Tag: book

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Why I’m still a Christian

There have been many times when I’ve asked myself, “Why am I still a Christian?” Admittedly, I don’t ask this question when pondering global Christianity, but instead, American Christianity. I find myself looking at the American church and wondering, “Is this my religion?” And if so, what does that say about me? Obviously, I don’t ask this question because I have a view of all American Christians. I’m not seeing those quietly serving food in a soup kitchen, or the pastor counseling someone who has lost a loved one. I’m seeing the personalities that make it onto cable network news, or the famous and wealthy televangelists, or those who have a large social media following. Because of the primacy of their place in society, and my lack of familiarity with what they call “Christianity,” I feel the urge to distance myself from the label. This sort of maneuver has proven wise in the past. As much as I would’ve liked to have seen the wonderful word “Evangelical” mean “people who try to live out the Gospel,” it means, in my view, something utterly opposite. There was a point when I identified as “Evangelical,” but decided that the word had become a lost cause, and chose to abandon it, lest someone assume my politics, morality, ethics, etc., before I could clarify them myself, not to mention my theology! But “Christian” is older and broader in meaning than Evangelical. So, I’ve retained it.

Even when identifying as a Christian, what I mean is that I’m trying to be one, not that I’ve arrived. I see being a Christian as an ambition, less so a status. If being a Christian means living like Christ, then I hope to be on my way, but I’m nowhere near home.

On the other hand, I know I’m a Christian as much as I know I’m an American. It’s something that I’ve inherited. And though I could choose, theoretically, to try to leave Christianity for a new religion, or no religion at all, just like I could choose, theoretically, to leave the United States, never return, maybe even apply for citizenship elsewhere, it’s the very fact that I feel frustrated with Christianity, like I often feel frustrated with the United States, that serves as proof that this is already home. The church is home, spiritually. The United States is home, nationalistically. I have residence in the “City of God” and the “City of Man”. My frustration indicates care and investment, not the opposite.

Chesterton on Christianity’s Critics
The great G.K. Chesterton made this point at the beginning of The Everlasting Man. He talks about critics of “the Church”. (He’s Catholic, so I’ll go with the capital “C” he uses.) The critics that he addresses are those who have departed from the Church. Today, we might speak of those who have or are “deconstructing” (presuming that buzz word continues to buzz). Now, I don’t want to share Chesterton’s thoughts as a way of criticizing anyone who is deconstructing or realizing that Christianity isn’t for them. I want to share his thoughts to explain why I know that Christianity remains for me, even if I struggle to settle into what that means for my day-to-day life. With that clarification in mind, let me return to Chesterton, who says of Christianity’s critics (pp. 10-11 of the 1993 Ignatius Press version):

They cannot get out of the penumbra of Christian controversy. They cannot be Christians and they cannot leave off being Anti-Christians. Their whole atmosphere is the atmosphere of a reaction: sulks, perversity, petty criticism. They still live in the shadow of the faith and have lost the light of the faith.

In light of this observation, he remarks (p. 11):

Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard”

Chesterton uses “a Confucian” as an example, saying, “He does not judge Christianity calmly as a Confucian would; he does not judge it as he would judge Confucianism.” This resonates with me. As someone who teaches comparative religion, I try to be as objective as possible. I try to represent religions as they are, not as they ought to be. I recognize my status as an outsider to Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc., and avoid weighing in on the internal debates within those communities. I’ll never feel comfortable saying “that’s heretical Judaism” or “that’s not true Islam”. I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying this for professional reasons, but also personal ones. I’m not Jewish; I’m not Muslim. Professionally, I don’t weigh in on what makes something heretical or true Christianity, but personally, I do have strong feelings about when Christianity is being done right and when it’s being done wrong. I do think there are healthier and less healthy expressions of my faith. I don’t have those feelings about other religions, at least not in the same way. (Obviously, as an outsider, I would prefer to engage Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, who are open minded, tolerant, willing to participate in interfaith work, etc.)

