The Craft Report Part 3

Greetings, everyone. AW MML, HI, here.  Hope you enjoyed my last post, “Brenda Jackson-Abernathy: From West to South,” and it’s certainly awesome. I wouldn’t expect anything less from Dr. Jackson; she holds high standards – LOL! But this week, I’m reporting on the fall 2013 edition of the Phi Alpha Theta Annual Lecture here at Belmont.

            For those of you who don’t know, Phi Alpha Theta (abbreviated as PAT) is a national honor history society, and Nels Andrew N. Cleven founded PAT 92+ years ago on March 17, 1921, at the University of Arkansas.[1]   Like many universities, Belmont has a PAT chapter of its own (Xi-Alpha). The Belmont History Department and PAT have organized these annual lectures since 2011 or so, and for the third, we welcomed Dr. Richard H. King “all the way from the United Kingdom.”[2]

            Born in Tennessee, Dr. King “has lived abroad for around 30 years.”[3] A foremost expert on “United States and transatlantic intellectual history” and specialized in a wide variety of topics, he “has focused on political thought, race, and literary culture. His major books include The Party of Eros: Radical Social Thought and the Realm of Freedom (North Carolina); A Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955 (Oxford); Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (Oxford), and Race, Culture and the Intellectuals, 1940-1970 (Johns Hopkins). He’s also the author of a slew of articles, really too many to count, along [with] editing a few collections.”[4] Presently, Dr. King’s book on “political theorist Hannah Arendt’s encounter with America” is near completion.[5]

            Dr. King is one busy guy, and we were honored he came. We owe our thanks to Dr. Peter Kuryla, for Dr. King is a good friend and mentor of his. Thus, during his introduction of Dr. King, Dr. Kuryla commented that the initial concept of his America Viewed from Abroad course originated with Dr. King. Anywho, on Wednesday, September 18, 2013, Dr. King presented his talk, “Religion, Secularism, and Intellectual Respectability: Contesting Exclusive Humanism in Recent Thought.”[6]

Dr. King posited that three major groups of intellectuals voiced the various opinions on the role of religion in our present-day age: Traditionists (by which he meant Neo-Traditionalists), Positivists, and Anti-Modernists.[7] For Dr. King, philosopher Charles Margrave Taylor,[8] novelist Marilynne Robinson,[9] and philosopher Thomas Nagel[10] embody the Neo-Traditionalists as they advocate and acknowledge the importance of religion despite the decline of its organized form.[11]Similarly, Darwinist Clinton Richard Dawkins,[12] premier writer Christopher Hitchens,[13] biologist Edward O. Wilson, [14]psychologist Steven Pinker,[15] philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, [16] pragmatist Richard Rorty,[17] and “wide-ranging German intellectual” Hans Blumenberg[18] represent the Positivists who highlight modernity and science and downplay backwardness and  religion.[19] Two subgroups comprise the Anti-Modernists: those who think in religious terms and those who think in secular terms;[20] eighteenth-century Parliamentarian Edmund Burke, [21]twentieth-century “German-American political scientist” Eric Voegelin,[22] twentieth-century conservative Richard Malcolm Weaver Junior,[23] and twentieth-century writer Thomas Stearns Eliot (better known as T. S. Eliot)[24] espoused religiousness whereas twentieth-century political philosopher Leo Straus,[25] twentieth-century “German legal, constitutional, and political theorist” Carl Schmitt,[26] twentieth-century phenomenologist Martin Heidegger,[27] and twentieth-century philosopher Karl Lowith[28] championed secularism.[29]

            Dr. King also asserted that this debate between religion and secularism began long before Christianity. But for his purposes, Dr. King utilized Christianity as a springboard for this ancient discourse; in fact, the Reformation, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods all mark significant scenes in the play that is the religion versus secularism debate. Dr. King named two major medieval precursors to the scholars mentioned above: Joachim of Flores and William of Ockham.[30] A “Cistercian abbot and mystic,”[31] Flores adhered to Gnosticism – the notion that an individual can achieve “the knowledge of transcendence”[32]  via inwardness and reflection as opposed to studying and acting according to the Bible, thus placing humans closer to God than normally believed.  “[A]long with Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, [Ockham ranks] among the most prominent figures in the history of philosophy during the High Middle Ages […] best known today for his espousal of metaphysical nominalism:”[33] the “position [… that] denied the real being of universals on the ground that the use of a general word (e.g., ‘humanity’) does not imply the existence of a general thing named by it.”[34]

