I wonder why some Christians lose their faith when they take philosophical courses. I knew a very intelligent guy, who was a very committed Christian, who took philosophy (I think he majored in it) at a well known Christian school. It seemed to throw him for a loop, and he dropped out of attending church for some time (years, I believe), before coming back. An aside question, so forgive me. I do remember that Francis Schaeffer told his students that when reading philosophy, they needed to be reading twice as much in Scripture (or something to that effect).If I had faced this important point about three years or so ago, I would say immediately because in general, the church doesn't teach people to think. Now, though, I think it is a bit more complicated in the sense that no college student is adequately prepared for their first philosophy class, except in very rare cases. Reading primary-source philosophy is so challenging to students because it's not at all clear why these thinkers are asking the questions they are. We live in a culture where other kinds of inquiry are prized, and the insularity of discipline and specialization are encouraged. Science, math, philosophy, and theology or religious studies are not integrated the way they were in earlier periods of Western history. Somehow in our contemporary mind, these issues are either already settled or not worth thinking about (because they don't quite make a buck).
Certainly the contemporary Christian life requires balance and integration of rational inquiry and spiritual examination (although they are in no way opposed to one another), but our experiences as young Christians are heavy on the spiritual side. We fail to recognize the integrated nature of our intellectual heritage, and in doing so fail to prepare for the different ways in which individuals have answered questions that we've already answered in certain ways. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but my recent experience as a teacher indicates a general unpreparedness for the problems philosophy is concerned to answer.
In my intro class this semester, I've let the book do the leading in the sense that Pojman begins by discussing the proper attitude that philosophy requires. I'm hoping that by challenging students on an attitudinal level, the ground might be prepared for accepting philosophical problems and criticizing their proposed solutions. The perpetual challenge for the individual teaching philosophy is to train people to take philosophy out of the classroom, instead of engendering an hour and fifteen minute period twice a week where we suspend our regular lives and questions in favor of these more speculative issues. How does philosophy become influential for living and not a mere thought experiment?
2 comments:
Great post! I'm interested in hearing how it happened for you.
For me, philosophy transformed from a thought expiriment (or a bag of tricks) to a dynamic in my whole life when I was really struck by some of the central questions: How do we know something? What is real, really? What ought I do?
I know those questions sound trite, but they suddenly struck me in a new way. If memory serves, one way I let philosophy influence my life generally was that I asked everybody those questions - my grandpa, my pastor, my mom, the guy at the bar, or whomever happened to be within hearing range... I would also have to say that I started to listen carefully at that time too.
nedric: Great questions. I never thought about asking myself those questions, though. :)
When did philosophy become influential for living for me? I think it was a kind of gradual change, very similar to the process you've described. I guess I first thought it was something other than just BS the night in high school when my Dad sat down with me and we talked about the Meditations together. That probably went a long way in making it credible.
Definitely the question "How do you know?" has always been lurking in the back of my mind, particularly as a result of that first exposure to epistemology in high school. We read Descartes, Locke, and Pascal. At the time I was intensely frustrated -- I once ran from the room singing the "I'm a little teapot" song (nice adolescent maturity, there).
I don't think I actually decided it needed to be my job until my junior year in college when I took a class in modern philosophy and was totally consumed by the ideas and the thinkers. It was back again to Descartes, and this time around Hume and Kant and I was totally sold.
Largely it's been an unconscious process in the sense that the questions of philosophy happen to be actually a straightforward way of coping with experience.
Fascinating. I hope that some of the other readers will weigh in on the concluding question of this post.
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