It’s not that I don’t agree or disagree with certain teachings of the various religions, but that I’m not (as?) emotionally invested in those disagreements. In fact, I prefer to find the agreements for the sake of interfaith cooperation! Similarly, I may be abstractly bothered by how things are done in China or Russia, but I don’t feel the weight of it like I do whatever is happening in my home country. Why? Because I’m not so foolish to think I have any say in “the world,” but I’m just foolish enough to think that I have a very, very, minuscule say in what happens in “America”. As an outsider, I have no standing within theological debates within Islam. As an insider, I’m just foolish enough to think I have a very, very, minuscule say in what happens within Christianity. I can remark calmly, as an outsider, about events within China, or theological disputes within Islam; I’m less calm about events within the United States, or theological disputes within Christianity.

And I quoted Chesterton to make this point. You know you’re not a Christian in the fullest sense when you don’t care, or don’t care enough to get bothered by much. I do care about China and Russia, but not enough to travel there to do anything in those parts of the world, or to seek citizenship in those countries. I do care about Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, but not enough to get involved in internal debates about what to believe, how to behave, and who gets to gatekeep who belongs. Whenever I’ve thought, “Maybe Christianity isn’t for me,” I’ve realized that the same care that causes me to think about this subject is the care that answers the question for me. I can’t be as objective about Christianity, at least not as a whole, at least not within my realm of minuscule influence, as I can about other religions.

The Imaginative Effort
Chesteron claims that when we make “the imaginative effort to see the whole thing from the outside,” of which he means “the Church” or Christianity,” we find that it really looks like what is traditionally said about it inside….To put it shortly, the moment we are impartial about it, we know why people are partial to it.” (p. 12) This isn’t to deny the validity of outside criticisms. As a Christian, I take to heart and feel the sting of comments like the one attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” But from Chesterton’s perspective, I recognize that when I look at other religions curiously, I try to find the things that I admire. This is what Barbara Brown Taylor called “holy envy”. This concept follows the guidelines for interfaith dialogue set forth by the theologian Krister Stendahl:

  1. When trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion, not its enemies.
  2. Don’t compare your best to their worst.
  3. Leave room for holy envy.

To better understand “holy envy,” read my review of Brown’s book: “Recently read: Brown Taylor’s ‘Holy Envy'”. In short, the idea is that there is always something nourishing to be found in religions that aren’t your own. There’s always something that another tradition might do better, or make clearer, etc., from which you can learn. But that tradition, on the whole, remains one other than your own. If I try to take this approach to Christianity (seeing it “from the outside” as Chesterton challenged his readers to do), then I do find the beauty within Christianity that can be easy to miss when I’m distracted by all the expressions of Christianity that seem to be doing it so terribly wrong. This is similar to how easily it can be for feelings of patriotism to fade when your conationalists, or the party in power, are representing your country globally in ways that seem antithetical to the values that we’ve told ourselves make us great. But we have to remember that just as our frustration with our nation tells us that we value it, and that there’s something we find worth our concern, so with one’s religion. And this is how I know it would be, for me, hypocritical to do anything other than confess to being a Christian, and do what little I can to try to contribute to a more positive, life-affirming expression of my faith in the world. If the day comes when I stop talking about Christianity, or only with minimal curiosity that’s mostly void of any attached emotions, that’s the day that I’ll know that I’ve left Christianity.

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Resuming my series on Simone Weil’s “vital needs of the human soul”

A while back, I began a series of posts on Simone Weil’s “vital needs of the human soul” found in her book, The Need for Roots. I got distracted by other things, and by the time I thought of resuming the series, I had begun my Substack “Philosophy of Human Flourishing”. So, the posts are there now! Here are the first two:

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Simon Critchley on our desire for asceticism

It may do the philosopher Simon Critchley an injustice to take these two paragraphs out of the context of his book, Mysticism, when they’re somewhat unfathomable without the context of chapter 2 (“Seven Adverbs that God Loveth”), but I have to post these words somewhere for future reference! Critchley writes (p. 87)):

I am curious about the meaningfulness of asceticism today. The forms of ascetic practice in which people engage are legion: hot yoga, ceaseless meditations, extreme fasting, various forms of detox, excessive exercise, and compulsive devotion to routine, which was particularly acute during the COVID-19 pandemic. Or asceticism becomes pathologized, as with anorexia, bulimia, and other ‘disorders.’

