Six Videos on Augustine of Hippo's On Free Choice of the Will, book 1

I've been teaching Augustine's On Free Choice of the Will in my Introduction to Philosophy and Foundations of Philosophy classes for a number of years.  In the past, I have had students read the entire work, but given how many other texts I usually pack into a semester, I've trimmed down our study to just book 1 of the work.

Creating video content - as busy as I am - is a continual process, and I'm not always able to shoot video on all of the texts I teach in face-to-face classes.  I was able to produce core concept videos on portions of a different work by Augustine in the past - his City of God - but I didn't manage to get to On Free Choice of the Will until this term.

Now, I have six videos on key topics in book 1 of that work available for not only my students, but also for the general public.  Here they are:

• Christian Faith and Human Reason
• The Causes of Wrongdoing
• Temporal Law and Eternal Law
• Proper Order in a Human Being
• The Will and the Virtues
• What A Good Will Is

Ten Videos on Augustine's City of God

Last semester, I started shooting a set of short lecture videos on the early Christian philosopher, Augustine of Hippo's City of God as resources for my students in two of my classes.  That late work of Augustine is a pretty massive tome, so we were just covering a selection of topics in books 5, 11, and 19 of the text.

The topics that we examined - human free will and divine foreknowledge, the role of Christian revelation in philosophy, created time and space, what human happiness requires, the virtues in their struggles with vices, and the extent of community - are all important in Augustine's thought as a whole.

The semester got away from me - I ended up taking on five classes (more than full time for academic teaching) - so I wasn't able to get to all of them until later on in December, after classes ended.  Here is the full set on the City of God - to which I will perhaps add additional videos down the line.

• Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will (book 5)
• Knowledge of God and the Mediator (book 11)
• Creation, Time, and Space (book 11)
• Goodness of Creation and Natural Evil (book 11)
• Existence, Knowledge, and Love (book 11)
• Philosophical Sects and the Supreme Good (book 19)
• The Supreme Good and the Present Life (book 19)
• Why Virtues are Not The Supreme Good (book 19)
• The Four Circles of Relationships (book 19)
• Peace as Universally Desired (book 19)

This semester, I'll only be teaching some of this material from book 11 of City of God in my classes.  But I will be covering a different Augustine text, his earlier work On Free Choice of the Will.  I'll be creating new core concept videos on that book later on in the semester.

Texts and Authors I'm Teaching This Fall

We're now at the end of Week 2 of the classes I'm teaching locally for Marquette University and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.  Many readers, viewers, subscribers, supporters, and other fans have expressed curiosity about the thinkers and texts we're covering in my Foundations in Philosophy (Marquette) and Philosophies of Human Nature (MIAD) classes, so I thought I'd take a bit of time and discuss those a bit.

There is a good bit of overlap in the material covered in these two classes, and there's several reasons for that.  Every one of the texts and authors we're reading and discussing is someone I think well worth engaging with for a student just beginning in philosophy.  Some of them are thinkers I've previously developed resources on when I taught them in the past, so I have good handouts, lesson page, or videos ready at hand. And, since I'm teaching a LOT this semester, I wanted to keep from having two entirely different preps for these two classes.

So for all of you who have been inquiring about my classes - and anyone else who is interested in the matter - here's the reading lists, followed by a bit more about new resources I'm developing not only for those academic classes, but also for my other online students, as well as for the general public.

So Now, Anger Is What The Good Guys Feel

There's so much to say about this recent American election - and so much that is actually being said -that, other than some short discussions and posts in social media (and a dinner-party discussion), I've been keeping a low profile, watching matters unfold, reflecting, and occasionally posting some of the better bits of analysis.  There's something almost like a communicative paralysis induced by the paradox of choice in the aftermath of this contest.  With so much that could be said, and so many things other are saying one might give a thoughtful response to, how do you pick?  Any choice you make, you leave something else out.

One of my hard-left colleagues recently posted an interesting piece from Truthout - Henry Giroux's essay, The Authoritarian Politics of Resentment in Trump's America.  And after reading it over several times, I now know precisely what to start with, at least on my account (I really don't need to think or speak on anyone else's quite frankly).  I'll give the sound-bite, the elevator pitch, or the thesis (depending on which favored term you're inclined towards) right up front.

In his essay, Giroux makes a mistaken distinction in a careless way.  He sets the anger of the left, the working people, the poor, struggling, and oppressed against the resentment of the right, the duped working people, the racists, the . . .  well, why not just call them the deplorables. Resentment is bad, while anger is good in his view.  And we can identify the good people and the bad along precisely those lines - with the added feature that Trump exploited the resentment of the bad.  As someone who researches, writes and speaks about, and deals with clients struggling with anger, this sort of narrative - and the underlying theory Giroux appeals to - strikes me as irresponsible.

