by Mary Beth Ingham and Mechthild Dreyer
End of Semester
The end of the semester is nigh. And good thing, too; it's probably been one of the worst semesters I've had. But, in two weeks the 17 hour load will be gone, I will be done with coursework, I can actually start reading the books I'm interested in (ok, continue reading, but without guilt), and soon after I can quit Starbucks and maybe get a job as a tutor, or something else with some positive level of job satisfaction. I was going to hold on until the end of the summer, but I got turned down for the Logic adjunct professorship at Trinity and so I really have no reason to delay the decision.
The New, Improved Medieval Me
Summer reading list: medieval philosophy and theology. I had gotten a bit disenamored of the medievals last fall, but they still had an odd fascination for me. I finally realized why: I was trying to treat them as analytic philosophers. Now, while the level of rigour and analysis is similar, modern philosophy doesn't much like systems. Analytic philosophy in particular tends to be concerned with discrete problems. While analytic philosophers themselves may out the problems together into a larger whole, they don't do this so much in their writings. So I can read Plantinga on modal logic and on epistemology without having to connect the two.
When I had tried this on Scotus, however, I only got bogged down in what seemed to be endless details. It was Aquinas that brought me back, however, through contemporary Thomists Gilson and Clarke; I was able to see the whole which made the parts meaningful. So I thought, I wonder if Scotus' thought was this developed? As Scotus did not leave behind a Summa, it is more difficult to see this in his thought, but the book I'm reading through right now (see top of this post) is helping me to see the bigger picture and getting me re-interested. That, and realizing that Scotus is his own philosopher/theologian and not just an Aquinas alternative.
Thesis
So, with all the reading I want to do, as well with preparation for a doctorate program in the area, I have to wonder if it may be appropriate to change my thesis topic yet again. Sure, I've been telling everyone for a semester that it was going to be Kierkegaard and Shinran, and that's interesting enough, but I have done anything official yet. On the other hand, I need to do something quickly; my one reader is on sabbatical in the Fall, so I have to have at least an idea of the flow of the paper by the end of the summer.
Our New Pet Tiger
Joy and I decided that we wanted a pet, but a dog or a housecat would just cause too many problems. A dog need more attention than we can give right now, and a cat would leap up and destroy all of Joy's knick-knacks. So, enter the Tiger: a lovable lop with tan coloring and black stripes. Intelligent critter; can get out of almost any setup of cardboard boxes we make to pen him in. So most likely we'll need to get a real pen so that he can exercise without constant supervision.
1 comment:
Just a question of clarification (in addition to congratulating you on your return to the era of philosophy when philosophy still was the love of wisdom, though the doctor subtilis begins to come close to breaking that mold): By "lop" do you mean a member of the order lagomorphs?
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