We are strongly drawn by the desire for asceticism, it seems to me. We are fascinated by the extremity of mystical practice—think of the wildly self-destructive antics of female medieval mystics like Christina the Astonishing described earlier, the self-mortification of monks, stylites, anchorites, and the bands of itinerant flagellants in the early Middle Ages. But we find such behavior and its metaphysical demands too rigorous and weighty for our softer secular souls. For us, the purgation of sin has become a juice detox, the flagellation has become our relation to a bad selfie posted on social media.

Why did these two paragraphs grab my attention. I pondered that for a moment and I think it’s because it says something similar to the entire book by Carolyn Chen, Work, Pray, Code: When Work Becomes Religion in the Silicon Valley. She shows how religious we humans are…even when we’re super irreligious. We need patterns and rhythms. Religion used to provide that to most of us. As we become more secular, the desire for order and meaning doesn’t go away, we just plant it elsewhere. Harvey Cox made many similar observations in The Market as God. Even the great atheistic philosopher, Daniel Dennett, toward the end of the documentary I, Pastafari, says something about how secularism shouldn’t go back to the superstitions of religion but sure needs to discover all of the social benefits that those religions offered before it’s too late. I guess what I’m saying is that as annoying as statements like, “you may not be religious but you have a religion” or “we all worship something” may feel to those who have left organized religion, the fact is that they contain a truth. We humans can’t dump the things that made us human over all this long millennia of our evolution. At best, we can reword and reinterpret them. I think Critchley captures this with relation to the mystical impulse.

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Brief comments on Tamler Sommers’ “Why Honor Matters”

As a long time listener of the podcast Very Bad Wizards, I purchased Tamler Sommers’ book Why Honor Matters with a positive disposition toward the author but a negative one toward the focus of the book: honor and honor cultures. My moral/ethical leanings are shaped by a “dignity framework,” whether that be because of my upbringing as a Christian and the explorations in Christian theology that have indoctrinated me, or (and?) because of my attempt to develop a rational basis for my moral and ethical beliefs that don’t appeal to divine revelation (often a secular derivative of Christian morality, if I’m honest). Right or wrong, Christian morality is presented as emerging from the example of a man, Jesus, who appealed to dignity (by way of the imago dei) in the honor/shame culture of the Roman Empire, with obvious favoritism toward the former. Jesus suffered because of an honor culture (i.e. his Passion) but the Kingdom of God that he preached imagined the world as a dignity utopia. This paradigm makes honor cultures look archaic and unevolved.

Sommers’ book doesn’t abandon the value of dignity-based morality but instead sheds light on the strengths of honor-based morality that we have lost in societies that have abandoned an honor-shame structure. He doesn’t ignore that weaknesses of honor culture—for example, honor killings, cyclical revenge, and such. He builds a steel man for the values of honor culture that I found at time convincing and at other times at least worth pondering further. And this book knocked me off my high horse by putting a spotlight on where dignity culture has failed (e.g. the American justice system and our world’s largest prison population).

I was attracted to the book for a negative reason: I’ve begun to think, contrary to some, that we’re not a society that needs less shame but one that may need more of it. I don’t mean old school, religious, Puritan-style shame. But I do think that social media has revealed a side of us in “Western” culture that’s gotten very ugly. It’s individualism taken to its most absurd extreme. We do what we want and we don’t care who it impacts, as long as we enjoy it. I think there should be some shame in that. The flip side of this is that there needs to be more people who want to live honorable lives: who care about their name, their reputation, and that of those closest to them. (For example, I want the name “LePort” to mean something that it definitely hasn’t mean in previous generations, and I want it to be a good name that my son can proudly own.) If you’re generally interested in a philosopher making a defense of the strengths of honor-based morality, or if you’ve had a concern similar to my own, then I highly recommend this book. It’s well-written and its case is argued as about as good as anyone can argue for honor-based morality in our current context.

