NDIAS Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2, Winter 2014

Vol.2

ndias quarterly

transcending disciplinary boundaries

Douglas Hedley & Jonathan Marks

No.2

WINTER 2014

this issue q PARTICIPATION IN THE DIVINE 6 q INVISIBLE ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 10 q THE EARTH IS NOT FLAT 24 q PFAU’S MINDING THE MODERN 29

Templeton Fellows Integrate Religion, Science, and the Academic Disciplines

Engaging Augustine of Hippo with Hildegund Müller Previewing the Templeton Colloquia at the NDIAS Philipp Koralus on the Foundation of LPPRD

The value and future of interdisciplinarity

2

ndias Quarterly WINTER 2014

24

contents

regular From Our Director 03 The Associate’s Angle 04 Student Perspective 18 Quarterly Interview 19 Alumni Fellow News 26 Publication Showcase 29 Call for Fellows 31

16

6 19

PHOTO creditS Matt Cashore Barbara Johnston Philipp Koralus Grant Osborn Todd Schorr Walker Art Center Special thanks to Melanie DeFord for her assistance in procuring images, to Carolyn Sherman and Eric Bugyis for their assistance proofing, and to Nick Ochoa whose keen eye for detail greatly improved this issue.

10

14

featured 06 10 14 16 24 31

Image, Imagination and Participation in the Divine The Invisible Aspects of Human Evolution On the Foundation of LPPRD The Value of Interdisciplinarity The Earth Is Not Flat Spring 2014 NDIAS Class

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

3

ndias quarterly

from our director Brad S. Gregory

bright thoughts, warm welcomes

T

he Midwest has been enduring one of the coldest and snowiest winters in decades. But it has neither slowed the pace of activities at NDIAS nor affected the warmth of welcome for our new Fellows this spring semester: Justin Biddle, Brandon Gallaher, Margaret Garvey, Cleo Kearns, and James VanderKam. All have been settling in well, working on research projects as diverse as the 2nd-century BCE Book of Jubilees to the legal and ethical issues involved in the commodification of genetically modified seeds. Their contributions to our twice-weekly seminar discussions, too, have been immediate and substantive. It is a pleasure to see a new scholarly community take shape in combination with the Fellows who are continuing with us from this past fall. They interact not only in our seminar discussions and informally, “around the water cooler,” but also through the many contacts they make with Notre Dame faculty.

In addition to our seminar discussions, the spring semester will be marked by a host of special events sponsored by NDIAS. These include a colloquium by each of our Templeton Fellows, philosopher-theologian

Douglas Hedley and biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks. In April, the Institute will also host a panel discussion and seminars on the magisterial new book, Minding the Modern, by Thomas Pfau (Duke). The discussants on the panel include Victoria Kahn (Berkeley), Douglas Hedley (Cambridge and NDIAS), and Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame). The four Templeton Undergraduate Research Assistants for 2013-14 have been reading Pfau’s book along with their advisor, Eric Bugyis, and together with other students they will lead an undergraduate seminar discussion with the author during his visit. One of my aims as Director has been to increase involvement in NDIAS and raise awareness of its objectives among students, a goal for which this year’s Templeton research assistants have been outstanding ambassadors.

South Bend is (in)famous for its many days without sunshine in the winter, but things are certainly bright on the eleventh floor of Flanner Hall at NDIAS. We cannot affect temperatures outside, but the entire staff can and does foster the warmth of fellowship among the Fellows as well as interdisciplinary intellectual intensity.