10 Philosophical Texts I'd Bring to a Desert Island

A bit over a year ago, a longstanding friend and colleague -- someone I actually went to college with -- asked me a question so intriguing that I ended up sitting down and recording a 20-minute YouTube video answering it in detail.

He wrote me:  If you could bring ten philosophical works to be stranded with on the proverbial desert island, which ten would they be, and why? 

Elements of Philosophy: What Do Philosophers Do?

 A new academic year has commenced, and I'm currently in process of producing some new lesson content for my Introduction to Philosophy students -- which this semester is themed on "Love, Friendship, and Desire.  Right now, its the very most introductory material for the class that I am writing and posting as lessons in our course management system.  Since I don't use a textbook for the class, but rather supply all the readings, resources, lessons, videos, and other sundries for the class within that course shell, it's critical that I provide these undergraduate, non-major students, many of them first-semester freshmen, with some idea early on just what the class is about -- what kind of approach we are taking, what kinds of activities we are engaged in, what sorts of tools we employ.

So, in addition to a number of other similar lesson sections -- some already (thankfully!) written, some of them still pressing items of my to-do list -- I decided to try my hand at explaining what we philosophers (and those who we're reading and studying) actually do, by way of discussing some of our most common tools -- the "elements," if you like, of philosophical work and works.  After I was finished with it, I thought that others might find it interesting or useful -- or perhaps glimpse better than I any glaring omissions or oversights.  So, if you've got something to add to this, by all means feel free to set it down in a comment, and I may incorporate it in a revised version of the online lesson.

Inserting Anselm into Alasdair MacIntyre's Narrative of Medieval Thought

I recently gave a talk -- partly reading, partly summarizing, and partly promising parts yet unwritten of a paper about Alasdair MacIntyre, Saint Anselm of Canterbury (or Bec, or Aosta, depending on where you're from) and medieval moral theory.




My contention -- a friendly one -- is that MacIntyre's account of what took place in that period we call "medieval" would be considerably improved by incorporation of a fuller picture of Anselm's formation and contributions to an ongoing tradition of moral enquiry.  MacIntyre calls this "Augustinian", but it is really much broader -- and older -- than the properly augustinian tradition in philosophy or theology.

I think what I'm trying to fix in this paper is encapsulated in one remark:  MacIntyre's account of Anselm is precisely what one might expect from a reading that focuses exclusively upon the Proslogion and upon Thomas Aquinas' references to Anselm's theory of truth.  Accordingly, my aim is to show, mainly by way of exposition, that Anselm's contributions lay in moral theory as well -- and to set out his influences upon Aquinas as an interlocutor.

Classic Arguments About God's Existence in Cicero

My Introduction to Philosophy class is currently one-third of the way into Cicero's dialogue The Nature of the Gods -- a work that, like many others of Cicero, I unhesitatingly endorse as a philosophical analogue to undervalued stock.  It's a text that rarely gets taught in Ancient Philosophy classes, let alone Philosophy of Religion (where I taught it years back), or as a text by which to induct freshmen non-majors into the canons and practices of the philosophical profession.  I suspect that one reason for this lack of attention and use is that relatively few practicing philosophers have encountered it themselves -- whether in their own educational formation or in the course of their further studies.

That's a shame -- not only for On the Nature of the Gods, but also for other Ciceronian great works like the Academics, Republic, Laws, On Obligations . . .  one could go on and on.  A quite understandable tendency to underrate Cicero's role in philosophy -- construing him as merely an unoriginal eclectic who brought the philosophy he had learned in the Greek world into Roman culture -- tends to conceal the high level of philosophical discussion and debate contained in his dialogues.  If his is borrowed  brilliance, the words and arguments he places in the mouths of his characters become no less valuable or valid for replicating saying and speeches he learned from leaders of major philosophical schools in Athens or Rhodes -- particularly since it is his own artful arrangements we have to thank for passing them on to us, and down the ages.  Cicero is more than a mere digest-creator or textbook-scribbler, though -- he creates, he replicates, he articulates clashes and conflicts of modes of thought of the highest order available in his own time and place -- and like every playwright, every novelist, every poet of genius, he understands all that his characters do, and more.

Love and Human Motivation in the Republic (part 1)

Reading my way once again through a text I've been revisiting for more than two decades, Plato's Republic , I never fail -- any time I read it anew -- to be struck by some novel, or perhaps not entirely novel but at least forgotten or passed over, feature of the work and of Plato's thought.  I'm happy to be teaching it again this semester, at least portions of the grand dialogue, that is, one of Plato's best known and -- as I get old enough to benefit from traversing Plato's sizable corpus a number of times, more in some parts than others -- one of his finest on multiple philosophical levels.  Rather than allowing the task of justifying to some extent why the Republic is entitled to such a laudatory judgement -- particularly given that there are plenty of Plato scholars who'd dispute that with me, who am decidedly not a Plato scholar, just an admirer --I'll say what some of the features that struck me this time were.