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Authenticity, Bad Faith, and Bad Authenticity

A year or so ago, I heard a talk on authenticity. The speaker told the audience that they knew that they had acted in ways that were disappointing to the community, that they had caused unnecessary trouble, and that they had hurt and offended people but that ultimately, they would do it all over again because they were being authentic to themselves. Some of the people in attendance applauded this speech, affirming this definition of authenticity: being true to who one is. I was appalled by it.

For one, I reject the idea that there’s an essential “I” to be “discovered”. This is why I find personality tests to be meaningless. I don’t agree with the presentation of selfhood that suggests that we’re a fixed self that we need to discover/understand to be happy. While there is much about ourselves that remains consistent over time, there’s also much that remains in constant flux, and we choose (however strong or weak you want to define that word) who we want to become. We don’t discover who we are already. I’ve been influenced by Buddhist and Existentialist accounts of personhood to the point where such ideas about the self—that we are who we are and the best that we can do is discover it and better understand it—seem insensible to me (see “Buddhism, Existentialism, and the Enneagram”).

I find what that speaker called “authenticity” to be contrary to authenticity; I find what that speaker called “authenticity” to be what Existentialists call “Bad Faith”. In her book, How To Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment, Skye C. Cleary defines “Bad Faith” this way (p. 253):

“Self-deception which involves denying our own or others’ freedom. We are in bad faith when we avoid the truth of our life and situation, when we deny we have choices, or when we reject responsibility for our actions.”

The speech that I heard fits the definition of “Bad Faith” ala Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The speaker denied their freedom to reflect and change. They chose to “avoid the truth of” their “life and situation”.

So, what then would I say is “Authenticity”. I return to Cleary (pp. x-xi):

“To become authentic means to create our own essence. It’s the creation that is vital here. We don’t discover ourselves, we make ourselves. Authenticity is a way of expressing our freedom: to realize and accept that we are free; to be lucid about what we can and can’t choose about ourselves, our situation, and others; and to use our freedom as a tool to shape ourselves. Our selves are not the product of a chain of impersonal causes and effects. Creating ourselves is an art form—the act of intentionally choosing who we become.”

Existentialist thinkers say “existence precedes essence”. We exist but we’re not defined yet. We’re born with certain characteristics, yes, and Existentialist call this our “facticity”. But what makes us different from say a rock or a cactus, is that our “facticity” doesn’t completely define us. We can experience “transcendence” as humans where rise above our facticity to give ourselves greater meaning, or to create our “essence”. This “creation” is what makes us authentic.

This is contrary to the talk I heard, or personality tests that help us “discover who we are”. For Existentialist, there’s no permanent “I” to be “true to”; there’s an “I” that continues to create itself. So, when this speaker said they recognized all the wrong they had done but then chose to double-down on it rather than confessing the wrong and declaring a desire to do better, they weren’t being authentic at all; they were acting in Bad Faith thereby creating “bad authenticity” or “authenticity” as it’s understood in the crudest and laziest way possible. If we reject our responsibility for ourselves in the name of letting our “true self” shine, then we’re being inauthentic because we’re denying that we’re making a decision to remain who we’ve been in spite of our awareness of ourselves and how that awareness demands that we change for our sake and the sake of others. We’re being inauthentic in that we’re (in the words of St. Paul) thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, not recognizing that as humans we’re categorically no better than other humans even as we convince ourselves that we are and that we have the right to act in ways that we would never accept from others if they acted that way toward us.

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Simone Weil’s “vital needs of the human soul”: #1. Order

I mentioned the philosopher Simone Weil a few posts ago (see “Simone Weil’s rootedness”), and her book, The Need for Roots. In that post, I mentioned my desire to meditate on her “vital needs of the human soul”. This post will be the first in a series where I’ll summarize what she says about each one and then share my own meditation on it. For Weil, these vital needs can be understood this way: (1) they are an attempt to answer this question: “what needs related to the life of the soul corresponds to the body’s need for food, sleep, and warmth”; (2) and they “must never be confused with desires, whims, fantasies or vices” (p. 8, Schwartz translation). While this may sound theological in nature, and for Weil it seems like there’s no line between theological and philosophical thinking, let me say that if the word “soul” is distracting, try to think of psychological well-being. Also, I don’t think one needs to assume the a soul/body or mind/body dualism to find value in this list. It’s common to speak of physical and psychological needs as distinct even if we believe that the mind/soul/psyche is material.