Brad S. Gregory Professor of History and Dorothy G. Griffin Collegiate Chair Director, Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study

COLOPHON

Editor & DESIGNER Grant Osborn CONTRIBUTORS Mark Alfano Paolo L. Bernardini Francesco Berto Eric Bugyis Vanessa Davies Carsten Dutt Margaret Garvey Brad S. Gregory Douglas Hedley Vittorio Hösle Philipp Koralus Ulrich Lehner Vincent Lloyd Jacob L. Mackey Jonathan Marks Vittorio Montemaggi Hidlegund Müller Grant Osborn Gladden Pappin Bharat Ranganathan Scott Shackelford Donald L. Stelluto

NDIAS DIRECTOR Brad S. Gregory Associate DIRECTOR Donald Stelluto Programs Administrator Carolyn Sherman Operations CoordinaTOR Grant Osborn Undergraduate research CoordinaTOR Eric Bugyis Research ASSistant Nick Ochoa CONTACT Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study 1124 Flanner Hall Notre Dame, IN USA 46556 Phone: (574) 631-1305 Facsimile: (574) 631-8997 Email: ndias@nd.edu Web: ndias.nd.edu Twitter: @NotreDameIAS

4

ndias Quarterly WINTER 2014

the associate’s angle

a risk worth taking

by Donald Stelluto

R

ecently, I met with a number of graduate students to discuss opportunities for scholars at the Institute, including our program of seminars, colloquia, conferences, and fellowships. As we spoke, these students became genuinely excited about what the Institute does on a regular basis as well as what it could offer them. As I explained the interdisciplinary exchanges at our weekly seminars, the various types of discussions we organize, and the commitment we have to collaboration as a mode of scholarly inquiry, their eyes lit up and the discussion became all the more animated.

‘‘The students were keenly interested in the idea of transcending assumptions in their own disciplines so as to enrich their pursuit of the truth . . .’’

I

n their questions and comments, these students revealed an excitement about the integration of the disciplines and how they might learn from other disciplines so as to better pose significant questions, conduct research, and articulate findings

that had a relevance and impact on scholars beyond their own fields. They concluded that understanding perspectives, studying questions of value, and implementing methodologies from other disciplines and fields are essential to modern scholarship.

The students were keenly interested in the idea of transcending assumptions in their own disciplines so as to enrich their pursuit of the truth and their confrontation of the big questions they were being encouraged to pursue. This approach is a departure from training in most graduate programs, and these students rightly concluded that there was a risk in deviating from established study programs to integrate other ideas and fields into their own.

W

itnessing their excitement about the integration of the disciplines affirmed my work as Associate Director of the NDIAS. Their enthusiasm was infectious and their newfound commitment to integrate other disciplines into their work was inspiring. True integration of the disciplines, or interdisciplinarity, requires a certain humility.

Scholars pursuing this type of work must often question long-held assumptions in their discipline or field in order to think anew—to ask new questions from new perspectives— and to consider other methodologies and their potential for uncovering truth in its many forms: a fresh insight or realization, a

NDIAS Quarterly WINTer 2014

‘‘. . . interdisciplinarity offered them something valuable and distinctive, not only to their specific research projects but to the larger questions they wrestled with as thinkers.’’

new understanding. There is a risk inherent in this type of activity, as a scholar often must again take on the mantle of the student.

Students are not often trained about humility with respect to their scholarship or how to be life-long learners, yet these graduate interlocutors understood and valued this quality—something that impressed me.

As these students quite rightly noted, such scholarly activity is highly productive as well as invigorating and progress on global problems is often made through collaborative thinking by scholars in many fields.

T

hese students were also keenly interested in and drawn to the engagement of scholars at the Institute, especially the emphasis on community and shared contemplation. In rejecting a model whereby scholars work in isolation, at the NDIAS, Fellows regularly engage colleagues at the Institute as well as members of the University community in discussions that span myriad disciplines while addressing questions of value. Senior scholars, often experts in their respective fields, may be queried by junior scholars or graduate student Fellows on matters that raise fundamental questions for their research. Such discussions occur in our twice-weekly seminars, colloquia, conferences, and in scheduled meetings of scholars. Some of the most interesting discussions of research projects occur ad

hoc, while our Fellows prepare their morning coffee, or as a trailing conversation after one of our seminars. For those who live as neighbors in the University’s faculty housing, there may even be conversations while their children play or during shared dinners. In this engagement, symbiotic relationships are formed, methodologies expanded, and research projects enriched.

As we concluded our meeting, the students weighed the risks against the benefits of creating a more integrated academic community. With confidence, these students concluded that interdisciplinarity offered them something valuable and distinctive, not only to their specific research projects but to the larger questions they wrestled with as thinkers. The promise of completing research projects of greater significance and broader relevance had appealed mightily to them and had overcome any risks looming in the future.