Summer and Winter Foolishness

Years ago in reading, I encountered the distinction between two families of fools -- and two types of foolishness.  I've invoked that easily remembered and vivid distinction by way of explanation in many conversations down the years, and have puzzled about precisely what goes wrong with the winter fool -- how to explain their folly in terms of defective practical reasoning, what specific defects or failures are involved, what concepts and what moral theories best illuminate this all-too-common but somewhat complex mode of misreasoning.

Why would this distinction -- originating in a Jewish proverb, then trickling through Russian folklore, eventually popping up and popularized in Hemmingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls -- continue to draw the interest of a moral theorist?  Well, for one because folly is the classical opposite to wisdom. It is practical wisdom, what the Greeks called phronesis, what the biblical Wisdom literature (which bears similarities to, draws upon, and reworks other similarly sapiential literature not only names but personifies, what the Latin west in its turn termed at some times prudentia, at others sapientia.  It's not enough to know what comprises and constitutes wisdom, though -- and that's tough-enough knowledge to acquire and retain, a never-ending arduous task in actuality -- one also needs to know what the various pitfalls, temptations, and forms of foolishness are, not least to recognize and avoid them, but also to understand them -- for by understanding how one goes wrong, one better grasps how one, choosing differently, goes right.

Saint Anselm on Anger (part 3)

The last two Sundays, I posted installments of serialized set of posts, part 1 and part 2 of a longer study of how anger fits into Saint Anselm's moral theory.  That study in its turn forms part of a broader-scope, ongoing set of examinations of anger (and connected topics) as understood by philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and (perhaps later) literary figures, ultimately intended to be housed in books (one of which, dealing with Aristotle on anger, I'm working on currently). Here, in this format, I work out and provide for interested readership the shorter, more preliminary studies of anger that later find their way into more systematic, academic manuscripts.

The last post on Anselm identified four Anselmian virtues bearing on anger:  patience, meekness, humility, and justice, and noted that each of these virtues was a particular habitual and dispositional structure of the human will, instantiated not only in the uses the human person chooses to make of his or her will, but even more so in  lasting affective currents of desire, fateful shaping, character, what Anselm calls will as affectio.

In order to better understand virtues, and their opposite, vices, we have to understand the will, and that requires us to understand a number of other interrelated matters.  There are good reasons why we human beings are so often mysteries to ourselves even when we think we best understand and know ourselves, and Anselm touches on this while mimetically representing what must have been a common enough occurrence in his life and teaching, begging off from giving his views and rational reflections on a divine mystery in Cur Deus Homo:

we need an analysis of ability and necessity and will and of other notions which are so interrelated that no one of them can be fully examined apart from the others. . . . For an ignorance of these notions produces certain difficulties which become easy to deal with as a result of understanding these notions.

Martin Luther King and Anger's Right Uses, Temptations, and Transformation

Anger -- particularly though not necessarily confined to righteous anger -- can be a powerful motivator, affectively sustaining criticism of, and resistance to, oppression and injustice.  It can function as emotional fuel for the many steps to work for changing of social conditions (and even more difficult, human hearts and consciences).  One's own anger -- and that of others -- can even exert an unveiling effect, permitting one to perceive conditions of which one was previously unaware or concealing from oneself.  It is not surprising that anger played a role in the Civil Rights struggle for desegregation, anti-racism, and equality in America, nor that it was a force in the non-violent approach of Martin Luther King.

 King's thought and action, I have claimed elsewhere, is clearly situated within the mainstream of a long-running and well-developed Christian theological tradition grappling with ever-present problems of violence, hatred, unjust social relations, and oppression, elaborating responses to these with the example and words of (and in mainstream tradition, in communion and relationship with) Jesus Christ.  This is not to deny his originality or importance, but rather to stress continuity with other thinkers he names and draws upon, not least of which are SS. Paul, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, all of whom made contributions to the ongoing project of making fuller sense of anger, as an emotion, a response, a virtuous or vicious habit, a dynamic.

Departure: Technogeek in place of Philosogeek

Back now for several days from a grueling month of attending conferences, preparing and providing workshops, seemingly interminable committee meetings, web-design, a few job applications, and . . .  oh, yeah, how could I forget, regular web-enhanced Critical Thinking classes for my students -- back and almost fully up to speed, it's time to get the blogging back into gear.  I've got a few started and then parked posts which I hope to finish, polish, and bring to light in the next several days.  But today, instead, a short, technogeeky (as opposed to philosogeeky) post.

One of our webmaster-IT gurus at FSU, Bill Gibson sent out an interesting email, which linked to his blog, which linked then to Odiogo, a site which takes blog posts and "reads" them as near-human quality speech to anyone who clicks on the newly-enabled buttons on one's blog, in this case my own little site of ramblings and ruminations.