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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 88
Search Result: ate oe The Greeks were intelligent people, but they discovered, as we so often have, that emotion and self interest are stronger motivating forces in human behavior, particularly on the level of international relations, than intelli- gence usually is. One important conclusion that could and...
Show moreate oe The Greeks were intelligent people, but they discovered, as we so often have, that emotion and self interest are stronger motivating forces in human behavior, particularly on the level of international relations, than intelli- gence usually is. One important conclusion that could and should be drawn from such observations is that men so seldom make anything even approaching full use of the human resources available to them. To say that we are more likely to reach a satisfactory solution to our problems by exercising our intelligence than we are by per- mitting, ourselves to be directed by passion and prejudice, is very nearly a truism. And, of course, it is another of the formal principles that I have been mentioning. We cannot really say what it means to put our intelligence to work at solving our problems except in the context of the particular problem with which we happen to be con- cerned. And only experience can teach us. On earlier programs I have occasionally mentioned the philosophy of pragmatism which, in general terms, is the view that experience and practical consequences have a great deal to do with determining the beliefs and princi- ples upon which we ought to base our decisions. Whatever mistakes you might think the pragmatists made, they at least taught us to take time seriously. And, whatever else might be true about man, it is at least true that his existence is lived within time. We ought not to be surprised, then, to discover that whatever conclusions we come to in answering the question "What is Man?" are contingent and changeable -- that as our experiences change and become wider; as our understanding of the world and of human behavior becomes more depend- able; our conclusions regarding man's nature are likely to change also. This, I believe, is what an existentialist like Jean Paul Sartre means when he suggests that man's existence always precedes his essence, for what man is (his essence) is contingent. It depends upon the sorts of experiences he has, and upon the choices he makes. Karl Jaspers expresses the same point in a famous phrase: "To be a man is to become a man." One conclusion we can draw concerning man, therefore, is that his existence is within time -- that whatever observations we might be inclined to make about him now might be expected to change with time. And there is a second conclusion we might mention, that has already been alluded to: and that is that man's being (what he is) is determined through his freedom, through his choices consciously made and responsibly undertaken. It is not popular now days to lay stress upon man's freedom and responsibility. It is much more pleasant to suppose that it is our heredity and our environment that are responsible for our behavior, rather than we ourselves. But any ethical or moral conception must begin with the assumption that man is free and responsible. Otherwise we are left with the nonsense of supposing that ethical assertions are nothing more than expressions of private pref- erence. There are, then, some conclusions we can draw regarding the nature of man, but they are not of the sort that you might have expected. They have to do with the conditions of human existence rather than with biological prop- erties or patterns of behavior. Man's existence is within time, and what he will make of it depends in good meas- ure upon his own choices. But in making those choices he has resources of mind, body and spirit which we have only begun to utilize. Man may never become the superman that Nietzsche envisioned, but he can progress beyond his fondest dreams if only he will make use of the resources already available to him. In closing, may I remind you that this series of programs has been brought to you by Concordia College, and by the staff of the Concordia Liberal Arts Institute, held every summer on the campus of Concordia College. If these broadcasts have been of help and interest to you; if you would like suggestions as to reading you might do to broaden your understanding of these issues; and if the Liberal Arts Institute seems to offer the kind of study that you think would interest you; we invite you to write to us. A letter addressed simply to Liberal Arts Institute, Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn., will reach us, and we will be glad to answer your inquiries promptly. Thank you for being with us, and good night!
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 89
Search Result: President's Convocation * Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota ¢ February 3, 1966 When President Anderson asked me about a month ago to address you during this convocation this morning, I accepted willingly, even though I suspected his motives. I am not sure whether he wanted me to put myself...
Show morePresident's Convocation * Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota ¢ February 3, 1966 When President Anderson asked me about a month ago to address you during this convocation this morning, I accepted willingly, even though I suspected his motives. I am not sure whether he wanted me to put myself on record, or simply wanted to get out of the assignment himself; but no matter. He asked me if I would reflect about and give some of my reactions to my first six months in the Dean's office, and that I am glad to do, even though six months is not a very long time for observing anything as complex as a college campus; and therefore | am risking superficiality and misunderstanding. You must remember, however, that before assuming my present role, | was once an ordinary mortal, a teacher of philosophy, and philosophers are much more adept at asking questions than they are at answering them. Socrates, of course, was a very poor teacher; he had a habit of posing nasty questions, of challenging other people's overly facile answers to them, and of requiring others to do their thinking for themselves. Perhaps I am a little better teacher than he was; I propose to ask some questions, and to give at least tentative answers to some of them, but I too propose to be more of a gadfly than a tutor. The proof of any ideas lies in their being put to work, and the ideas that I shall express here shall be tested, if at all, in your experience and mine. So I shall ask you this morning to reflect with me about the nature and the future of an institution like Augsburg College. Remember that these are reflections, not fixed ideas, and I would welcome your disagreement and even criticism, if only we can work together toward fashioning a stronger Augsburg. For some time, Mr. Sorlien has been asking me for a title for this address. Giving a title to something like this is difficult for me, for those that occur to me seem either too stodgy or too flippant. I first thought I might call it "The 180 Days of K. Bailey,” but then thought I might thereby be encroaching too far upon another masterpiece of rhetoric. Then I thought I might use "The First Six Months in the Life of a New Dean,” but that seemed to sug- gest something much more riské than has actually been the case. These have been exciting and-satisfying months, to be sure, but not in the way that a Playboy advocate would find exciting. When I reflected more close- ly upon what I wanted to say, it seemed as though the most fitting title would be "Christian Higher Education: A Mandate and an Ultimatum," for these are the things I want to talk about. A substitute title might be "On Babies and Bathwater," but, quite rightly 1 suppose, my best critic thought this a mite too flippant. There is a connec- tion, however, as I propose to point out in just a moment. Let me begin by reflecting for a bit upon what I believe to be the mandate of an institution like Augsburg College. It might very well be asked whether we have a mandate at all. In an age characterized by hugeness, in education as well as in many other areas, many sincere and reflective people are asking whether there are any good reasons why the Christian Liberal Arts College ought to continue to exist. Can it ever hope to be large enough, or good enough, or significant enough to warrant its continued existence? The prophets of doom have concluded that the answer is "no," that the days of the Christian Liberal Arts Colleges are numbered, that they can never hope to contribute in any significant way to the huge masses of young people who will need, and demand, an education in the future. The awesome thing about it is that the prophets of doom may very well be right! More and more we are being caught in a squeeze; as the better high schools improve, they are taking over more and more of the work that traditionally has been done during the freshman year of college and may soon be encroaching upon the sophomore year; and many graduate schools have begun to reach down into the under- graduate years to shape the education (by means of requirements for graduate school entry) of those who pro- pose to do graduate work. So it seems as though the role of the undergraduate college is being eroded away from below and from above, so that unless we adapt to the changes that are taking place (and that is the heart of the matter) there soon may be no significant role left for the undergraduate college to play. We who know and love the church colleges have another answer: "But," we say, "we are the salt of the earth, and we know that the amount of salt in relation to the whole mixture is small and depends for its effect upon quality, not quantity." A good answer, apparently. It even has scriptural overtones. The only trouble is that we really are not sure that it is true. Are we, students, faculty, graduates of Augsburg College the salt of the earth? There is no doubt that, in the past, some have been and some have not. In the future perhaps some others will be, but we continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 90
Search Result: Deacidart anuncatinn Gokhea c ; President’s Convocation * Febr uary 3, 1966, continued cannot be sure of it. The real question is not whether we have enjoyed some measure of success in the past, but whether we are presently in danger of losing our savor. What distinctive contributions do we have...