For them, the day’s conversation had taken an unexpected turn and led to a host of new possibilities.

Donald L. Stelluto, Ph.D. Associate Director, NDIAS

5

6

contemporary NDIAS QUARTERLYmagazine WintER 2014 month 20XX

image, imagination, & participation in the divine M

by Douglas Hedley

uch scholarship is dedicated to very minute and specialist work. I am temperamentally drawn to a much broader canvas—for the last decade I have been working on the idea of the religious imagination. Yet although it can be thrilling to work on a broad topic, it can also have its problems and dangers. It is an immense privilege to work at the NDIAS and it is my good fortune that my project overlaps with the work of other Fellows of the Institute in myriad ways. I can test out my thoughts and arguments in a critical and yet sympathetic context. The Institute is a remarkable model of learning and mutual exchange, especially for a scholar like myself who relishes the big ideas.

The Catholic tradition and the mission of the NDIAS have provided a very fecund context for my research this year. Whereas an interest in “religion” can often be perceived with suspicion in the contemporary academy, the Institute provides a context where religious problems can be addressed “head on” and yet in a critical and proper analytical manner. The NDIAS has a unique concentration of scholars with roots in the Catholic intellectual tradition, even when their projects do not focus on Catholic topics. Integration of disciplines as well as being in a community where significant questions are examined is also important to my work due to the many issues and questions that link directly to other disciplines and fields.

The Institute has provided me with an opportunity to systematically draw on the insight of other scholars by building a community with a strong commitment to shared contemplation; this has become a great resource for my project.

The title of my project is The Iconic Imagination. Shakespeare’s paean to the imagination in the speech of Theseus in A Midsummer’s Night Dream extols the poet’s prophetic eye glancing “from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,” “bodying forth” and giving shape to “things unknown.” The imagination becomes in the Renaissance and Romanticism a vehicle of Divine revelation. Yet this pivotal concept of the “imagination” raises philosophical questions that have absorbed and intrigued philosophers from Aristotle to Ryle, Collingwood, Wittgenstein and Sartre. One cannot avoid the philosophical dimension of the image. In English we can distinguish between a picture and image; in German “Bild” conveys both.

Whereas a picture is a material object, an image may be mental. Thus “image” is the more expansive and illusive term. Is it a mere accident of etymology that the English word “imagination” contains the “image”? In The Iconic Imagination I reflect upon the relationship between imagination and images in aesthetic, theological and metaphysical terms.

In English literature and art history, there has been a strong interest in the so called “iconic turn.” Writers like W. J. T. Mitchell in the U.S. and Gottfried Boehm in Switzerland have probed the philosophical and anthropological dimension of the image in the context of photography, cinema and the digital age. Yet both of these

‘‘. . . the Institute provides a context where religious problems can be addressed “head on” and yet in a critical and proper analytical manner.’’

thinkers relate such an “iconic turn” (or pictorial turn) to classical topics in aesthetics such as “mimesis” or “ekphrasis.” Mitchell and Boehm are frequently drawing upon the Romantic interest in the imagined “image” and subsequent critiques by philosophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer and Rorty.

Yet the theological aspect is ineluctable because the human imagination, art, and religion have been historically so closely linked.

Many of the objects which one can observe in museums were originally in temples, mosques or churches: sacred places of worship. Sometimes the relationship between art and the sacred has been conflictual, even violent. An integral element in this deep but ambivalent relationship is clearly the role of the imagination.

Consider an image like the Indian icon of the “dancing Shiva.” There is a theological or metaphysical dimension to the object as the representation of an aspect of supreme reality. There is also a mythological dimension, which is the narrative that surrounds and supports the image of the Deity.

Finally, there is the ritual aspect of the object, which is how it should be consecrated and used.

The great religions take very different stances over images.

Hinduism is replete with images.

