s akin to the mind-body dualism introduced René Descartes. I’ve found pantheisms attractive for this reason, which is why Indian philosophers like Śaṅkara, with their non-dualist thinking, appeal to me. I supposed Spinoza to be a pantheist based on what I was reading about him and through samplings of his work Ethics. I taught my students about his non-dualist, seemingly pantheist, maybe crypto-atheist philosophy-theology based on my understanding of him.

Now that I’ve read Clare Carlisle’s Spinoza’s Religion, I think I misunderstood him! I’m not doing a full book review here but I do want to say for those who are curious, Carlisle’s Spinoza is neither a pantheist nor an atheist. Instead, Carlisle speaks of Spinoza’s “Being in God” theology, which feels very close to being pantheistic. I would say that it’s similar to the Indian philosopher Madhva, except if I understand Madhva, he understood material reality to be coeternal with divine reality while simultaneously dependent upon divine reality. So, he remained a dualist, not a monist/pantheist. Spinoza doesn’t seem to advocate a view like that.

Instead, Carlisle’s Spinoza is something of a non-Christian Thomist. When I tried to explain Carlisle’s views of Spinoza to a friend, he thought it sounded a bit Whiteheadian, so that’s something to consider. My impression is that if Carlisle is correct, Spinoza imagines the divine as the very ground for the existence of everything. Any discussion around theism/atheism is somewhat non-sensical since it would be like debating whether existence itself exists! Spinoza rejected anthropomorphic depictions of God (though he thought they may have a social value, e.g. a divine law giver). Spinoza’s God doesn’t seem “impersonal” in a Daoist or “the Force” in Star Wars type of way but he’s definitely not a massive bearded man in the sky either. In many ways, one could argue that he’s an Enlightenment descendent on Maimonides, since Maimonides’ theology seems to have had a similar trajectory.

Anyway, the book is great. If you’re interested in Spinoza or theology proper or theology and philosophy/science, this is a recommended read!