Show moreDeacidart anuncatinn Gokhea c ; President’s Convocation * Febr uary 3, 1966, continued cannot be sure of it. The real question is not whether we have enjoyed some measure of success in the past, but whether we are presently in danger of losing our savor. What distinctive contributions do we have to make to education that make the additional cost worthwhile, that cannot be done as well, or better, by the public institu- tions? For the moment I am exercising the philosopher's prerogative of asking nagging and I hope honest ques- tions for your reflection. I will get around to suggesting some answers a bit later. What is there about an institution like Augsburg to warrant the appellation "Christian"? Do we not run the risk, in calling ourselves a Christian college, of implying that other types of educational institutions are unchristian? If "pride goeth before a fall," it seems to me that we are inviting disaster in priding ourselves a Christian college. Is it really true that we and other institutions like ours are alone Christian and that others, the non-church-related private colleges, the state universities and colleges are not? The point, I think, is a subtle one; you might even say it is a matter of semantics. We cannot afford to claim that we are a Christian college, for this lays us open to many criticisms which are, unfortunately, too often true. Our distinction, if we honestly have one at all, is not in what we are, but in what we are trying to do and to become. To paraphrase Kierkegaard, to be a Christian col- lege is to become a Christian college. We are always in the throes of trying to give birth, and the birth pangs are hard. Most uncomfortable, of course, is the fact that we are never certain as to just what we are, but this very uncertainty, if it gives rise to the right kind of constant self-examination, is the one thing that can save us. These are hard questions precisely because, in detail, they have no simple and certainly no final solution. Every generation must search for answers that fit its own situation. But there is a general answer to them: The church belongs in education, and there it must remain, not for the sake of its own survival, but for the sake of its mis- sion. The mission of the church college is a part of the mission of the church, and if we sometimes do not seem to serve the same ends, it is because of a natural human failing--failure to see with perfect clarity what our ends are and how they are best to be achieved. There is a fallacy often committed these days. For want of a better name, it is often called the fallacy of throwing out the baby with the bath water. For example, because some people have identified certain ills and shortcom- ings within the church, they suggest as a solution getting rid of the church along with its shortcomings, forget- ting that any organization we put in its place (and, being human, organize we will!) will shortly prove to have difficulties and shortcomings of its-own. One might as well argue, you see, that because the baby needs a bath, we might as well get rid of it along with the bathwater, forgetting that it is the nature of babies to need baths and that we cannot have the one without the other. In politics there are those who suggest that because the capitalis- tic system is prone to occasion injustice, the solution is to get rid of it by substituting some sort of theoretically non-competitive economy. But every economic system has its failings; the question is, how can we best retain the advantages of a competitive system and minimize its injustices? By and large, we all want the same ends. Political differences, if they are healthy ones, arise because we do not agree on how those ends can best be achieved, and no political group has all of the answers. The strength of a free society lies in open discussion as long as we realize that no solution is final but must be open to constant re-examination. So the Christian college. That it has problems and shortcomings is beyond question. The only significant question is whether it is worth saving, and whether, in the process of trying to find solutions to its problems we risk destroying it. The reason why suggestions of the sort I have been discussing are fallacious is because they ignore the fact that the baby, in spite of its tendency to need constant bathing, is worth saving because of the contributions it might make in the future. The church college is likewise worth saving, but the price is continual vigilance and constant re-examina- tion of both ends and means in a context of free and open dialogue. I have suggested that the church belongs in education, that we have a mandate for our existence. We are enjoined by Christ himself, who is the head of the church, to go into all of the world, to teach--what? He doesn't say, in detail. Like all good teachers He tells us to teach but leaves the details up to us, and there is the agony of it all. We cannot make Him responsible for our decisions. (Sometimes, when one is faced with a decision, the statement is made, "Think of what Christ would do in a situation like this, and then do likewise." The problem is that I haven't the faintest notion of what Christ would say if he were asked whether we ought to continue to teach Latin or to add another teacher to the Philosophy Department.) Nor can we expect our forefathers to have 90 .. continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 91
Search Result: 91 President’s Convocation ¢ February 3, 1966, continued seen with precision what demands would be placed upon education in the mid-twentieth century. The responsi- bility, and the opportunity, are ours and we cannot escape them. We are enjoined to teach, but what to teach and how to teach it:...
Show more91 President’s Convocation ¢ February 3, 1966, continued seen with precision what demands would be placed upon education in the mid-twentieth century. The responsi- bility, and the opportunity, are ours and we cannot escape them. We are enjoined to teach, but what to teach and how to teach it: For answers to these questions we are forced back upon our own resources, with all of the uncer- tainties that situation implies. We have a mandate also from a rich cultural heritage which we cannot afford to ignore, but to which we likewise cannot afford to become slaves. There is much in our heritage from which there are important lessons to be learned, but there is also much that is not worth learning for its own sake. We must learn to distinguish the one from the other. In my own teaching, I have always tried hardest to encourage my students to think for them- selves. A diet of re-digested Plato or Immanuel Kant can be at the same time too rich and too lean for modern man, but there is much in their thought that can be applied mutatis mutandis to our contemporary situation. In part they spoke to their own ages, which is one reason why it is sometimes difficult to understand them, but they also spoke to the perennial problems of human existence: Who am I, and what am I doing here? We cannot expect that their answers, given in their particular existential contexts, will apply wholly to us in our particular day and age, but we can expect that their long and acute observation of, and reflection upon, human existence will have some contribution to make to the formation of our own philosophy. It behooves us to know them well enough to benefit from their insights as well as to avoid their mistakes, which, of course, are the basic reasons why a study of the past is worth our time and attention. One mistake which many of the great philosophers of the past made was that they failed to take sufficient cog- nizance of the fact of change. Two groups of philosophers have been primarily responsible for forcing us to take into account the factors of time and change. One of these is the pragmatist and the other the existentialist. Our age has often been called a pragmatic age, which, like most generalizations, is in part true and in part false. The Pragmatists were those philosophers, like Pierce, James, and Dewey, who insisted that the significance of an idea lies in its "cash value,” in the work that it will do when put into practice. Ideas which appear to be different because of differences in the ways they are expressed have the same meaning, the same "cash value,” if they issue in the same consequences. There is a great deal of truth in this view. We have very often been misled into the idea that two sentences are different in meaning merely because they differ in grammar or syntax. Thus the sen- tence "This room is empty" and the sentence "This room is full of invisible, intangible chairs" have the same meaning, even though they employ a different vocabulary and syntax, because they lead us to expect precisely the same consequence: If one looks into the room, he sees just what he expects to see, nothing! Many supposed differences in belief have been shown to be the same because they lead us to expect exactly the same conse- quences. Or, and perhaps this is more often the case, they have been shown to be equally meaningless because they both lead us to expect no consequences whatever. This is an important and very useful tool in the analysis of ideas. But, as is so often the case, what is in some instances a valuable tool can be in other instances very misleading. In this case the difficulty lies in the interpretation of the term "cash value." Its usual interpretation is much too nar- row. We live in an age which, quite rightly, values a course of study which is practical, but which tends to inter- pret the term "practical" in much too narrow a sense. For example, William James characterized the Idealism of Josiah Royce as a "Marble temple shining upon a hill," implying, you see, that its value, if indeed it had any at all (which James doubted) was only that of an object of distant beauty. But Royce's rejoinder was that his view was "inextricably mixed. with the dust and dirt of things." In more immediate terms, it is easy for us to see the value of a course of study which prepares us for a profession, but it is much more difficult for us to understand the immense practical value of a poem, a painting, a musical composition-and indeed of a faith--that can raise our sights beyond the immediate problem and encourage us to work--and to hope--for better things. Idealism is not dead. We are just beginning to understand how important it is, in the sciences for example, to exercise creative imagination in seeing beyond the drudgery of data and detail. If you talk to a scientist or mathematician, you will find that a very important part of his motivation is the aesthetic pleasure he receives from an elegant proof or a closely reasoned theory. This is not at all unlike the pleasure the linguist gets from a well turned sentence, or the historian from the answer to a vexing historical problem. .. .continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 92
Search Result: There is no doubt that in modern education we simply cannot afford to ignore its practical aspect. Mankind is crying for the solution to too many pressing problems to forget our obligation to do all that we can in helping to find them. But neither can we forget that man does not live by bread...
Show moreThere is no doubt that in modern education we simply cannot afford to ignore its practical aspect. Mankind is crying for the solution to too many pressing problems to forget our obligation to do all that we can in helping to find them. But neither can we forget that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of the Father; by every source of inspiration. It is perfectly true, I think, that a course of study which has no relation to human needs and aspirations is not worth our time or attention. There are a few of these, usually bearing esoteric names such as phrenology, mental physics, astrology (you might notice that a high sounding name is not necessarily a sign of worthwhile content); and these are rightly ignored in building a col- lege curriculum. The need for a highly trained intellect and for a sensitive conscience is as great as, if not greater than, it has ever been, in part precisely because the pressures in society and in education are in the opposite direction. Society has the means for achieving great ends--vast resources of nuclear energy, and amazing techni- cal ability-but we are far behind in knowing what ends are worthwhile and how they can best be achieved with- out great loss to human dignity and freedom. I think there are some hopeful signs. For example, the excesses of the positivistic movement have largely been overcome through recognition of the fact that the important question, when dealing for instance with the prob- lem of religious language, is not whether the statements made by the religious individual are empirically (scien- tifically) verifiable-by and large they are not--but the role played by religious expressions in the life--intellectual and otherwise--of the man who makes them. Recognition that religion is not like science implies not the death of God, but a rebirth of faith--recognition that the Christian faith is not primarily a set of beliefs about history or about the world, but a commitment to a way of life, expressed through the historic affirmations of faith. And these, like all expressions of faith, retain an essential vagueness that requires constant reinterpretation and re- examination in terms of the practical problems of human life. So, perhaps we have reached the heart of the matter. The task of the college which hopes to become Christian is the constant reinterpretation of the Christian faith in order to apply its insights to the problems, and opportuni- ties, of human life. It is not the role of the college to state what that faith is, for in the final analysis it is defined in the lives of men and women--and it is there that God lives or dies, not in our conceptual formulae. What is a Christian college? The answer is simple to formulate, but vastly difficult to implement. It is an institution which takes as its aim the attempt to apply to the lives of men the insights of the Christian faith in all of its vagueness and ambiguity. This is a course which is open to any institution, whether church-related or not, for it is a course consciously and, I trust, responsibly made. It is also a course which invites and indeed welcomes dialogue and disagreement. It is not these we fear, but indifference! To summarize briefly, the Christian College has a mandate, but that mandate is not as some people have thought it to be. Our task is not to pass on to each succeeding generation a culture and tradition which in some respects is so different from our own as to have lost all meaning; nor is it simply to keep alive the faith of our fathers, if that means merely retaining the old formulae and not caring whether or not they say anything to modern man. Our aim rather is to do all that we can to help each other become thoughtful men and women, acquainted with the past and optimistic about the future, and dedicated to the Christian way of life. Notice that I have said that our aim is to help each other, for all of us, students and faculty alike, are all involved in the process. I must in all honesty admit that I have learned far more from my students than I have ever taught them. My only hope is that I have contributed something to the process whereby they might become more thoughtful, concerned, and mature men and women. But, just as the church and He who is head of the church present us with a mandate, so society confronts us with an ultimatum: Change or Die! And now I come to the most difficult part of this address. A good diagnostician must retain his objectivity, for if he becomes interested in his patient, that very interest may blind him to the sig- nificance of the symptoms that are there for him to see. So perhaps I am not the one to try to assess the shortcom- ings of Augsburg College, for the longer I am here the more I come to admire, respect, and even love her for what she has been and is. Therefore I may be blind to some of her failings, and I may be wrong in what I think I see, but for better or worse, my task is to encourage what I see to be her strengths and to help to overcome what I take to be her weaknesses. 9 .. continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 93
Search Result: President’s Convocation * February 3, 1966, continued Of all people whom I know, the most conservative are college teachers. I am not now speaking of political per- suasion, for it is well known that a shift toward political liberalism has taken place among college faculty people in recent years....