Islam is hostile to representations of the Divine and even the human form;

contemporary NDIAS Quarterly magazine month Winter 20XX 2014

indeed images can be the source of outcry and outrage as dangerous idols. Christianity occupies a middle ground between the two in its doctrine of the incarnation. Yet even within Christianity, there are fierce divisions over the status of images of the Divine. Since arriving in Cambridge, I have used the opportunity to work with experts in non-Western religious traditions and have developed a deep interest in both Islam and Hinduism in particular. This project draws upon my own collaborative work with scholars of Islam and Hinduism and reflects the fruition of sustained grappling with the problem of image and imagination in comparative religion.

The Iconic Imagination also draws together strands of my interest in the Platonic tradition of Western philosophy. It explores the idea of seeing an invisible God and the image implicit in the Platonic conceptions of participation or likeness—a strand

7

of thought which influenced Islam and Jewish traditions as well as Christian.

Plato famously presents the physical cosmos as “participating” in the ideas.

Aristotle dismissed this as merely a poetic manner of speaking. Yet the idea of “participation,” through the influence of Neoplatonism, was a pivotal aspect of late antique and medieval thought (e.g., Aquinas). It is, however, almost entirely absent in modern philosophy—no major western philosopher from Descartes to Nietzsche employs the word “participation.” It becomes part of what C. S. Lewis famously described as the “discarded image.” To what extent does the status of the “image” change through the erosion or loss of a broader metaphysical idea of participation in or imaging of an intelligible cosmos?

With my project’s title, I am using the term “iconic” rather loosely. I do not wish to discuss the Byzantine or Orthodox Icon, but I am using the term in order to express a particular view of the imagination as furnishing glimpses of transcendent truth. My Iconic Imagination is an attempt to bring this period of reflection on the imagination to a conclusion. In this volume, I wish to explore the role of images in both the paths of affirming and denying knowledge of the transcendent. Why are certain images often viewed as bearers of nonpropositional knowledge of the Divine? Why are some images often viewed as barriers to an adequate apprehension of an invisible Deity and potentially idolatrous? Some philosophers have been keen to stress the metaphors we live by—that is, how much our conceptual apparatus is basically metaphorical.

Behind such laudable attempts to insist upon the imaginative dimension of the relation between mind and world, we find a deep nominalism. I do not find the nominalism or anti-realism motivating such theories appealing or convincing.

Hence, I would rather stress “images that we live by.” Images can bear a relation

8

contemporary NDIAS QUARTERLYmagazine WintER 2014 month 20XX

Another relationship that figures importantly into my to the word that is not merely figurative—images, and we work is that between poetry and philosophy. There has see this in the sacramental practice of Christendom, can been a history of philosophy as poetry, from antiquity to bear the imprint of their archetype. the modern period. Some of the great poets have also been The strong philosophical dimension of the Institute considered more as philosophers or trained as philosophers. has been important for my research, no less because A question that has exercised my research is this ancient this dimension is broadly constructed. The promotion of quarrel between poetry and philosophy. In a context where collaboration and engagement among the members of the the pre-eminence of the natural sciences in the modern community have enabled me to think in new directions and university is often unquestioned, this particular tension in dialogue with a number of other disciplines, especially between poetry and philosophy seems particularly urgent. on very large questions such as how the relationship While examining this tension, it has been especially useful between images and concepts draws on propositional and for me to have literary scholars at the Institute. non-propositional knowledge. Particularly helpful for me The opportunity to work alongside Jonathan Marks, the has been the tremendous rigor, lucidity, and precision with other Templeton Fellow in residence at the NDIAS this year, which philosophers at the Institute (Robert Audi and Carl has also been deeply enriching. One of the puzzles I address Gillett) have examined my work, as well as challenged and in my monograph is the idea of humanity in the image stimulated my reflection on the source of values. It has of God. Jonathan has confirmed my opinion about how also led to further questions about the varied contexts for biology per se tells us little or nothing about the normative these questions of value, questions that colleagues at the and spiritual dimension of human experience. Jonathan’s Institute were quite helpful in exploring with me. work on our nature For example, a as bio-cultural “ex key question in ‘‘. . . my engagement with faculty and students apes” makes the relation to the image is that of power; has provided me with first-hand experience of the popular biological determinism of images exert power remarkable academic culture of the University of much writing about and influence.