The list of vital needs
First, let me share the list that Weil created. It’s fifteen items long, so this series may take some time:

  1. Order
  2. Freedom
  3. Obedience
  4. Initiative & Responsibility
  5. Equality
  6. Hierarchy
  7. Honor
  8. Punishment
  9. Freedom of Opinion/Association
  10. Security
  11. Risk
  12. Private Property
  13. Shared Property (“participation in collective goods”)
  14. Rootedness
  15. The Need for Truth

The reason that I want to (1) summarize and then (2) reflect/meditate upon each is that I’m not sure if I agree with this list as a whole. As I re-read each one, it’ll give me a chance to critically evaluate what Weil wrote. If there’s space, I want to end my class “Philosophy for Human Flourishing” with a lesson on this list, so this gives me a chance to really evaluate it. Let’s begin with “Order”.

Summarizing Weil’s comments on “Order”
Weil calls the need for “Order” “the main need of the soul” that is “the one closest to its eternal destiny” (p. 8). What does she mean by “Order”? Her definition is as follows: “a web of social relations such that no one is forced to violate strict obligations in order to fulfill other obligations” (pp. 8-9). For context, Weil begins the book (p. 1), “The concept of obligations takes precedence over that of rights, which are subordinate and relative to it. A right is not effective on its own, but solely in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.” In other words, I can demand people recognize my rights all day, but if they feel no obligation to me then there’s nothing to the language of rights; and if I don’t feel obligated to others, then I won’t recognize their rights. As she said, “…a right that is not recognized by anyone amounts to very little.” Also (p. 1), “He in turn has rights when he is considered from the point of view of others who recognize obligations towards him”. 

With a shift in our attention from rights to obligations, “Obligations are only binding on human beings” and “Identical obligations bind all human beings” (p. 2). Our identical obligations to other human beings means, “There is an obligation towards every human being through the mere fact that they are a human being” (p. 2). Her foundation for these claims is definitely theological in nature. She says that the obligations are not based on “de facto situations, or on legal precedent, or on customs, social structure or relations of force, or on the legacy of the past, or the supposed direction of history…This obligation is not based on any convention” (pp. 4-5). Instead, “This obligation is eternal.” Why? “It echoes the eternal destiny of all human beings.” Since, theologically speaking, the human is eternal, so our obligation to these other eternal being with which we surround ourselves. “This obligation is unconditional.”

When Weil describes our obligations to every other human, they include “not to let them suffer from hunger”; “shelter, clothing, warmth, hygiene and care for the sick”; and those things that are “not physical” but part of the “moral life” (p. 6). With this in mind, we see that “Order” means that making sure that people can fulfill their varying obligations to others. Weil mourns, writing “Nowadays, there is a very high degree or disorder and incompatibility between obligations.” But she’s not confident that this order is possible. She writes (p. 9), “Unfortunately, there is no method for reducing the incompatibility. It is not even certain that the idea of an order in which all obligations are compatibility is not a fantasy.”

She takes hope is the widely diverse universe working in a synchronized way, and “truly beautiful works of art” doing the same. But it seems to me that this is the best she can offer: a hope. She writes (p. 9):

Lastly, our awareness of our various obligations always stems from a desire for good that is unique, fixed and identical to itself for each man, from the cradle to the grave. This desire perpetually stirring inside us prevents us from ever resigning ourselves to situations where the obligations are incompatible. Either we resort to lying in order to forget they exist, or we struggle blindly to extricate ourselves from them.

If I’m reading her correctly, Weil is saying that we desire a world in which our obligations are not in conflict. This is a need of ours, even the central one. But it’s also one that may be “a fantasy”. We want a morally structured society. I presume that this implies that a morally dysfunctional society leaves us unable to experience this order that we crave

Reflecting on Weil’s comments on “Order”
Every philosophical thought experiment from the trolly-problem on is a reminder that we live in a morally tense universe. As I wrote in my last post, “Effective Altruism and moral intuition”, there are moral systems that make a lot of sense but then when pressed, feel immoral at points. This is true of a lying deontologist and a hard-line utilitarian. But the desire that we have for such a framework is real, and if I’m understanding Weil, then maybe the constant striving for such “Order” is the best we can achieve.