Show morePresident’s Convocation * February 3, 1966, continued Of all people whom I know, the most conservative are college teachers. I am not now speaking of political per- suasion, for it is well known that a shift toward political liberalism has taken place among college faculty people in recent years. [am rather speaking of that which they know best; the design and operation of a college curricu- lum, and I think that I have detected at Augsburg a reluctance to depart from the tried and _ true practices of the past. This is understandable. No one likes to think that there is something wrong with the way he does things, but the only way to discover whether the old ways are really best is to try something different. Take the teaching of philosophy, for example, something I know at least a little about. The burden of most under-graduate pro- grams in philosophy is that they are usually oriented around a study of the thought of historical figures, so much so that students frequently come to think that everything worth saying has already been said by someone else. And so the student finds it difficult to say anything about a problem without prefacing his remarks with some phrase as, “Plate says that...” or “According to Kierkegaard...” Of course these are rich sources, but sooner or later the student ought to come to the point where he is willing to speak for himself. Think of how exciting it might be to teach a class in which the student is given not a list of books to be read, but a set of problems with which to wrestle, free to look for insights anywhere he chooses, hopefully even in his own reflections. We say that one of our aims is to help students to become thoughtful, but how often do we give them a chance to think, to depend upon their own resources, willing to accept their fumbling and mistakes for what they are, the first important signs of a consciousness willing to think for itself? This makes for difficult teaching, because it is frus- trating to watch a student fumble and flounder when you know that only a word from you is needed to set his thinking straight. But to say that word is often to cheat the student of the satisfaction that comes from having thought through a problem for oneself and from having made one's own proper share of mistakes. Of all educational institutions, the Christian college ought to feel itself the most free. Why, then, are we so hide- bound by the notion that so many credits for a course means so many hours, or minutes, spent in class listening to someone else? More properly, a four-credit course ought to mean that the student has, or ought to have, twelve hours a week free to devote to the content of that course. How are we best to utilize that time? That depends upon the nature and content of the course. But the first requisite is to, as psychologists say, get out of the field, to forget the notion that there is some necessary connection between credits and class minutes. Perhaps there are better ways to utilize that time. If so, it is an important part of your job to find them! Students that I have known, and I trust that they are not significantly different here, are much at fault in the same area. You are too dependent upon regimen--you want too much help of the wrong sort. What you ought to ask of your teachers is not answers, but insights into the problems you are dealing with. If there are facts that you must learn, then find out how to learn them in the most efficient and effective way, so that they will stay by you for a while. But you are not receptacles into which it is our job to pour facts and formulae--you are fledgling teachers, scholars, scientists, ministers, business men, citizens, with whom we want to work in the process of improving your ability along with our own. Your job is to learn how to use the library and the laboratory, to uti- lize your own resources, to take full advantage of the resources at your command. Our job is to help you to learn what it means to be a teacher, a historian, a chemist at work, and to help you to experience the joy of dis- covery of a job well done. There is nothing novel in what I have been saying. Good teachers have always known that they can only help and encourage good students; they cannot create them. And good students have always known that there must come a time when they are forced back upon their own resources, and it is that "moment of truth" toward which they are striving. All I am saying is that we must find new and more effective ways of doing these things, and doing so might imply a radical break with the ways we have done things in the past. Our future as an educa- tional institution, indeed our very existence as a significant facet of contemporary education, depends upon our being willing to experiment, to innovate, to create. My second general observation, and this is I think true of most Colleges like Augsburg, is that we do not really seem to have accepted the fact that we are part of an American, contemporary culture. We tend to retain a kind of romantic, nostalgic, preference for European culture, and this, while often scholarly and pleasant, may in time place us outside the mainstream of American life. If one looks at the situation objectively, there really is not .. .continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 94
Search Result: much hope that we will be able significantly to alter the course of American culture and history, but we can strive first to understand it; and second to make some significant, worthwhile contributions to it. Augsburg, unlike most liberal arts colleges, is located in a highly urban setting. This...
Show moremuch hope that we will be able significantly to alter the course of American culture and history, but we can strive first to understand it; and second to make some significant, worthwhile contributions to it. Augsburg, unlike most liberal arts colleges, is located in a highly urban setting. This is at once an advantage and a challenge. About fifty per cent of our students are commuters, with all the problems that entails missed busses, cars that won't start, jobs at distant points that require time and attention. This situation makes it difficult to run classes efficiently and to insist upon deadlines for papers and examinations. But what efforts have we made to come to grips with the situation? We simply cannot expect to operate in the same way as a college in a more rural setting where there is more time for reflection and fewer distractions. There is no use in decrying the situa- tion. We simply must adjust to it, changing our techniques and procedures to fit the needs, and unexpected little emergencies of the resident and commuting students alike. Perhaps the commuting student will have to adjust to his own situation also. It may be that with the distractions of work, of driving to and from the college every day, of not having library and laboratory resources ready at hand, will require him to consider seriously taking more than the traditional four years to complete a college education, and perhaps it will be possible for the col- lege to find some way that this can be done without additional cost to the student. We must live with the situa- tion and find ways in which it can enhance rather than hinder the educational process. The obvious advantage of our urban setting is that it places at our disposal very important cultural and intellec- tual resources that most colleges simply do not enjoy. Do we make as full use of them as we might? At our doorstep there is a ready-made laboratory for social research--a community engaged in rapid and fundamental change--and for learning the operation of business and government. We must find ways and means of taking advantage of our opportunities. If we ask help and support from the community, we must be willing to lend in return the kind of assistance we are best fitted to give so that we might learn and work together for the mutual benefit of college and community. For example, although our heritage and the characteristics of our society are American rather than European, I have not been successful in an attempt to introduce a course in American philosophy into the curriculum. Our society is basically a pragmatic one, which we can hardly hope to understand if we pay no attention to Pierce, James or Dewey who have been so influential in giving an intelligible framework to the pragmatic point of view. Too many of us tend to look down our academic noses at such ‘professional’ courses as School and Society, as though it made sense to send someone out to teach while ignorant of the peculiar nature of the American educa- tional system and its relation to American society. We ought to learn to be proud instead of apologetic for being American, and to try to understand ourselves as Americans, not as displaced Europeans. This implies that we need to accept American culture for what it is, with all of its shortcomings, and to do what we can to enrich it and encourage what is good in it. We understand far too little of how to speak to contemporary Americans in their own language. The Berkeley uprisings should have been no surprise to us. For years we have known that the basic reason for student unrest and for the so-called 'town and gown’ dichotomy is that the academic world too often does not speak the lan- guage of the student or of the society in which it is located. In the case of the student uprisings of which we have heard so much of late, I don't really think that students want primarily a hand in running the university or college. After all, they have problems enough of their own without assuming ours also. But perhaps they have been able to see no other way to force us to remember to whom we are, or ought to be, speaking. All of the teachers at Augsburg understand their subject matter. No one doubts that. But we do not take enough time or trouble to find out the needs and interests of our students; to find out where they are in their thinking, so that we can meet them there. Of all people, we best ought to be able to apply the psychology of learning, the basic prin- ciple of which is that unless some reinforcement occurs (i.e., unless we to some extent meet the felt needs of our own students) no learning will take place. .. .continued 94
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 95
Search Result: 35 President’s Convocation ¢ February 3, 1966, continued Many commentators have emphasized the surprising degree of ethical and social idealism of the student rebels, who rebel because they feel that too often what we have to say to them has no relevance to their interests and problems....
