c o u r s e s | teaching

fall 2006

IDIS 150: DCM | Rethinking Common Grace in an Age of Empire
The notion of “common grace” is a central component of the Reformed tradition's affirmation that “the whole world belongs to God.” Rejecting the dualism of other Christian traditions, common grace underwrites the value of every sphere of creational life, including all of the institutions that we find ourselves a part of: education, recreation, political life, and the world of commerce and economic distribution. All of these spheres, despite the fallenness of the world, remain “good” aspects of creation to be affirmed by Christians. But there is another side to the story. While common grace is an important theme in the Reformed tradition, the notion of “antitheses” is equally important, though little discussed of late. An antithetical stance asserts that while the structure of each sphere is a creational good, the direction of such spheres can be terribly misdirected. As such, Christians seeking to be agents of redemption should distance themselves from given configurations of these institutions. (Often the notion of common grace is employed to baptize not only the structure of given institutions, but also the direction of such institutions.) This course will intentionally seek to revive the notion of antithesis, suggesting that such a stance is particularly important in an age of “empire.”

PHIL 378 | Philosophy of Language and Interpretation
This course provides a historical and topical introduction to key themes in the philosophy of language and hermeneutics through an engagement with historical, analytic, and continental figures. The core of the course will be devoted to readings from Augustine, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Austin, Searle, Derrida, and Brandom--with a view to considering two areas of "applied" consideration: (1) the function and operation of language in literature, and (2) the role of interpretation in science. Students will be invited to participate in one of two "lab" tracks related to these applied themes. Lab (1) will explore Nicole Krauss' novel, A History of Love. Lab (2) will involve readings in hermeneutics and science, as well as lab experience in the sciences.

spring 2007

PHIL 153 | Fundamental Questions in Philosophy

PHIL 201/SOC 395| Philosophy of the Social Sciences
This course will consider the methodological foundations of the social sciences (sociology, psychology, economics, political science) with special attention to theories of the human person that govern paradigms in the social sciences.  Themes include the theory-laden nature of empirical observation, the differences between quantitative and qualitative social research, the role of interpretation, the relationship between theology and social science, and how questions of justice figure (or don't) in current social scientific practice.  Readings will include texts from Christian Smith, Charles Taylor, John Milbank, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Download a copy of the syllabus .

fall 2007

PHIL 201/SOC 395| Philosophy of the Social Sciences
This course will consider the methodological foundations of the social sciences (sociology, psychology, economics, political science) with special attention to theories of the human person that govern paradigms in the social sciences.  Themes include the theory-laden nature of empirical observation, the differences between quantitative and qualitative social research, the role of interpretation, the relationship between theology and social science, and how questions of justice figure (or don't) in current social scientific practice.  Readings will include texts from Christian Smith, Charles Taylor, John Milbank, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Download a copy of the syllabus .

spring 2008

Director, Semester in Britain Program, York St. John University, York, UK

Course Description:
Victorian Britain and Postmodern Culture: Contemporary Medievalisms

This course will explore what, intuitively, must seem like a paradoxical claim: that late 19th-century Victorian Britain has much to teach contemporary, “postmodern” culture. And more specifically, key figures and movements of 19th-century Britain have much to teach us about what is required of us as faithful citizens of the city of God as we inhabit our postmodern earthly city.
The course will consider four inter-related and overlapping movements in late 19th-century Britain which have had an impact on contemporary thinking in philosophy, theology, social justice, and the arts. So we will be listening to these 19th-century voices with 21st-century ears.

(1) The “Oxford Movement” of Pusey, Newman, and others was an Anglo-Catholic renewal movement within the Church of England which wed a deeply liturgical, catholic understanding of the Church with a robust sense of social concern and justice. This movement was a very important precursor of the contemporary “Cambridge Movement,” Radical Orthodoxy.
(2) The “Pre-Raphaelites”—who were also influenced by the Oxford Movement—were a brotherhood of artists who sought to challenge the modernism (i.e., Raphaelitism) of art in their day by a return to medieval (i.e., pre-Raphael) sources. Inspired by the Arthurian romances and the novels of Sir Walter Scott, the Pre-Raphaelites (led by Ruskin, and including D.G. Rossetti, Edward Burne- Jones, Sir Edward Millais, and later William Morris) translated their artistic vision into a social agenda. Their contemporary recovery of medieval sources was the basis of a strident social critique of industrial England.
(3) The social concerns of the Pre-Raphaelites inspired and overlapped with other movements of socialism in England that had distinctly Christian influences, particularly the “Christian socialism” of F.D. Maurice, but also the arts-and-crafts movement associated with William Morris. Both of these figures have been taken up in John Milbank’s “radically orthodox” vision of a Christian socialism and in certain streams of “new urbanism.”
(4) Perhaps the least likely stream here is the “aestheticism” associated with Walter Pater which came to flower in the art and life of Oscar Wilde. However, the course will explore the ways in which this aestheticism—which seemed the exact counterpoint to Ruskin’s “moralistic” understanding of art—in fact embodied very similar sensibilities. In the same way, though Wilde’s work seemed to celebrate licentiousness and immorality (The Picture of Dorian Gray is usually cited), in fact it can be argued that Wilde’s work is deeply Catholic.

Together these four overlapping movements—whose figures bumped into each other at the same society events and were students, friends, and sometimes opponents—share in common (at least) two interesting traits: (a) they all represent a kind of “contemporary medievalism,” a way of constructing the future by recovering the ancient; and (b) they all draw on a Catholic and liturgical sensibility—what we might call a “sacramental worldview.” In this respect, I think exploring them will be instructive for imagining our own way of faithfully inhabiting a postmodern context.