Our pursuit of “Order” and our desire to create it for others is why every moral treatise and moral system has come into existence. We argue for our preferred morality in hopes of finding the morality that will work for all of us. This hasn’t happened yet but again, I think the goal is noble and what’s the alternative. Even if we concede some form of moral relativism, that’s a system, that’s a structure that we land upon in order to find “Order”.

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Hannah Arendt’s “two faculties” and “two…different mental activities”

A week ago, I wrote about Svend Brinkmann’s distinction between the “problem-solving” and the “meaning generation” forms of thinking (“Two forms of thinking: problem-solving and meaning generating”). In Hannah Arendt‘s Life of the Mind, she presents a similar framing of “two…different mental activities” (p. 14). Prompted by Immanuel Kant’s “scandal of reason” “that is, the fact that our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that it nevertheless can’t help thinking about”, i.e. “‘ultimate questions’ of God, freedom, and immortality”, Arendt argues that we have “the distinguishing of two faculties”. She calls them “reason and intellect” that she says “coincides with…thinking and knowing” which she frames as “mental activities”. These “mental activities” align with “two altogether different concerns, meaning…and cognition” (p. 14).

Kant’s “scandal of reason” can be addressed when we recognize the differences between:

  1. Our “faculty” of “reason”, that is experienced through the “mental activity” of “thinking” which aligns with the “concern” of “meaning”.
  2. Our “faculty” of “intellect”, that is experienced through the “mental activity” of “knowing” which aligns with the “concern” of “cognition”.

These two framings align with Brinkmann’s (1) “meaning generating” and (2) “problem-solving”. If we combine Brinkmann’s categories with Arendt’s, here’s what we get. Arendt uses the word “reason” to refer to the type of thinking (“mental activity” which she calls “thinking”) that is concerned with “meaning” or Brinkmann’s “meaning generating”. I might use my faculty of “reason” to “think” about the “meaning” of a concept like “God” or “freedom”. In response to Kant, yes, our mind is unable to ultimately arrive at sure “knowledge” of whether there’s a God, or what it means for us to be free, or if we’re immortal in some sense, but that doesn’t prevent us from pondering these questions seriously. Brinkmann’s “meaning generation” can be “instrumental” but more often than not, it’s “intrinsic”. We want meaning because meaning gives us the basis for living as humans rather than as robots. But as humans, we don’t exist only to “solve” problems. As humans, we benefit from reflecting on what we think “love” is or should look like (for example), even if there’s never an objective answer to be found to our questions.

Arendt uses the word “intellect” to refer to the type of thinking (“mental activity”) which she calls “knowing” that is concerned with “cognition” or Brinkmann’s “problem-solving”. I might use my faculty of “intellect” to “know” through “cognition” the answer to a mathematical question, or a question of logic, or through the empiricism of science. Brinkmann’s “problem-solving” can be “intrinsic” but more often than not, it’s “instrumental”. We want to solve problems because they help us live better in our world. As humans, if we focused on meaning alone, we’d starve to death. We’d live far less enjoyable lives with less time for leisurely thinking and other activities. As humans, we benefit from creating new technologies, trying to cure cancer, etc.

As I said in the aforementioned previous post, I don’t see these two approaches to thinking as opposites. But our society has begun to create an imbalance. We value intellect/knowing/cognition, or “problem-solving” but we’ve begun to devalue reason/thinking/meaning. In the United States, we’ve been playing with the health of our democracy. I know that education alone won’t save us. In fact, I don’t think “meaning generation” alone will save us. But I don’t think democracies can survive without “meaning generation”.