Show more35 President’s Convocation ¢ February 3, 1966, continued Many commentators have emphasized the surprising degree of ethical and social idealism of the student rebels, who rebel because they feel that too often what we have to say to them has no relevance to their interests and problems. Thankfully Augsburg College is small enough so that the student can get personal attention if he wants and asks for it; but we professors are as prone as they are anywhere to talk to ourselves and to each other. It's just possible, you see, that the student who says that he can find nothing of relevance to his own existential situation in the philosophy of Hegel is perfectly right. By now you surely have understood that what I am suggesting, basically, is that we approach our problems and our opportunities existentially. We need to resist the notion that one can decide a priori (beforehand) what a Christian Liberal Arts College ought to be like, and then proceed to fashion the institution accordingly. To do so is to invite disaster, for while we are busy fashioning an institution after our own preconceived image, society will pass us by and leave us no significant role to play save talking to ourselves and others like us. To the con- trary, in order to be a significant educational institution we simply must be alive and sensitive to the changes tak- ing place in the world around us--always willing to test our ideas by their relevance to the world around us. That this is the more difficult course I know full well--it implies disagreement and dialogue; it implies nostalgia for the days that are gone; it implies an open-mindedness to change and a willingness to accept the possibility of being wrong. But it is the only course open to a college which refuses to be content with a steadily deteriorating role in contemporary education and society. Many people have told me both before I came to Augsburg and after, that it enjoys the best opportunity for significance--service in education of any college in The American Lutheran Church, and I finally believe that this is true. But that potential will not be realized automatically. It will be realized only as we, students and faculty alike, seize upon it as an opportunity to apply all of the creative insight at our command to remaining relevant to the world around us. My plea is that we do not permit our opportunities to go by default, and that we do all in our power to retain our relevance.
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 96
Search Result: President Opsahl, Honors Students, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is always a pleasure for an academic dean, one whose interests and responsibilities lie primarily in the academ- ic area, to be asked to address students who, by the quality of their work, have shown that they, too, have an interest in...
Show morePresident Opsahl, Honors Students, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is always a pleasure for an academic dean, one whose interests and responsibilities lie primarily in the academ- ic area, to be asked to address students who, by the quality of their work, have shown that they, too, have an interest in academic matters. Yet in these times it is a problem, too, to know what one might say that would be of interest to a group of bright, contemporary youth. Even though I am fully aware that the so-called "generation gap," is not a matter of years but a matter of lack of understanding and concern; so that it really is a foolish thing to say something such as "Never trust a man over thirty, 11 for matters of trust and empathy are never mere functions of age; I am nevertheless very much aware that those interests which I have indulged and nurtured over the years I have been in higher education may not seem to be of the slightest value or interest to you. I hon- estly confess that even though I have spoken with many people, attended many conferences on the topic, and have engaged in many discussions with students at Augsburg and elsewhere, I am by no means satisfied that I know what the present student generation means by "relevance." What makes something relevant anyway? Is it a matter of immediacy, so that the only things we properly ought to be concerned with in education are those which students will find to be of immediate use to them? If that is what we mean, then we run a very serious risk of obsolescence, for we are told that, in many fields, the tech- niques and methods now in wide use will probably become obsolete in as few as five years. Then where would we be? Is it a matter of concern with possible, viable solutions to the problems which seem to beset our society on every side? Do we mean by "relevance" the application of our time, energy and knowledge to the social , ethi- cal, economic problems that are of such immediate concern? If so, we may well run the risk of failing to recog- nize that most of the problems of our society are not unique, that in one fashion or another they appeared in all of the past ages as well as our own. If we fail to recognize that, then we run the parallel risk of supposing that there is nothing for us to learn from the past, and history becomes a tedious, meaningless bore. Well, then, per- haps we mean by "relevance" a recognition of the human element of life and of society; an awareness that human beings are not computers; that education of the mind is empty and perhaps even dangerous without parallel education of the heart and the spirit. Perhaps this is closer to the heart of the matter, for I have heard students, and professional educators say that the western conception of knowledge is much too rational; that we need somehow to replace, or at least modify, the rational structure of the academic disciplines by a recognition of the importance of emotion and aesthetic appreciation. There is again an important element of truth in this claim, for there are some widely accepted theories in some of the social sciences today which are pretty sterile because they do not make room for the richness of human experience. Yet, like many claims that seem valid on the surface, this one can quickly becomes nonsensical. How would it be, for example, to structure mathematics or physics according to the ways we happen to feel about their subject matter? Do circles suddenly become square because we happen to prefer angular lines to curved ones? Or does the atomic conception of the nature of matter sud- denly become untenable because we find it more comforting to think of matter as absolutely solid? What I am suggesting to you is that, no matter how much we stress the importance of relevance and immediacy, there remain those elements in education which really are eternal verities. The trouble with the notion of eternal truths, I believe, is that too often we have supposed that it refers to answers rather than to questions. It really is certainly true that there are certain perennial questions which confront every generation. It is just as certainly false that the answers which satisfy, more or less, the needs of one generation are necessarily appropriate to the people of another age or generation. No matter who you are, or when or in what circumstances you live, you cannot escape asking the questions "Who am I?", "What is life all about, anyway?", and "For goodness' sake, what am I doing here?" The answers you may want to give to these questions may be quite different from those that 1 would want to give; and I would not for a moment suggest that my answers are right and proper for any- one else. The eternal verity lies in the fact that every generation must ask questions like these; that it must pro- vide its own answers in ways that arise out of its own ways of interpreting life and experience; and that, if the answers are to be worthwhile and sound, they must be based not on the whims of the moment but upon earnest and serious reflection. 6 .. continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 97
Search Result: 97 Honors Convocation ¢ April 2, 1969, continued Before I became an academic dean I used to teach philosophy. I still do as often as I] can, which isn't often enough. Anyway, philosophers have a pretty general reputation for being a lot better at asking questions than they are at answering them....
Show more97 Honors Convocation ¢ April 2, 1969, continued Before I became an academic dean I used to teach philosophy. I still do as often as I] can, which isn't often enough. Anyway, philosophers have a pretty general reputation for being a lot better at asking questions than they are at answering them. I think the reason for this is that philosophers have come to recognize that while we can be certain that certain questions will come up time and time again, although perhaps in a different guise in different ages; we cannot be certain that any given answer is true. Most of us, furthermore, are convinced that no answer is complete because human experience is never complete and because, for better or for worse, any answer we give to the human questions must arise out of our own experience. There is a story about the village idler who was approached by a tourist. "isn't it pretty dull," said the tourist, "to sit here all day and do nothing but whittle?" "Well.." said our cracker-barrel philosopher, "I'm thinkin’ mostly." "Do you mean that you can sit here all day and do nothing but think, and still not get bored?" The old man nod- ded thoughtfully. "Thinkin’,” he observed, "is a lot like sin. Them that don't is scared of it. Them that do it often enough get so they like it." Along the same lines, a very wise man (Solomon) once remarked, many years ago, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." (Proverbs 23:7) I ask you now to emulate the village idler and think a bit about what it means to be a man in the twentieth cen- tury. Our age has been called, and truly I think, the "Age of Science." That means, among other things, that we believe in our day that science is our best means of obtaining knowledge about our world. It also means that perhaps the dominant feature of our historical period is the very rapid progress we have made in understanding the material world and in learning how to do many of the things that other ages have only dreamed of. For instance, we now stand on the threshold of two dramatically new and different ages, the age of space and the age of atomic power. Mankind has succeeded in placing a man in space, and before very many years have passed it seems likely that someone will make a journey to the moon. Atomic power has placed virtually unlimited sources of energy at our disposal, enough to make possible the many things that up until now we have not been able to do because of a lack of sufficient, economical power. A striking illustration of the speed with which sci- ence has advanced is the fact that most of the world's brilliant scientists are still alive. So we are able to do many things, more things than a few years ago we would have dreamed possible. And yet the striking, almost fantas- tic fact is that we do not know what it is that we ought to do with all of this. There is no question but what the exploration of space is important, but instead of a purposeful, planned, intelligent program involving the co- operation of all of the world's experts, we find the United States and Russia involved in wasteful, almost neurotic competition to see who can get to the moon first. The situation is similar with respect to atomic energy. We have at our disposal sources of energy sufficient to drain all of the swamps and irrigate all of the deserts of the world, but we do not because most of our time and energy are expended in making threatening noises at each other, rattling rockets designed to exterminate man from the face of the earth. The simple fact is that our ability to do things has far outstripped our understanding of what it is that we ought to do. And when we do finally understand something of what we ought to do with the resources at our disposal, our efforts to put them to good use are often so futile. Although I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the world situation in terms of political and economic considerations, I believe that much of our bewilderment arises from two basic factors: first, our failure to understand ourselves as men; and secondly our efforts to remove God from His throne and replace him with ourselves. What sort of being is man? T here are probably few questions that have aroused as many divergent answers as this one has. Some of these answers suggest that man is a very fine thing indeed: Shakespeare has Hamlet say: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" .. .continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 98
Search Result: Honors Convocation ¢ April 2, 1969, continued It seems that we could hardly desire higher praise than this. But, unfortunately, not all have held such a high opinion of man. Sir Thomas Browne remarks: "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave." (Urn-Burial, Chapter 5) An...
