Questions April 5-7

 NO CLASS APR 5, finish reading Law... Begin Compson. NOTE: The Little Book of Humanism is recommended. It's only available at this point in a kindle edition. Hope you can make it to see our faculty candidate Gregory Slack discussing "The Value of Philosophy," Tuesday afternoon, Peck Hall 318 at 3:30 PM. If you do, ask him for me what he thinks of Bertrand Russell's take on the value of philosophy. The philosophic mind, wrote Lord Russell in the concluding chapter of The Problems of Philosophy,

will view its purposes and desires as parts of the whole...Thus contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.

Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Thinking of oneself as a citizen of the universe, a true cosmopolitan, is (I've once again witnessed first-hand) one of the genuine consolations of philosophy -- particularly in times of personal loss and grief at the passing of a beloved fellow citizen. That value is priceless.

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SL 6-8

1. What would be a caricature of humanist moral & religious education?

2. A humanist approach does not involve telling children what?

3. What's P4C?

4. People who sheltered Jews from the Nazis tended to have been brought up how?

5. A meaningful life, says Law, must be what?

6. Having what is not sufficient to render life meaningful?

7. How does the Euthyphro Dilemma apply to the question of meaning?

8. How does Law say humanist funerals have impacted religious funerals in Britain?

DQ

• Will there ever come a time when attempts to control what people think will be universally scorned and repudiated?
• What do you think would happen if P4C were introduced to all children?
• What do you think of faith schools? 115-16
• How do you answer the questions on 119?
• Can you fail in your major life goals and still have lived meaningfully?
• Is meaning a family-resemblance concept in the Wittgensteinian sense? Does that trivialize it?
• Are sacrificial acts on the part of non-believers more impressive and admirable? 129
• Is philosophy better than religion at encouraging young people to think? 131
• Do you agree with Douglas Adams? 133
• Would you prefer a humanist wedding or funeral? What would your survivors think of it?

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AC 1-2

1. Who coined "secularism"?

2. What three parts of secularism does Bauberot identify?

3. What three aspects of social equality of belief does Carling discuss?

4. What usurpation was commonplace in the time of Ambrose? 

5. How did Aquinas differ with Aristotle with respect to lex humana and lex divina?

6. What forms of righteousness did Luther distinguish?

7. What was Roger Williams' vision of freedom in Rhode Island? 

8. Who did John Locke say ought not to be tolerated?

9. All important Enlightenment thinkers derived the legitimacy of government from what?

10. What lavish festival in Notre Dame cathedral was organized in 1793? 

11. What recent French controversy has called that nation's commitment to equality into question? 

12. What did Jefferson tell the Danbury Baptists about a wall? 

DQ

• What meaning does secularist convey to you that atheist or humanist do not?
• Does the separation of church and state somehow discriminate against religious people?
• Do you prefer the American or the French conception of secularism? 28-9