Because I do not Notre Dame; I have been reminded that place and human nature (e.g., in evolutionary have a background community do matter to one’s research.’’ psychology) seem in political theory, both speculative and engagement with deeply improbable. If the thumb developed alongside tools, political theorists (Gladden Pappin), and even literary one would expect much of our inheritance to be cultural as scholars who address political questions and culture (Ethan well as purely biological. I encouraged Jonathan to read Vico Guagliardo), have led me to challenge some of my initial and Jonas; he has opened a whole vista of contemporary assumptions and to reflect, often with these individuals, on anthropological reflection to me. Jonathan has reinforced the political dimensions of images. my conviction that we are deeply imaginative creatures.

The tradition in Christendom with the most explicit Another opportunity this year has been that of working attention to the image, particularly with respect to with two exceptional research assistants, Sarah Lovejoy the icon, is Byzantine. There are fascinating questions and Jack Yusko. These two students have been extremely about Greek and Latin Christianity as well as divisions in resourceful, diligent and helpful to my work this year. They Western Christianity over the status of the image. The have also been a delight to work with.

Catholic emphasis has been on the image while Protestant The Institute has afforded me this year the requisite emphasis has been focused on the critique of the image balance of stimulus and opportunity for dialogue and in favor of the Word. Anyone working on icons or images exchange while allowing me enough space to write and cannot avoid the pivotal significance of the specifically pursue particular avenues of research. Attending various Byzantine tradition, notably its influence on the West and seminars in philosophy and theology and my engagement particularly Renaissance art as well as the reaction from with faculty and students has provided me with first-hand the West to the Byzantine iconic tradition. New questions experience of the remarkable academic culture of the emerged for me this year about the relationship between University of Notre Dame; I have been reminded that place political culture and the power of the image in the eastern and community do matter to one’s research. I expected tradition as I worked in community with specialists that my Templeton Fellowship at the NDIAS would be on Russian history and the Orthodox Church (Scott productive. What I did not anticipate is that it would be such Kenworthy and Brandon Gallaher) whose knowledge and a transforming experience. recommendations with respect to the Russian Revolution and comparative study of Christianity in the West and Douglas Hedley East provided additional direction and a specific context to explore, enriching my understanding of the issues 2013-2014 Templeton Felllow at the NDIAS surrounding image and icon.

Reader in Hermeneutics and Metaphysics, University of Cambridge

contemporary NDIAS Quarterly magazine month Winter 20XX 2014

9

Participation in God: Reassessing an Ancient Philosophical Idea and its Contemporary Relevance A Templeton Colloquium at the NDIAS

led by Douglas Hedley, Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS

Reader in Hermeneutics and Metaphysics, University of Cambridge

March 18-21, 104 McKenna Hall This colloquium brings together scholars from numerous disciplines, including the natural sciences, philosophy, theology, and literature, to examine the fundamental questions of participation in the Divine. Building on philosophical premises and drawing on a rich tradition of thought, including ancient and Thomist philosophy and the inheritance of participation following the scientific revolutions, this meeting of scholars will examine key ideas, conceptual definitions, the language of participation, and its logic.

Tuesday, March 18 •“The historical background of participation in the Divine,” with presenters Mark Noll and Brad Gregory (please note, this session has limited seating) Wednesday, March 19 •8:30 am “Ancient philosophical understandings of participation,” with presenters Stephen Clark and Gretchen Reydams-Schils •10:20 am “Medieval understandings of participation,” with presenters Richard Cross and Stephen Gersh •3:30 pm “Participation and literature,” with presenters Christian Moevs and Vittorio Montemaggi •7:00 pm “Participation and the modern scientific worldview,” with presenters Ryan Mullins, Jacob Sherman, and Charles Taliaferro Thursday, March 20 •8:30 am “Participation, the image of God, and evolutionary theory,” with presenters Carl Gillett and Phillip Sloan •10:20 am “Participation and its contemporary relevance: metaphor or metaphysics?,” with presenters Vittorio Hösle and Cyril O’Regan •3:00 pm “Participation and the natural sciences,” with presenter Celia Deane-Drummond Accession #: 1990.22 Artist: Anselm Kiefer Title: Emanation Date: 1984-1986 Medium: oil, acrylic, wallpaper paste, lead on canvas Dimension: 161-1/2 x 110-3/4 x 9-1/4″ Credit Lines: Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Gift of Judy and Kenneth Dayton, 1990

For more information, please visit our website: ndias.nd.edu or blog: blogs.nd.edu/templeton-colloquia-at-the-ndias.