Show moreHonors Convocation ¢ April 2, 1969, continued It seems that we could hardly desire higher praise than this. But, unfortunately, not all have held such a high opinion of man. Sir Thomas Browne remarks: "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave." (Urn-Burial, Chapter 5) An even more cynical note is sounded by Sir Robert Walpole: "All men have their price.” The implication, of course, is that to man ethics and morality are a sham, which any man will forego provided only that the price is high enough. We live in a cynical age, when men find it difficult to believe that ideals are more important than their own interests. It would be possible to go on and on in this vein. Just for fun I took a look into Bartlett's Familiar Quotations under the listing "Man." There I found a large number of quotations of the form "Man is..." For example, it is said that man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, a magnet, a pliable animal, and so on. In fact there are 53 quotations of this form listed, including some very odd notions as to what man is or is not. I do not intend to be add to this list. I think it is perhaps too long already. So I shall be content to discuss some wider issues, and let | you do with Bartlett's list what you will. There are, I believe, three basic interpretations of the nature of man, which I would like to review for your brief consideration. The first of these is the classical interpretation, perhaps best expressed by Plato, who believed that there are three basic aspects of the human soul (psyche), corresponding roughly to what we might nowadays call the appetites, the will, and reason. The reason, according to the ancient Greeks, is man's highest and noblest fac- ulty, and it is the exercise of the reason that distinguishes man from the vegetable and the beast. Man, however, is not solely a rational being, for the life of pure reason is suited only for the gods. Rather the ideal form of man- hood requires a proper balance or harmony of all three aspects of the human soul, a condition to which Plato gave the name ‘justice.’ (It is interesting to notice that the so-called ‘cardinal virtues' of temperance, courage, wis- dom, and justice are derived from the classical psychology of Plato; a list to which later centuries added the so- called 'theological virtues’ of faith, hope, and charity.) In spite of the fact that modern psychology has generally abandoned the structural approach, it continues to have considerable common-sense appeal to us. It is clearly true, I think, that men have appetites that need to be satisfied; that they are able, on occasion, to act courageous- ly; and that they do, perhaps somewhat less often, at least attempt to solve their problems in a rational fashion. But the basic mistake of this point of view lies in its tendency to suggest that somehow the soul of man is divisi- ble into three discrete parts, much as Caesar divided Gaul, so that we are inclined to suppose that the spirit of man is something apart from his body, or that the reason is independent of the emotions, so that we can minister to or educate the one apart from the other. Plato did not make this mistake, which makes it all the more difficult to understand why it was made so often by subsequent theologians, educators, philosophers, and psychologists. We are just now beginning to appreciate again the basic truth that man is not a composite being, but a whole and must be treated as such. Unfortunately, this is an error to which educators and religious people are particularly prone. We do not educate minds, but persons; and the concern of those who minister to our spiritual needs is not only a special area of life called 'religious,’ but the whole life. This is what we mean when we say that reli- gion is not something that can be put on on Sunday, or some other day, with your best coat or hat; but a way of life that is as meaningful outside of the church or synagogue as it is in the special act of worship. The second interpretation of the nature of man might be called 'scientific,' in a rather wide sense of that term. Depending upon which particular science one utilizes in the study of man, the suggestions as to what man is vary widely. Thus, from a physical standpoint, man is an organism much like other animals, to be understood physiologically and chemically. From a modern psychological standpoint, man is distinguished from other ani- mals only by his behavior, and perhaps by his highly developed language and ability to handle tools, and, occa- sionally, to solve problems in an abstract fashion. From a sociological or anthropological point of view, man is perhaps best distinguished from other organisms by the structure of his society, which, according to Ernst Cassirer (Essay on Man) is unique in its ability to change in response to stimuli arising within the society as well as in response to changes in its environment.. There are two remarks I should like to make about the 'scientific' view of man. The first is that the differences which science discovers between man and other animals are always differences of degree rather than differences os .. .continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 99
Search Result: Honors Convocation ¢ April 2, 1969, continued in kind. There is nothing very remarkable in that, however, for it is just what one ought to expect. From the sci- entific point of view, -man is simply one species among many, to be understood in much the same fashion as is any other organism. (This,...
Show moreHonors Convocation ¢ April 2, 1969, continued in kind. There is nothing very remarkable in that, however, for it is just what one ought to expect. From the sci- entific point of view, -man is simply one species among many, to be understood in much the same fashion as is any other organism. (This, I suspect, would have been no surprise either to Plato or to St. Augustine!) The second remark I should like to make is that the attempt to understand man scientifically is surely justified. There is no earthly reason why we should be dismayed at the failure of science to ‘discover’ that man is unique in anything like a religious sense, for it is simply beyond the capacity of science to do so. The only danger attached to this way of attempting to understand man is that of supposing that after a descriptive analysis of man has been accomplished (if, indeed, it can ever be said to be accomplished) there remains nothing more to be said. It is often thought, mistakenly I believe, that the scientific interpretation of man is opposed to the third approach I want to mention, namely the Judeo-Christian. One reason for this, I think, is because people often suppose that what the religious man wants to say ‘about’ man is tantamount to a scientific assertion, and they are therefore dismayed when science does not provide confirmation of religious beliefs. For instance, when it is said that man is a spiritual being, (that he has, or better, that he is an immortal soul), it is easy to suppose that this is on a level with saying that man is a biped, that he has an unusually large, well-developed brain, or that he possesses highly developed rational powers. Technically, a philosopher or logician might say that the mistake lies in supposing that every sentence of the form 'Man is .. .' is of the same logical type. To illustrate my point, permit me to quote from Psalm 8:4-5: "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor." As you undoubtedly know, this estimate of man is repeated by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews, Chapter 2. When one reads these familiar words, he is perhaps tempted to wonder of whom the psalmist and Paul might have been speaking. Surely, one is inclined to think, they could not have been speaking of the people that I know! At least most of the men that I know have surely been fashioned a good deal more than a "little lower than the angels." There is very little about them that could, even with the wildest stretch. of the imagina- tion, be called "angelic." But surely the apostle Paul knew this. Even in his own day, men had made a pretty sorry mess of the world they lived in. There was nothing very angelic about Roman rule, and there is nothing very angelic about governments today. I think this can be said even though during every political campaign.. each political party maintains (perhaps with tongue in cheek?) that the election of their candidates will usher in the millennium! Of whom, then, might the psalmist and the apostle Paul have been speaking. Perhaps of Adam and Eve before their venture into the heinous crime of snitching an apple from the forbidden tree? Perhaps, depending upon the meaning which you attach to this story, but even if they were speaking of Adam and Eve before the fall of what significance might this be to you and to me in the age of space and atomic power? There is no evidence that Paul meant to exclude his Roman rulers from his estimate of man; nor did he apparently intend that Adolph Hitler's should, because of their crimes, be excluded from the human race. What Paul meant, of course, is that we need to take a serious look at what man is in the light of what man might have been. He was not talking nonsense, nor was he demeaning the angels in saying, in effect, that they are only a notch above the Hitlers or other despoilers of human society. No, what he meant was that if we take a good look at ourselves, we will find that we are far from angelic. And I think that he thought we ought to be dis- mayed by that fact. I do not mean that you should take a look at your neighbors and be prepared to be shocked at how little they resemble angels. I mean, to the contrary, that you need to take an honest look at yourself! One of the most important lessons we have learned from modern psychiatry is that the hardest person to toler- ate, to really accept is ourselves. Perhaps this is why one of the hallmarks of contemporary society is our intense fear and dislike of being alone with ourselves. 'We do not like ourselves very much, because if we are honest in our self-appraisal, we must admit that we are far less than we ought to have been. I do not say this in .. .continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 100
Search Result: a sense of false humility, nor do I intend to be critical of you. I say it because the first requisite of a meaningful religious experience, regardless of faith or denomination is to take a good honest look at ourselves. The Judeo- Christian tradition puts it this way: we are condemned by the Law...