            Now onto my opinion of Dr. King’s presentation itself – the subject and title intrigued me. When Dr. Brenda Jackson-Abernathy announced this lecture at the annual mandatory history majors and minors meeting on Wednesday, September 4, I thought, well, it’ll be something interesting and fresh for me to blog about.  Once Wednesday, September 18, arrived, I entered the Leu Art Gallery inside the Lilia Bunch Library. Dr. King gave his talk in the early afternoon when I was fatigued from the heat and my seasonal allergies.  I felt like he didn’t cover new ground. On a large scale, Dr. King discussed ideas with which I was familiar due to Dr. Kuryla’s America Viewed from Abroad course; nevertheless, Dr. King did so with a new spin and with new data. I wish Dr. King introduced newer large-scale ideas as opposed to simply presenting new information on ideas discussed in America Viewed from Abroad.

I enjoyed Dr. King’s lecture.  I came to be with my history peeps like Ray Posada since I have no history classes this semester (all writing courses in case you were curious), and I enjoyed hearing one of Dr. Kuryla’s mentors talk – an honor that all history students should receive.  We should relish meeting or at least hearing those who mentored our mentors, for perhaps they, our mentors’ mentors, can help mold us even further.

            Peace!

MML, HI

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[1] “About,” Phi Alpha Theta: National History Honor Society, phialphatheta.org, 2013. http://phialphatheta.org/about.

[2] Brenda Jackson-Abernathy, email message to Matt Craft and others, September 16, 2013. Information sent by Brenda Jackson-Abernathy, but provided by Peter Kuryla.

[3] Jackson.

[4] Jackson.

[5] Jackson.

[6] Jackson.

[7] Richard H. King, “Names, Terms, and Terms for ‘Religion, Secularism, and Intellectual Respectability’” (handout, Third phi Alpha Theta Annual Lecture, Belmont University, Nashville Tennessee, September 18, 2013).

[8] “Charles Taylor,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/939950/Charles-Taylor.

[9] “Marilynne Robison,” Amazon.com, 2013. http://www.amazon.com/Marilynne-Robinson/e/B000AQ76O2.

[10] “Tomas Nagel,” New York University, 203. http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/object/thomasnagel.

[11] King.

[12] David Klinghoffer, “Richard Dawkins: A Biography,” Discovery Institute, 2009. http://www.discovery.org/a/10291.

[13] “Christopher Hitchens,” biography.com, A+E Television Networks, LLC, 2013. http://www.biography.com/people/christopher-hitchens--20845987.

[14] “Edward O. Wilson,” biography.com, A+E Television Networks, LLC, 2013. http://www.biography.com/people/edward-o-wilson-507387.

[15] “Steven Pinker,” Harvard University, 2013. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/about/longbio.html.

[16] David Klinghoffer, “Daniel Dennett: A Biography,” Discovery Institute, 2009. http://www.discovery.org/a/10301.

[17] “Richard Rorty,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/.

[18] “Hans Blumenberg, Philosopher, 75; Studied Modernity,” The New York Times, 1996. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/15/us/hans-blumenberg-philosopher-75-studied-modernity.html.

[19] King.

[20] King.

[21] “Edmund Burke,” biography.com, A+E Television Networks, LLC, 2013. http://www.biography.com/people/edmund-burke-9231699.

[22] “Eric Voegelin,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/631789/Eric-Voegelin/.

[23] “Richard M. Weaver, Jr. (1910-1962),” North Carolina History Project, John Locke Foundation, 2013. http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/67/entry/.

[24] “T. S. Eliot – Biographical,” Nobel Media AB, 2013. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1948/eliot-bio.html.

[25] “The Leo Strauss Center: Biography,” The University of Chicago, 2010. http://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/biography.

[26] “Carl Schmitt,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/.

[27] “Martin Heidegger – Biography,” The European Graduate School: Graduate & Postgraduate Studies, 2013.  http://www.egs.edu/library/martin-heidegger/biography/. 

[28] “German, Jew, Philosopher – Karl Lowith,” Goethe Institut, 2013. http://www.goethe.de/ges/phi/prt/en7944393.htm.

[29] King.

[30] King.

[31]Kevin Knight, “Joachim of Flora,” Catholic Encyclopedia – New Advent, 2009. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08406c.htm.

[32] Stephan A. Hoeller {Tau Stephanus), “The Gnostic World View: A Brief Summary of Gnosticism,” Gnostic Society, 2013. http://gnosis.org/gnintro.htm.

[33] “Nominalism in Metaphysics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/.

[34] “Nominalism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/417400/nominalism.