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Two forms of thinking: problem-solving and meaning generating

A couple of weeks ago, I finished Svend Brinkmann‘s brilliant little book, Think: In Defence of a Thoughtful Life. In the first chapter (“What do you think?”) he argues that there are two forms of thinking: (1) problem-solving and (2) meaning generating (p. 18). I found this helpful as someone who teaches religion and philosophy in a society that continues to devalue the humanities in favor of STEM. STEM focused on Brinkmann’s “problem-solving” form of thinking. He describes it as “instrumental and intrinsic thinking” that “can either be a tool in service to something else, or an end in itself with (intrinsic) value per se.” He gives examples of the “instrumental” and “intrinsic” form of “problem-solving” style thinking (p. 19). For “instrumental” he says, “For example, choosing the right recruit after a job interview”. For intrinsic, he says, “For example, doing a crossword”.

The “instrumental” approach to “problem-solving” thinking solves a problem in service to something else. This style of thinking is done in order to choose the right person for the job for the benefit of the company that’s doing the hiring. On the other hand, the “intrinsic” approach would include, as with the example, doing a crossword or another puzzle. I have a colleague who plays the New York Times’ game “Wordle” almost religiously. He is solving a problem for the pure enjoyment of solving the problem. There’s no other end.

My colleagues who teach math, science, and for the most part, Innovation and Design, are helping students learn to value instrumental thinking. This is a valuable skill. And it’s a skill our society values. But it’s not the only style of thinking nor is it the only style of thinking that’s valuable.

Brinkmann’s second style is “meaning generation”. He uses the example of when we “think back” on a situation that was formative in our lives in order to better understand it. This approach to thinking “is related to daydreaming and reverie” (p. 18). This means it can be “proactive” as much as “retroactive” thinking.

Brinkmann writes (p. 18):

“Thinking as meaning generation doesn’t need to be about our life, but can be about more general existential or cosmological questions: Is there a God? Is the universe infinite? Is there life after death? What would the ideal society look like? From where does the experience of beauty stem? Do we have a duty to forgive? What is love?”

When we think on these things, “the point is not to ‘solve the problem’ and move on, but to let our minds wander and mull them over.” The examples Brinkmann gives for “meaning generation” style thinking include “instrumental” and “intrinsic” examples as well (p. 19). For “instrumental” he says, “For example, writing an exam essay about your future”. For “intrinsic” he says, “For example, reflecting freely on the meaning of life”. We may write the essay in order to help us think clearly about what we want to do to shape the life we want to live. But we may reflect on the meaning of life for the sole purpose that we want to consider what all of this means. Meaning is inherently valuable just like the joy of solving problems can be.

Brinkmann argues that “children tend to learn—and master—problem-solving before meaning generation”. His claim is that meaning generation “requires maturity and depth beyond the reach of children” and that “Philosophical thoughtfulness calls for a more mature intellect” (p. 20). I want to say “yes” and “no” to this because I do think children can begin participating in meaning generation though I get what he’s saying.

While both styles are important, it makes me wonder: what does it say about our society that we’ve placed such heavy emphasis only on one style. The humanities are dying. Fewer college students are majoring in humanities related fields. I’m convinced that this is good for capitalism but detrimental to democracy. We need a society that can invent and make and fix. We need a society that can solve problems like climate change and cancer. But for our own mental health, collective well-being, and the common good, we need people to think about why we do what we do, why we want what we want, where we want to go and what we want to become. If a society can do things but they can’t explain why any of it is meaningful outside of capitalist terms such as wealth and employment, I fear we’re headed for ruin. I get it: before someone commits to student loans and majoring in a field of study for four to six years, they want to know that there will be a paycheck on the other side. This is practical and wise. But our lives can’t be just about our work. It can’t be just about our careers. Honestly, that benefits only those at the highest point of our economic class system. The rest of us better learn to ask what it is that gives meaning to our lives outside the 9-5.

I worry that there’s reason why cultural forces want us to participate in only one form of thinking as a society; why our government, universities, wealthy elite, and others tell us that we need to do something “practical” that’s a “real job” and my hunch is that they don’t want us to stop and ask ourselves “why” we are doing what we’re doing; why we’re pouring our energies into “problem-solving” while ignoring “meaning generation”. I think that if more of us stopped to participate in “meaning generation” it may lead us to reevaluate how we spend the several short decades of our life on this planet.

