Month: June 2007

(Apologies for this context-dependent joke, to readers who have not been watching The Office, as Margaret and I have been.)

Continue reading “Message From Future Margaret”

While Margaret and Pippa have been running errands and attending meetings downtown, I’ve been wrestling my last few grades into order. This morning, though, Pippa decorated the kitchen in honor of Margaret’s and my wedding anniversary today:

Now, a few more grades, a few episodes of The Office.
Continue reading “Twenty-Five”

Some smallish pockets of the Web have shared grief at the death of Richard Rorty; not, so far as I can tell, as wide and deep a mourning as lamented the death of his French counterpart, Jacques Derrida. While it’s silly to rank philosophers — as though their value could be weighed out in carats — I’d wish for Prof. Rorty more appreciative response. More to the point, I wish that fewer people were so willing publicly to disdain his standing, as though the nation were overrun with philosophically-minded sales managers, copy editors, and small-animal veterinarians who out-thought Rorty in their free time. Professional standing doesn’t make all the difference in the world, but when one calls into question the institutional discernment of the community of professional peers, one had better bring some strong arguments to the table. Jürgen Habermas, frequent opponent of Rorty on topics philosophical, allowed that “Among contemporary philosophers, I know of none who equalled Rorty in confronting his colleagues – and not only them – over the decades with new perspectives, new insights and new formulations.”

Rorty exemplifies many of the qualities I most cherish in an intellectual, and some that irritate me. In those areas where we part ways, he may (after all) be right; he’s not the only atheist on the block, nor even the smartest, and certainly (thank heaven) not the most derisive. He made one of the strongest arguments for liberal democracy that I can imagine, even as I wince at reverence for the idols of liberalism. Rorty offered the world his greatest gifts: a capacity to diagnose overinflated claims about truth and reality, an appreciation for American philosophers in the strength of their cultural context, an unswerving dedication to justice and “the general welfare.”

I will miss him — as an articulate writer, as a clear-sighted philosopher, as a judicious opponent of theology. I learn discipleship more from challenging intellectual, ethical adversaries than from scornful yea-sayers.
Continue reading “Missing Rorty”

I ordinarily feel a wave of relief when the academic year ends, but the prospect of my full-year sabbatical leave has filled me with so intense an intoxication that I’m having a hard time bearing down and finishing the Easter-Term grading. The weather is lovely, and soon I’ll be totally free to let my mind wander, to follow whatever interests catch my attention, to shake free and stretch out.

But I really really really must finish grades now.

On our trip to the Art Institute, Margaret and I delighted in this painting of Job, which the title card identified as an anonymous Spanish work from the early seventeenth century:

(Job is saying “Noli me condemnare,” “Do not condemn me,” from the Vulgate of Job 10:2: “I will say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; show why you judge me so.‘ ”)

The way the painter adopted lettering that looks like metal type tickles us pink. What does this imply about the way the anonymous painter thinks about speech, about print, about communication? Would a brush script not have sufficed? What models did the painter have — perhaps only the blackletter banner-lettering from cheirographic and woodcut Bibles? Did he think that by emulating a Roman text metal typeface, he rendered the image “modern”?

(Cross-posted to Beautiful Theology)
Continue reading “Intermedia, Post-Renaissance Style”

“Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.”

Not a power brick coffee heater, a USB hub/coffee heater Found via Shelley’s link to USB devices for geeks.

During my annual review with the Deans yesterday, I alluded to my frustration with the “real meaning” reflex. You know, when someone makes the claim to tell you what this or that really means. It functions as a an authority claim (or a discussion-ender): “What this Greek word really means is. . . .” or “You said X, but you really mean Y.”

Back in the 80’s “real meaning” struck Jeffrey Stout as a cardinal instance of a term that cries out for what Willard Quine called “explicating”: We fix on the particular functions of the unclear expression that make it worth troubling about, and then devise a substitute, clear and couched in terms to our liking, that fills those functions.” (Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 258-59, quoted in Jeffrey Stout’s “What Is the Meaning of a Text?” NLH 14 (1982): 1-12 — unavailable on JSTOR). Since the rhetorical function of “really means” depends on the fact that the alleged “real meaning” is somehow in question — otherwise, why else would one say it? — we could probably advance an argument or two by eschewing a claim about “real meaning” and substituting a more precise characterization of our interest in pinning down meaning in the particular context in question.

I suspect that Fearsome Pirate and I advocate markedly different theologies, ecclesiologies, and liturgies, but his eight-step program for church growth makes sense to me. (No offense meant to people who actually like singing Earth and All Stars.)

Margaret and I celebrated our pseudo-pre-second-honeymoon (that is, “a week at home while Pippa is away at choir camp, before we celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary next week, but not by any means a real vacation or second honeymoon”) by taking a day in downtown Chicago at the Art Institute and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. We had a glorious time, and I commend both activities enthusiastically, especially combined, with a simple dinner of omelette and salad at Maxim’s (where, despite the reviews, we were served a quite suitable dinner at a reasonable-for-downtown price by a friendly server).

The Art Institute — words do not suffice to sum up the banquet of treasures to be found there! Margaret and I wore ourselves out strolling from room to room, but we could hardly stop. I will say that, among all the stunning beauties we encountered, none struck me so forcibly as Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait; were I ever to live in a space with a masterpiece of art, this is a painting whose effect would take a very long time to become routine to me. I didn’t see any of the Matisses that I most love, and although I have long admired Monet, the paintings I saw here — marvelous and intensely lovely as they are — didn’t pierce my soul as did Van Gogh. Chagall’s White Crucifixion stood out in the same numinous way. Margaret cited some of the Picassos (the casual way in which oe can say, “some of the Picassos” about one’s local museum’s collection itself flummoxes me) as particularly compelling; she also loves Joan Miró’s The Policeman (larger, darker photo here), among other Miró favorites. She envisioned an exhibition that juxtaposed surrealist paintings from some of the images from the International Gothic and Renaissance styles.

Footweary and heavy-legged, we settled in at the Chase Auditorium and laughed uproariously at our favorite radio personalities. It’s well worth a visit, if you’re in Chicago; we didn’t even see our very favorite panelists, but Adam Felber, Roxanne Roberts, and Paul Provenza bantered at the highest pitch of wit. Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell presided with great good humor, and the live-in-auditorium version entertained with various slips, gaffes, and non-compliant ripostes that you won’t hear on air. (Email me if you want to know who won before the program airs.)

Now if only I hadn’t dropped my wallet while I was down there — but, thankfully, a security guard found it and it’s waiting for me at the Chase Tower. Looks like another trek to the big city.

What’s all this about people trying to banish intelligent design from our schools? Frankly, I think that we could all use a lot more intelligent design. For example:

Why do approaches to airports always offer you a choice between “arrivals” and “departures” (I know, I know, there’s a classic bit in Big Trouble about this) — why don’t the signs say “Pick Up” and “Drop Off”? The arrival and departure signs at Midway are way too small, and they’re positioned so that you have to play chicken with a concrete barrier as you peer forward and decide which sign applies to you, and aligns with which fork of the road. That’s certainly not intelligent design.

When did “reinventing” become not simply a possibly-good idea, but a social norm? I’m troubled by the currency that “reinventing oneself” has attained, with its concomitant resonance of repudiating history, continuity, responsibility (even “accountability,” however much that may irritate Dave).

I harbor no animus against trying anew, or changing direction, or amendment of life; the trope of “reinventing,” though, sounds ominous to me.
Continue reading “Reinventing”