Show morea sense of false humility, nor do I intend to be critical of you. I say it because the first requisite of a meaningful religious experience, regardless of faith or denomination is to take a good honest look at ourselves. The Judeo- Christian tradition puts it this way: we are condemned by the Law, not because of what we have done or have not done, but because of what we are. Because the heart is wrong. Because we must realize, if we are honest, that each of us is a good deal lower than the angels. The result of honest self-appraisal, the existentialists tell us, is anxiety and dread, knowing that we stand, facing death, naked and condemned before God. It is not so much that we are condemned by God, or by the Law, (we cannot, after all, shift responsibility to God or to the Law any more than we can to our heredity or environment) as it is that we condemn ourselves. "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" Whatever else man may be, sinful, creature of the dust whereof he was made and from which he seldom seems able to be free, a rational ani- mal, a social animal, he is at least this: man is a moral being, with responsibilities and opportunities that reach far beyond the usual little Intimate circle. And he is also a spiritual being, cloyed by the dust of earth to be sure, but nevertheless capable of reaching heights that we have not yet realized. In other words, man is a potential being, never in the position of having quite realized all of which he is capable. In saying that man is a spiritual being, I mean that his need for worship will not be denied; and our guilt lies in having placed ourselves upon the throne of God! But this is only a part of the story. For in the first chapter of The Epistle of Paul to the Romans Paul writes: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, 'He who through faith is righteous shall live!" As a Christian, I believe that the message of the New Testament is that God has seen fit to announce His Grace and Mercy in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. One of the most beloved passages in the New Testament leaves us in no doubt on that score: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16) But what does it mean to believe in the Son of God? The analysis of the concept ‘belief’ is a lengthy and detailed matter, into which I shall not enter here. But it must be said that the Christian life does not merely consist in ver- bal assent to the many statements the New Testament makes about Jesus. Rather the Gospel message is that it is possible for man's relationship to God to be renewed, and that the result can be a "newness of life." Then God is no longer viewed as an object of curiosity or of speculation, but as a source of great strength and peace. As the psalmist put it: "Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God." One of the most mementos developments of modern times offers new hope that men of all faiths may yet learn to live amicably together. As is well known, a sincere effort is being made by men of all faiths to understand the beliefs and practices of others. In this context, the role of the Christian is not to argue his beliefs, but to invite oth- ers to come and share what we believe is God's message to our time. It is my joy and privilege to issue to you the same invitation that Philip gave Nathanael, when Nathanael in his skepticism asked scornfully: "Can any- thing good come out of Nazareth?" Philip's simple, and yet profoundly moving answer was: "Come and see." 100
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 101
Search Result: Commencement Address ¢ Antioch - Minneapolis Campus ¢ June 15, 1975 The other day President Richard Bailey of Hamline University began a commencement address by saying to his audience "I wish you dissatisfaction," whereupon a lady in his audience promptly fainted. Then in rapid succes- sion there...
Show moreCommencement Address ¢ Antioch - Minneapolis Campus ¢ June 15, 1975 The other day President Richard Bailey of Hamline University began a commencement address by saying to his audience "I wish you dissatisfaction," whereupon a lady in his audience promptly fainted. Then in rapid succes- sion there followed: a stereo next door, at full volume, blaring rock and roll; the siren of an ambulance arriving upon the scene to pick up the woman who had fainted: end a large brown dog, which wondered up onto the stage and stole Bailey's glasses. It looks as though nothing like that will happen here today. None of you looks like fainting, unless from boredom; and | don't see a large, brown dog anywhere in the room. Nevertheless, I don't intend to tempt fate, so I will not begin by saying "I wish you dissatisfaction.” But I will begin by saying to you that I am profoundly moved by the nature of this occasion, and by the make-up of this audience. There are those, you know, who would find it offensive for a white educator to address a graduating class some of whom are black; and, indeed, for a white man to presume that he could give any meaningful assis- tance at all to an educational program which differs at all significantly from that which is intended to maintain the status quo. But I am indeed gratified that I have been able to be of some help now and then, at least accord- ing to Gwyn, even if it has been no more than to tell her now and then that she has to stay home and tend to business: for I agree with Robert Frost that "Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast." "Mending Wall," lines 1-4. On many occasions it has been possible for us at Antioch Minneapolis to "pass abreast" through the gaps in the walls of differences of race and background that might well have divided us. In fact, I believe that we can take some measure of satisfaction in having demonstrated, if only on a small scale, that blacks and whites can work together as long as they can agree on a common goal. The means of achieving that goal might well cause disagreements, as they have on more than one occasion, but those are differences that can be overcome as long as good will, and the conviction that the goal is worth achieving, prevail. Our common goal, after all, is education, which presumes a willingness on the part of everyone to learn; and I am willing to admit that, in my association with Antioch, I have learned much more than I have been able to teach. In spite of degrees and the years I have spent in the classroom, on both sides of the podium, I am hopefully still a student with a great deal yet to learn. Nevertheless, there are some things I have learned which I think it might be worthwhile to mention to you today, if for no other reason than to help all of us to pull together the threads of our education. The first of these is that I suggest that we view our contemporary world with a good measure of skepticism. The Skeptics, you know, were a group of people in ancient Greece who tended to be dubious of the truthfulness of claims to truth on the part of the authorities of their day. I think there is good reason to be doubtful in our day, too, of the truth of much of what we are told. For example, I somehow doubt that it's possible for each of the three leading headache remedies to "hit and hold the highest level," since, of any three groups, it is possible for only one to be "highest." Nor, in my own travels, have I found any significant differences between the major airlines. Each seems to be able to get you there and back again with about equal dispatch and discomfort. The skies seem to be no more friendly to one than to the other. If there are any significant differences, they seem to be only that some are worse than others in matters of discomfort and inconvenience and lack of courtesy. Hence | think that a good dose of skepticism in regard to the claims of modern advertising is a healthy thing. It may even save each of us a few hard-earned dollars, which are increasingly hard to come by. But such matters are trivial. It really doesn't matter very much which headache remedy you use, or which airline you take, as long as it's scheduled to take you where you want to go. But the claims made by educators, by gov- ernment, and by our religious leaders are not trivial. Whether we accept them at face value or view them with some skepticism is likely to make a profound difference in our lives. We all know, for example, that our society 101 .. .continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 102
Search Result: and our world never stand still; things are constantly changing. It is quite unlikely, therefore, that any politician is going to be able to keep all of the "promises" that he or she makes in the heat of a campaign. If you know that, you are less likely to be disappointed or disillusioned when...
Show moreand our world never stand still; things are constantly changing. It is quite unlikely, therefore, that any politician is going to be able to keep all of the "promises" that he or she makes in the heat of a campaign. If you know that, you are less likely to be disappointed or disillusioned when you discover that no single agent of government has the answers to all of our problems. In this regard politics is like education: problems are threshed out over a period-of time, and no answer is permanent or entirely satisfactory, because the world of government, as the world of education, is constantly changing. One of the profound lessons of history is that no leader, whether in education, government, the church, or business, is free of the influences of the times in which he or she lives and must make decisions. So I suggest, therefore, that we should view the statements made by our leaders, in what- ever field, as in part determined by the times in which we live; and that we realize that, as times and circum- stances change, so will the ways in which we understand ourselves and our world change. Not even Antioch, adaptable as it is, is likely to be able to keep up with our fast-changing world. While we have been able to accomplish a good deal in fashioning an unusual educational program at Antioch Minneapolis, in order to accommodate unusual educational needs for an unusual group of people, it will take constant effort, and even a modicum of skepticism with respect to what Jim Dixon says, to be sure that our program, too, doesn't become locked-in and out-of-step with the needs of the times. Secondly, I wish for all of us a set of dependable values. Please notice that I have suggested only that we be somewhat skeptical of our times, not cynical. Cynicism, which is the conviction that, in the end, nothing is worth while, is never constructive. There are those things in life which are of value, even those things to which it is worth while dedicating one's life. As for me, I made the decision long ago that education was that effort to which I wanted to devote my professional life: for you it may be something different. But I do know that life is immeasurably enhanced if one is able to find that cause, that enterprise, to which one is able and willing to dedi- cate one's effort and interest. I know, of course, that decisions, or choices, are not all that easily made. As Thomas Mann puts it in The Magic Mountain, "A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries." T he choices you will have will not be entirely of your own making, but the choices that you make should be, insofar as is possible, consciously made, with the intent to apply the effort necessary to make them succeed. Part of the genius of Antioch Minneapolis is its emphasis upon individuality. The life experiences which you have had, and which you have generously shared with us, are your experiences, and not those of someone else. So the choices you make should be yours and not those of someone else. Andre Gide puts the matter in a rather unusual fashion: "What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself -- and thus make yourself indispensable." (Les Nourritures Terrestres. Envoi.) If I were to take Gide literally, of course, I would not have attempted this commencement address, for there are many who could do it better than I. But his point is more subtle: whatever you do, be sure that your effort is a reflection of your person and personality. Otherwise it is not worth doing. Finally, I would like to suggest to you that education is never a finished product; it is more like a door opening to the future, to the creative process that life, in the best sense, ought to be. While we do not know what the future has in store for any of us, we do know that it will contain possibilities and opportunities which it is the business of education to fit us to make the most of. What is past is past: "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it." (Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam. LXXI. FitzGerald translation.) The future is open to you, but which road you shall take remains to be seen. You have shown courage, dedica- tion, and creative intelligence in pursuing a degree from Antioch Minneapolis, which augers well for the deci- sions which you will be making in the future, choices which will help to determine whether your education was worth the time and the effort. Perhaps it will be for you to take a road which has so far not been much traveled: o> .. .continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 103
Search Result: Commencement Address ¢ June 15, 1975 "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim,...