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What do we want for our students? Dispositional growth!

Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about shifts in my thinking regarding what I teach and how I teach it. I tend to be an introspective and retrospective person by nature. This has been super charged by the news that I received several months ago that by the end of the year, I’ll be a “dad”. I began to wonder, “What kind of education will I want my kid to have when they enter high school?” Also, “If I were to be my child’s teacher someday, what/how would I want to teach them?” These questions haven’t led to a midlife crisis. I enjoy what I’m doing as a teacher. I have no desire to do anything else. But I’ve thought a lot about the future relevance of what I’m teaching currently, and I’ve second guessed the viability of the field of study to which I’ve dedicated so much of my life, at least whether or not I’m interested in the questions that I would need to keep asking in order to continue being engaged.

Additionally, I’ve reflected on the environment I hope to create in my classroom but also outside my classroom, as in what place do I think education has within the context of the adolescent’s life. In a recent post, “Homework, rigor, and being the ‘chill’ teacher”, I wrote about how I try to measure the success of my teaching in ways that don’t align naturally with the current modus operandi of American education. What do I want to see? I want to see students learning how to read: to read thoughtfully, carefully, and intentionally. I want them to become accustom to taking notes and using those notes. I want them to practice putting what they’ve learned into their own words, so that they take ownership of their knowledge rather than thoughtlessly parroting how others say it, or worse, outsourcing their learning to emerging AI or the top Google search results. I plan to help students learn to develop arguments (in the philosophical sense) where they can show their reasoning. I want students to be mentally tired at times in my class but I want the culture of my classes to be such that when they look back on their experiences, it felt “easy” because what I was trying to teach them became natural to them, and while they were pushed to stretch themselves, they weren’t driven to anxiety. These are ideals, aspirations.

I purchased a book titled The Art of Teaching Philosophy: Reflective Values and Concrete Practices to help me think through these ideals and aspirations. One essay captured what I’ve been feeling:

That first paragraph from David W. Concepción‘s essay (pp, 189-196) grabbed my attention. That’s what I’ve been trying to articulate. I want to focus on dispositional growth. And this exercise at the beginning of the essay grasps what I’ve been seeking. What do I want to stick with my students when they reflect on the experience of my classes years after they take them? Those are my “learning objectives”!

I completed the exercise. My gut response is something like this:

  1. I want them to use their knowledge to increase their inward happiness but also the outward good that they will do in the world
  2. I want them to become more thoughtful/self-examined/self-aware
  3. I want them to develop an open posture toward learning
  4. I want them to become more tolerant/less dogmatic
  5. I want them to develop and sharpen their critical thinking skills

Concepción’s chapter addresses concerns that administrators may have that such dispositional goals are immeasurable. He argues convincingly that all learning assessments are “[inferential] through proxy”. Furthermore, he provides guidance for how objectives that matter to philosophers and other teachers under the umbrella of the humanities, such as increased “curiosity, intellectual humility, comfort with ambiguity, and fair-mindedness” (p. 191), can be measured and the types of assessments/rubrics that would do the job. I won’t spoil the chapter for those are interested. I will recommend it! I think Concepción is exactly right that our real learning objectives have to do with the type of people we help our students become. The information we provide them is necessary but not sufficient in itself. As C. Thi Nguyen writes in another essay in the book (“On Writing Fun, Joyful, Open-Ended Exams”, pp. 297-303; here, p. 298): “Many of us have come to think that good pedagogy is not just about the transmission of information. It is also about trying to encourage a mindset to foster intellectual virtue.”

This may be uncomfortable to say, especially in our current political environment where teachers are frequently targeted, often accused of “indoctrination” (a rich, though pitiful accusation as any teacher who has struggled to get students to complete work or pay attention in class for more than a few minutes is aware) but education includes values as much as (though likely more than) it includes information. If we teachers are honest, we don’t teach because we think we can compete with Wikipedia, Google, or ChatGPT; we teach because we believe we can model and impart intellectual virtues that help out students grow into flourishing humans. As soon as we admit this to ourselves, and articulate it aloud, we’ll begin to see that dispositional goals are the most important goals for most of us.