Posted by: gcarkner | November 6, 2012

More Thoughts on Language

Language & Identity Formation

Identity formation is also about using language to self-interpret, to articulate, discover and define self. We must constantly answer the question, ‘Who am I and what do I stand for and what am I able to contribute?’ There is an important implication of the sociality of the self that is forwarded by Taylor (Sources, p. 34). Contrary to the traditional view in behaviourist social science, the self is not an object or substance in the usually understood sense. We are not selves in the way we are organisms and we don’t have selves in the way we have livers and lungs. As Taylor points out, it is a fundamentally misguided question to ask what a person is in abstraction from his/her self-interpretation. This important dynamic self-interpretation is worked out in community through a language and a story, which the individual has accepted as a valid articulation of various identity questions and orientation within society. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | November 3, 2012

Quality of the Will…7

A Key Qualifier on the Moral Framework

Through his discussion about frameworks, Taylor recovers an interest in a commitment to the good. In his understanding, development of identity emerges in a way that is closely linked to one’s orientation within a particular moral framework or horizon, that is, where one is positioned with respect to one’s moral map and the goods within one’s horizon. This is the defining edge of meaning in one’s life; he claims that a self with depth (a thick self) must be defined in terms of the good: ‘In order to make minimal sense of our lives, in order to have an identity, we need an orientation to the good, which means some sense of qualitative discrimination, of the incomparably higher’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 47). What one calls the good is the most significant defining factor: ‘What I am as a self, my identity, is essentially defined by the way things have significance for me and how I orient myself to the good’ (1989, p. 34). Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | November 3, 2012

Prominent Literary Scholar

DAVID LYLE JEFFREY

Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities, Honors College, Baylor University

Distinguished Senior Fellow, Director of Manuscript Research in Scripture and Tradition

Email David Lyle Jeffrey |David Lyle Jeffrey Vitae | Publications

David Lyle Jeffrey has been Distinguished Professor of Literature and Humanities at Baylor University since 2000.  He is also Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Ottawa, and has been Guest Professor at Peking University (Beijing) since 1996 and Honorary Professor at the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing) since 2005. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | October 30, 2012

Faraday Film & Faculty Panel

Faraday Institute Film & Faculty Panel on Biological Origins

Wednesday, November 14 @ 4:00 p.m, Woodward IRC Room 5 (UBC Gate One)

Reading Material: Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies. 

UBC Regent & TWU Live Panelists (moderator Martin Barlow)

  • Bart van der Kamp, Professor Emeritus and Former Head of Forestry, UBC
  • Iain Provan, Professor of Ancient Hebrew Literature, Regent College
  • Judith Toronchuk,  retired Professor Biopsychology, Trinity Western University 

Distinguished Participant in the Faraday Institute Film on Origins and Evolution Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Public Lectures, Science Reflections, Seeker Corner

Posted by: gcarkner | October 29, 2012

First Things: a Unique Journal

  (http://www.firstthings.com/) is an ecumenical journal focused on creating a “religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society”.[1] The journal is inter-denominational and inter-religious, representing a broad intellectual tradition of Christian and Jewish critique of contemporary society. Published by the New York-based Institute on Religion and Public Life,[2] it is published monthly, except for bi-monthly issues covering June/July and August/September. Newsweek called First Things “the most important vehicle for exploring the tangled web of religion and society in the English-speaking world.”[3]

Founding

First Things was founded in 1990 by Richard John Neuhaus, a prominent Lutheran minister and writer, who converted to Catholicism and entered the priesthood shortly after the journal’s founding. Fr. Neuhaus served as the journal’s editor-in-chief until his death in 2009 and wrote a regular column called, “The Public Square.” He started the journal after his connection with the Rockford Institute was severed.[4]

Influence

With a circulation of approximately 30,000 subscribers, First Things is considered to be influential in its articulation of a broadly ecumenical and erudite social and political conservatism. George Weigel, a sometime contributor, wrote that after its founding in the early 1990s, First Things “quickly became, under [Neuhaus’s] leadership and inspiration, the most important vehicle for exploring the tangled web of religion and society in the English-speaking world.”[3] Ross Douthat wrote that, through First Things, Neuhaus demonstrated “that it was possible to be an intellectually fulfilled Christian.”[5]

Also see CRUX Magazine from Regent College

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Posted in Faith & Culture, Grad Student Strategies, Prayer & Spirituality

Posted by: gcarkner | October 29, 2012

Quality of the Will…6

Taylor’s Concept of Moral Horizon

Another important dimension of the moral self for Charles Taylor is the concept of horizon, a larger context for the self and its moral discriminations. Once the case is made for qualitative discriminations, Taylor continues to develop the case for realism by arguing that one has to make sense of these basic human moral intuitions. This means that one has to articulate self within a moral framework, in a way that makes sense of that experience. The various goods that vie for attention need to be organized within a defined moral worldview, a big picture of moral thought and action. This process involves the geography metaphor of moral mapping of a landscape, producing a map or making explicit the existence within the self of a map which can describe, contextualize and guide one’s moral experience and judgments, through a set of moral parameters. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | October 28, 2012

Language: Friend or Enemy?

Language: a Necessary and Sometimes Confusing Human Capacity

Language and text is the thing; those of us in the arts and humanities think much in terms of language. We all envy great poets who possess great skill in word craft. Language is power in university and in society. Many long to capture that articulate grasp of things, to enhance the capacity of their grammar, rhetoric, and story telling. In academia, we make a close reading of the text in order to have credibility in our work and to be taken seriously. But academics also deconstruct the language of those they oppose, or a previous philosophical regime. Can we give credit to the place and power of language without reducing all reality to a ‘linguistic universe’?  We ultimately cannot escape being homo linguisticus.
Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, GCU Personality, Grad Student Strategies, Stewardship

Posted by: gcarkner | October 28, 2012

T.S. Eliot Four Quartets II

Woman at left is painter Suzanne Valadon

Woman at left is painter Suzanne Valadon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The thrilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | October 26, 2012

Critical Alternatives to Scientism…Point 3

Recovery of a Thick View of Humans

In our next move, we want to transcend scientism’s caricature (reductionism) of human existence, towards a more whole and rich perspective. What are we to make of homo sapiens sapiens?  Beyond the initial exhilaration, nihilistic materialism offers a very empty paradigm for how we are to live together. It starts in nothingness and offers naked choice. When we accept a view of other humans that takes them as nothing special, we head down a very treacherous road. Reductionistic anthropologies have led to much political oppression and abuse in the twentieth century, where the government became the pirate of the people. History cannot deny that scientific materialism has morphed into political-economic exploitation, with massive human suffering. We strongly resist this impoverished, thin model of persons in search of an alternative–a thick view. This is not merely academic, but an urgent quest in our age of global terrorism, corrupt business leaders, shrinking resources, global warming and political flash points. Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, Science Reflections, Seeker Corner

Posted by: gcarkner | October 23, 2012

Quality of the Will…5

Some Important Qualifications on Quality of the Will

Some important qualifications are in order for Taylor’s qualitative distinctions, or what Harry Frankfurt calls second order desires. He is not suggesting that each and every choice is subject to strong evaluation. This is clearly not true of the choice of flavour of ice cream or style of clothing. Secondly, individuals are not always aware of the hierarchy that is in play; it can be held pre-articulately or tacitly as a background to moral understanding. Thirdly, the language of strong speaks more about quality than force or power. Fourthly, Taylor believes that all individuals are strong evaluators, but does not believe that they all value the same things strongly. He is quite aware of plurality. Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, Seeker Corner, Stewardship

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