Show moreCommencement Address ¢ June 15, 1975 "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. (Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken") The road to creative living is the "one less traveled by,” and it is not an easy road, nor is it easily found. But it is the road that for each of us will perhaps make "all the difference." We do not know all of the elements that go together to make a creative approach to life possible, but we do know that courage and willingness to take the road "less traveled by" are some of them, and these you have already shown. We also know that creativity is not dependent upon sex or race, for we have been made more conscious in recent years of what we have always known, that neither males nor whites have a corner on making signifi- cant contributions to society or history. And now we know, too, that each of you has mastered some of the tools you need to say and do some of the things that our society so badly needs. Perhaps the final, and perchance . even the only, word you need or want from me is the encouragement of knowing that it is possible, and that it is : worth while. It would be indeed presumptuous of me to say, on the basis of my own experience, "Try it. You'll like it!” But I do have the testimony of those who are much more creative than I that the profound sense of satis- faction of knowing that your life has made a difference, that you have been able to do something significant for someone else, perhaps surpasses all other forms of satisfaction. So, unlike President Bailey of Hamline, I wish for you satisfaction, the satisfaction of knowing that the path of life you have chosen for yourself has made a difference to somebody. That is quite different from being satisfied with things as they are, for perhaps discontent is at the root of wanting to make a creative contribution to our society. Perhaps at Antioch Minneapolis we have gone some distance toward showing that education can be dif- ferent; that or men and women of good will, of whatever race or background, can work together toward a com- mon goal; that, as your presence here today testifies, the game is worth the candle; that, however much we have been able to do, there remains much more to do; and that a creative approach to education is still possible and fruitful. It is in this sense that I wish you satisfaction, with what we have been able to achieve together; and with-the open possibilities that remain before us. While I congratulate you upon achieving a degree today; I, at the same time, challenge you to remember that creative living is an aim worthy of your finest efforts. Bon Voyage!
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 105
Search Result: Know Thyself Said to have been inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, in ancient Greece, are the words Jy O@t cavr "Know Thyself." These words are also sometimes ascribed to the Greek cosmologist, Thales, according to Diogenes Laertius,! which is something of a surprise since what little we...
Show moreKnow Thyself Said to have been inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, in ancient Greece, are the words Jy O@t cavr "Know Thyself." These words are also sometimes ascribed to the Greek cosmologist, Thales, according to Diogenes Laertius,! which is something of a surprise since what little we know of Thales indicates that he spent relatively little time reflecting upon the nature of man. "Know Thyself" was also Socrates’ favorite advice to the young men of his time, and it is to him that the expression is most often ascribed. It would surely seem that Socrates' advice was sound, for what better starting point could there be for philosophy than an understanding of oneself, to which each of us would appear to have privileged and direct access? In spite of the obvious wis- dom of Socrates’ words, however, the task of knowing the self is one of the most perplexing in all of philosophy, For example the Scottish empiricist David Hume has difficulty in finding even his own self; 2 whereas the American pragmatist William James professes to find not only one self but four! Most philosophers have held that our knowledge of objects is of necessity indirect; that in the act of perception we do not see or feel things directly, but only through some media such as sensations or sense data. To be sure, some philosophers, usually denominated common-sense or naive realists, have held that in the act of perception we do experience things directly, so that in some fashion the existence and the nature of a perceived object are certified in the act of perception itself. 4 Philosophers have by and large held. however, that because of the untrustworthiness of sensory experience and because analysis of the act of perception indicates that sensory experience is necessarily indirect, common-sense realism is not a tenable position. Hence the appellation ‘naive.’ So it may safely be said that the majority opinion is that our experience of objects is indirect, although there is considerable divergence of opinion as to the nature of the relation between sensory experiences and the objects which they are somehow supposed to represent. In somewhat more contemporary language, there is consider- able disagreement as to how our assertions about the world are to be analyzed. If we turn from consideration of our experience of ordinary objects to consideration of the self, the situation would seem to be vastly different. Experience of the self seems to be both direct and privileged, in the sense that an experience of the color yellow apparently requires no mediator between the experience and our awareness of it; for an experience of yellow and one's awareness of that experience would seem to amount to the sane thing. One does not, as it were, stand off and view his experiences objectively in the sense in which one might view a chair objectively. Whereas it might make sense to say that the chair, qua object, is something above and beyond my experience of it, it does not make sense to say that my experience of the color yellow is something above and beyond my being aware of that experience. Furthermore one's experiences are privileged in the sense that one has sole access to them. I cannot experience your experience of yellow, and you cannot experience mine, Subjective experiences are private. They cannot be shared. Of course it is true that similarities in the ways you and I use language might indicate that our experiences say of the color yellow, are at very least similar, since we might both say of the same object that its color is yellow. But our use of the same term in describing the same object does not necessitate that our experiences of the object are the same. I have no warrant for supposing that the experience you associate with the word 'yellow' is the same as the experience which I associate with the word ‘yellow.’ Indeed, if it were possible for me to experience your sensation of yellow, I might not even recognize it, or at least call it by another name. These two apparent facts, that experiences of the self would seem to be direct, and that subjective experiences are of necessity private, occasion two contrary tendencies among philosophers and psychologists. On the one hand, the apparent fact that awareness of the self is direct seems to suggest that knowledge of the self ought to be both more easily obtained and more dependable than an knowledge of other objects, a knowledge of which seems to be necessarily indirect. Consequently some philosophers and some psychologists have suggested that the intro- spective method, a method of observation directed upon the self or its mental states and operations, if properly structured and followed ought to result in knowledge which could not fail to correctly represent the nature of the human self. On the other hand, however, the fact that subjective experiences are necessarily private makes them highly suspect to modern empiricists, since the sciences long ago determined that the proper objects of .. continued 105
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 106
Search Result: Know Thyself, continued scientific investigation must be public. If it is true that my own subjective experiences are necessarily private, this means that only I am privileged to 'observe' them, and that my ‘observations’ of them cannot be critically scrutinized or corrected by any means...
Show moreKnow Thyself, continued scientific investigation must be public. If it is true that my own subjective experiences are necessarily private, this means that only I am privileged to 'observe' them, and that my ‘observations’ of them cannot be critically scrutinized or corrected by any means whatsoever.’ If no critical scrutiny or correction is possible, then it would. seem that there is no way to verify the claim that my observations of my own mental states represent them correctly. This consideration might not be serious if it were the case that introspective reports of various persons were sufficiently similar to suggest that further refinements of the method would probably result in agreement regarding the operations and structure of the mind. But this is not the case. Introspective reports vary widely, so widely in fact that there seems, to be almost no hope of their eventual agreement, no matter how refined the introspective method might become. Consider, for example, Plato's claim that it is possible, through reflection, to come to an intuitive understanding of the nature of justice. How might such a claim be either estab- lished or refuted? Presumably, a claim to knowledge by intuition could be refuted only by another to a contra- dictory intuition. But, since both are subjective experiences, neither has any prior claim over the other. There are available a considerable number of' penetrating and valuable works which, attempt an analysis of the self from a more or less subjective, introspective point of view. One might mention, for example, the very signifi- cant work of the French existentialist Gabriel Marcel, as well as that of Kierkegaard. However, the attempt to _ give anything like an adequate account even of a single self, without suggesting that the self can adequately be considered as an object of study, is a very difficult, and sometimes obtuse undertaking. I intend here nothing as ambitious as that. Instead I should like to consider a more general case. Since we are all men, in the generic sense, perhaps an attempt to define the general term 'man' will shed some light upon our problem. Ostensibly, it would seem simple to find a definition of ‘man.’ I am certainly aware of the numerous, and passi- vate, objections to the use of the word ‘man’ in this fashion, even in its generic sense. However, it seems to me that use of an alternative, such as “human,” a “human being,” a “humanity” is awkward, and contributes noth- ing to our understanding of the matter at hand. Perhaps it will suffice, for some readers at least, to say that the - term ‘man’ as used here is intended in an entirely gender-neutral sense. The most obvious course is to refer to a good dictionary. Thus one purports to define 'man' as "the human race, " which, although it is no doubt valuable to know that one can substitute the term ‘human race' wherever the term 'man’ appears in discourse without loss of meaning, is singularly unhelpful as far as our problem is concerned. What we want to know here is not whether 'man' and ‘human race' are synonyms, which they are, but what are the characteristics shared by all human beings which justify our calling them all by the same name, whether it be 'man' or some synonym. In order to approach an answer to this problem, we need not a dictionary definition, which purports to tell us only how a term like 'man' is ordinarily used, but an analytical definition, which defines a term by specifying the characteristics or properties shared in common by all of the entities referred to by that term. Sometimes it is said that a definition of this type specifies the connotations of the term to be defined, since a term like 'man' denotes a class of individuals and connotes the properties common to all members of that class. All students of logic know that whereas it is easy enough to specify what an analytic definition properly ought to be like, it is much more difficult to construct an adequate one. However, our problem now appears in this form: What characteristic or characteristics do all men share that would justify our calling them all by the same name? Although we have found that a dictionary is of no help to us, might it not be the case that some clues are to be found in literature? The Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews Chapter 2, offers one estimate of man: "For Thou has made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.” Shakespeare has Hamlet say: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!” Somehow, after having observed some of the cruelties that man sometimes inflicts upon his fellows, I feel as though both the Apostle Paul and Shakespeare have overstated the case! .. .continued 106
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 107
Search Result: Know Thyself, continued A more humbling experience is afforded by Sir Thomas Browne, in his Urn-Burial, Chapter 5: "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave." I think this is a notable example of irony: what little praise Browne offers in his one hand is promptly taken...
