... 
......
L. fundus -- bottom. I.E, bhudh: base, (butt—bottom line)
middles
beginnings
endings
A triadic linear sequence for the historically-minded, dia-
chronological and story tellers.. Once Upon a Time for
most is long ago and far away—some big bang or paradise
or turtle with the world on its back stirring up the waters
of the Nile. Who can tell the origin of the first person to
tie a neckerchief around a dog’s neck? Turned around the
peak on his visor cap, got the first tattoo?
Beginnings (origins, originating, generating).
All three are also always going on—simultaneously—
and available for anyone to turn-up, foreground,
and put into play: beginnings, middles, endings –
at any point in time..
Phil Otterness’s plea for a body-of-faculty that could
actually immediately respond to some dictate or event
or administrative decision so as to represent, as we say:
Now look here: this is what we think about THAT
is already available on Faculty L (or FacultyTalk) .
Doesn’t take a grant or a constitution to sustain ongoing converse-
action on all issues that came up at retreat relating to assessment
and strategic planning and vision and whether liberal education is
alive or dead or dying in the free world, whether we’re a business or
vocational, esoteric & salvational or primarily career-orientated &
good-citizen generating etc.
I don’t know what it takes.
IT’s an environmental issue. If the environment here is ever
such that ongoing converse-action across the curriculum is
not only a given but a characteristic, a unique quality of this
place—as cherished as free firewood, as lovable as our 25
miles of trails, 3 dollar lunches, opportunity to whack weeds
& work with cattle, world wide travel, service & work relationships,
dollar housing lots: the kinds of qualities we brag on in the
Frank & Honest letters we send back to candidates to give them
a sense of our special approach to liberal art…then it will become
part of our nurturing nature that we naturally trade wise cracks
& insight, guesses & observations, theories & expostulations,
disciplinary quirks & queries, trampling out the grapes of wrath,
stoking and sparking our ongoing intellective & affective fires of
un-postponed joy .
An environmental issue.
Not to be collapsed with our various ongoing “this’s” and “that’s”:
getRdone concerns, satisfying the accreditation people and
the need for transparency and accountability….
%%%%%%%%
Frank’s paper on Political Theory and the American Founding
(The Tension between Logic and History) is rich in concepts.
(Daniel Pink claims we are shifting from an Information Age
to the Age of Conceptualism. Way back in the late 60’s a group of
Princeton students described their learning agility as CEPT-ing,
& was hot in the media for a few months. Their belief: The IDEA
is more important then than the facts. Concepts: umbrella storage,
a kind of mnemonic capacity to focus on the “forest” without short-
changing “trees” - You know: Einstein’s claim that imagination is
more important than knowledge.
Forest/trees
Ideas/facts
Media/message
Form/content
Process/product
—a string of “ideas,” concepts. Conceptualism.
Fill in your facts and nitty gritty details. “this’s” & “that’s”
galore.
Sure, anyone can argue the opposite: facts first, etc.
And I claim it would be the ARGUING, then, that
is more important than either: idea or fact, concept
or information, imagination or knowledge.
Arguing Uber Alles. "I am a verb."
ARGUING trumps the tokens of argument,
and that’s why the idea of sustainable converse-action
across the curriculum is exciting to me as a possible
Environmental Characteristic and Quality of Life of
Mind minding here at Warren Wilson. (Sure: work &
service, too—of course: our niche.)
@@@@
Briefly and reductively: 3 ways of talking about
community-founding (another way of framing
environmental studies, don’t you agree?
way of talking about vision and strategic planning)
abstracted from Frank Kalinowski’s Political Theory
and the
& History) .
In terms of:
1. Civic Humanism..... .....2. Lockean Liberalsm
based on a classical..................based on a rational view of
republic notion of.................... human nature rather than an
an ancient integrity................historical ethic of precedent; and
always facing...........................on the idea of a “social contract”
dissolution (corruption)........ as if a community were a reasoned
with a shared sense of........... agreement to cohere for mutual
ethical citizenship in...............benefit. INDUSTRY & hard work
which the general welfare.....(rather than an inherent virtue for
naturally supercedes.............supporting-common-good) becomes
personal concerns and one..... the indicator: a standard against
(as McCain claimed) puts .......laziness (rather than self-interest)
the interests of “nation” .........as the entropic threat to community
(or community) ahead of .......collaboration.
self.
3. Humean Liberalism
Habit, and not reason or consent, is the source
of the obedience
teaching a theory based on consent,
a concept of inalienable rights, is as dangerous as it
is false. It promotes popular disturbances, undermines
authority, and
private property … (FK)
Every man ought to be supposed a knave,
and to have no other end,
than private interest... (David Hume)
Hume’s “repudiation of a rationally-based theory of
rights: is stated
Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions,
and can never pretend to any other office than to serve
and obey them…’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the
destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
Humean Liberalism: the issue is neither the establishment
of a
rights, but
social setting
individual self-interest
the power of their private interest groups to oppress those
who disagree with them or who block their
power. In this sense Humean liberalism, as
from classical and contractual philosophy represents
clearest expression of an emerging system of modern
political thought.
Contrary to republican [ism] there was little communal
cooperation in Hume’s society since belligerent quarreling
was an ineradicable component of human behavior, and
contrary to the faith of the Lockean liberal Enlightenment,
this enmity could not be reasoned or educated out of the
human breast. (FK)
3 ways of talking about community founding
(at any point, yes?—back in the day, now, or later on):
1. In terms of a self-evident ethic of an always higher
bonding to a larger whole—asking not what your
community can do for you but rather asking
what you can do for the community kind of ideal.
2) In terms or a rational & reasoned “contract” to
cohere on the basis of shared purpose: clearly
understood goals and aims. .
3) Out of a shared awareness that we’re all knaves
with no other end in all our actions but our own self
interest.—and that belligerent quarrelling (aka:
academic argument in the best sense) is part of
our behavior, a natural born enmity which can
only be denied and covered up at our peril.
These 3 notions are IDEAS about human nature yes?
Concepts—independent of founding fathers. It would
be an impoverishment to think Dr. Kalinowski is just
talking about American Political History.
He’s talking about the tension between logic and history,
which is the same tension as between the “eternal” and
“time”—the difference and the relationship and which of
these two realms become the dominant basis for argument
re: founding.
Oh, you can think IT’s about, Madison and Hamilton
and Locke and Hume etc: but they are just talk tokens
for the play of idea and concept—and algorithmic
to what it takes to form a faculty-body (say) that might
could respond to events and dispositions and proclamations
and with some kind of immediate satisfaction if not gratification
here & now—just like any one can improve my terms and
images here & now and begin again & again our own
sustainable and sustaining converse-action across
the curriculum—or what’s a college for? .
xxxooo, Sam
No comments:
Post a Comment