Show moreKnow Thyself, continued A more humbling experience is afforded by Sir Thomas Browne, in his Urn-Burial, Chapter 5: "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave." I think this is a notable example of irony: what little praise Browne offers in his one hand is promptly taken away by the other! Somewhat more crudely, Sir Robert Walpole sneers a Olt at us, and remarks cynically "All men have their price." Cynicism is no novelty in our age. And perhaps it is to some extent justified, for even a cursory examination of the daily papers suggests that, for many men at least, their own interests are far more important than any moral or ethical ideals. But, perhaps in spite of his rather obvious shortcomings, and in spite of the fact that men have seldom if ever come even close to the psalmist’'s conception, there may be hope for man yet. Perhaps, even though he is now apparently something a good deal lower than the angels, he may in time become better than he now is. Perhaps through evolutionary changes, and especially if he is willing to make an effort in that direction, man may serve as a stepping stone to something higher. Or so Friedrich Nietzsche believed at least, "Man", says Nietzsche, "is something to be surpassed. . . . a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over an abyss."© The idea is not that man will someday become perfect, but that he is infinitely perfectible. Nietzsche's Ubermensch is not a state which man may sometime claim to have accomplished. Assuming that such a state had already been achieved was at least one mistake of the Nazi philosophy. To the contrary, in Nietzche's view man is always something to be surpassed. He is always something less than he might become. Strangely enough, perhaps, judging by his admiration for hatred and violence, Nietzsche was an idealist. The Ubermensch is an ideal form which man can never in fact accomplish, but which is nevertheless the goal of his evolutionary development. In Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, under the listing "Man," there are approximately 53 quotations of the form "Man is. . .” Those we have already mentioned constitute only a sample. I could, of course, mention others, but perhaps enough has been said to suggest that in literature one can find a wide variety of notions regarding what man is or is not. And precisely because the estimates of poets, playwrights, philosophers and so on vary so widely it is difficult if not impossible to decide which of them might be correct. Surely they cannot all be, at least if one takes all seriously. It is not obvious, at any rate, how one could reconcile St. Paul's-suggestion | that God has "crowned him with glory and honor" with Kipling's estimate: "Man that is born of woman is small potatoes and few ina hill. 7 Of course it might be said, as it often is, that many of these quotations are not to be taken literally, but, allowing that this may indeed be the case, it is precisely to the extent that they pretend to be but are not literal descriptions that they do not help us in our attempt to understand what man is. . I think it probable that just because the estimates of man among philosophers, poets, and playwrights and the like are so widely variant, and because they are so seldom, if ever, subject to empirical observation and verifica- tion, the attempt to understand what man is seems nowadays to have been given over to the sciences. We in the more literary areas may bemoan this fact, but at least a part of the reason for it is our own failure, to avoid confu- sion, conjecture, and obscure symbolism in our discourse about man. Be that as it may, however, the fact remains that today, when we ask seriously, "What is man?" the tendency is to look to the sciences for definitive answers. At this point it would be well to remind ourselves that science seeks to describe its objects of study in terms of objective, observable properties. Sometimes people object to a scientific account because of its apparent coldness and lack of emotive color, and because it is limited to an examination of what some people call 'superficial’ aspects or appearances of reality. But really this is foolish! An objective, disinterested, unemotional account of man is precisely what we ought to expect of the sciences. As we shall see, the question is not whether a scientific account of man is valid or possible, which it surely is, but whether, after the scientific account has been given, there remains something more to be said. A bit earlier I remarked that what we are looking for is a definition of the term 'man’ in terms of properties that are shared in common by all, and nothing but, men. One confusion which we need to avoid is that of supposing that a description of man and a definition of 'man’ are the same thing. Some description or other of man might very well be universal without being sufficient to delineate man from some other class of beings. For example, it is said that one of the ancients liked to define man as a featherless biped, which seems cogent enough until one 07 .. .continued
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Title: Kenneth Bailey Chapel Talks, Page 108
Search Result: Ven neee Wheyonll anti: Know Thyself, continued remembers that a plucked chicken would also qualify! Ridiculous as this example is, it serves to illustrate a falla- cy which is still prevalent, the supposition that a universal property is necessarily a unique one. A definition, that is, must...
Show moreVen neee Wheyonll anti: Know Thyself, continued remembers that a plucked chicken would also qualify! Ridiculous as this example is, it serves to illustrate a falla- cy which is still prevalent, the supposition that a universal property is necessarily a unique one. A definition, that is, must specify not only those properties which belong to all men, but also those which belong only to men. Furthermore, any property or properties which would serve to define 'man' must be necessary rather than mere- ly accidental. As a rule, we cannot define a class of objects in terms of their color, for color is, at least usually, an accidental property. The paper upon which these words are being written happens to be white, but if it were green or any other color for that matter it would still be paper, although its customary use might be different. A great many properties of things are accidental rather than essential, and these accidental properties can be identi- fied by a simple test. Merely ask yourself this question: “If this property were different than it is, would this still be the same kind of thing or something different?” If a change in, or the absence of, that property makes a differ- ence as to the kind of thing it is, then that property is an essential one; otherwise it is accidental. In spite of the ease with which this mistake can be recognized, however, it is still common enough. For example, it is some- times suggested that a unique feature of man is his customary upright posture. This, however, is probably an accidental characteristic. A person who can no longer assume an upright position does not for that reason cease being a man. Nor is upright posture exclusive to man. Other animals, including the anthropoid apes, sometimes assume an upright posture, and it may be that in time this will become customary for them. However, if this should happen it would not be sufficient to justify our including the anthropoid ape in the class 'man..' I have again chosen what might well be regarded as a foolish example, merely for the sake of illustration. But there are other suggestions as to how 'man' ought to be defined which do not appear absurd on the surface, but which nevertheless commit one or both of the fallacies we have been talking about. One of the oldest ways, for example, of defining 'man' is as a "rational animal," as though man were the only animal capable of rational thought. Of course there may be some sense of the term 'rational' which would at present apply only to (some) men, as when it is suggested that only man is capable of abstract thought. Perhaps this is true. I do not know of' any pure mathematicians among the anthropoid apes. But it is widely known, due to the work of men like Wolfgang Kohler, that non-human animals are able to solve some surprisingly complex problems, at least some of which would seem to require the use of concepts in their solution. Furthermore, although it is no doubt unlikely, it is not ridiculous to suppose that at the anthropoid apes may some day become capable of mathematics and logic. They already appear to have a more sophisticated language than was formerly sup- posed, and we humans have given over some of the more laborious tasks of some kinds of thinking to machines. True, the human brain is a marvelous instrument, but at least some of its activities can be duplicated by machines, or by the brains of other kinds of animal. Therefore, the functions of though and language do not suf- fice to define 'man.' In view of the fact that it is difficult to find a single feature or characteristic which is both universal and unique as regards man, it might very well be suggested that man is the only creature which normally walks upright and possesses the powers of speech and abstract thought, and evinces self-consciousness, etc. But the problem is not to be resolved so easily as that. The point, you see, is a logical one. Neither an empirical property, now any complex of empirical properties will suffice to define 'man,’ for it is a necessary feature of man’s existence that he is involved in the flux of time. Man is continually becoming--Nietzsche was right to that extent--and we have no way of knowing, empirically, just what course future developments will take. We might suspect that certain physiological changes will take place in the future--somewhat facetiously, perhaps, it is sometimes suggested that future generations may have longer arms, developed as a consequence of the need to turn off the television set-- but you might well object that acquired characteristics of this sort are not genetically transferable. And, anyway, whatever future physiological developments may take place are not necessary but accidental, a constant reminder that we exist within the stream of time. Furthermore, words tend to change their meanings through usage, and hence it is never possible to specify a def- inition of 'man,’ that will necessarily continue to suffice. The way in which we define words is very largely a function of our convenience, so there is considerable cogency in saying that we can define 'man' in whatever way best suits our convenience at the present time. And as the context of our discourse changes, it might very well 108 .. .continued
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