10

ndias Quarterly WINTER 2014

the invisible aspects of human evolution

by Jonathan Marks

A

ncestry is a bio-political topic.

That is to say, it has meaning that is partly made up of the natural facts of procreation but also of cultural facts, such as whose ancestors were superior to others, and whose story of descent is truer. When it comes to species, and particularly the species Homo sapiens, evolution is the relevant story of descent, and by the standards of reliable knowledge production at our disposal (that is, “science”), it is the truest.

When we conceptualize the ancestry of our species, there are certain areas in which the data constrain us strongly—because we have a lot of fossils—and certain areas where we are more or less freed from those constraints. A century ago, for example, it was widely thought that the (large) human brain evolved before the (small) human canine teeth. Fossils discovered in Africa since the 1920s, however, have shown that, rather, our teeth evolved before our brains.

Indeed, we now know that our remote ancestors had feet, legs, pelves, and teeth like ours long before they had brains like ours.

But there is also much that the fossil record doesn’t tell us about the origins of the human condition, and that it cannot tell us. After all, the human condition is not simply a biological state, but a bio-cultural state. Back when our ancestors were small-brained bipeds, about two-and-a-half-million years ago, they figured out that by banging rocks together they could make sharp edges, and that those sharp edges could transform the things around them in useful ways.

Chimpanzees can’t do that because, in spite of their anatomical and genetic similarities to us, they have neither our large, strong brains nor our large, strong thumbs. In other words, our organic properties of dexterity and intelligence appear to have co-evolved along with our earliest technologies. Human evolution is thus fundamentally the transition from biological processes and properties to bio-cultural ones.

Another example of the co-evolution of the organic and non-organic involves our hair. Human head hair, unlike that of chimpanzees, usually keeps growing. Without the means to cut and tend it, then, our hair will overgrow our sensory organs—an unusual and presumably highly maladaptive situation. To understand it, we need to realize that our hair is not merely a biological feature, but a bio-cultural feature. It universally conveys symbolic and social information about us. Indeed, the earliest depictions of the human form that we have—the “Venus” carvings from about 25,000 years ago—show the hair carefully tended, even back in the Stone Age. Presumably hair served more-or-less the same social functions back then that it does universally in our species now. Once again, that plainly implies that hair growth must have evolved in concert with the technological ability to maintain it.

The problem, though, is that we don’t—and can’t—know much more than that. The reason is that we are now talking about the symbolic, the social, and the physiological features of our species, none of which is retrievable in the ancient human fossil record, which is limited to the world of osteology and lithics, or more euphoniously, of bones and stones.

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

And yet there is so much more to the emergence of humanity. Over 100,000 years ago, we find bones bearing the final anatomical hallmarks of the human condition, notably foreheads and chins. Yet the people with those foreheads and chins, who looked like us skeletally, were living lives fundamentally like those that Neanderthals lived, without foreheads and chins. Not only did these anatomical humans lack domesticated plants or animals, metallurgy, and writing, but even drawing—all of which lay tens of thousands of years in the future.

This gets to the core of my research as a Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS and for my upcoming symposium on “The Invisible Aspects of Human Evolution.” There are many things that make us human, but only a few of them are even accessible in the archaeological record. Consider language, which differentiates us from the apes (who at best are capable of a small bit of human communication, after far more intensive training than humans require or receive).

Communication doesn’t fossilize, nor does the tongue or larynx, whose human forms differ from those of the apes and which permit us to articulate our thoughts. How, then, can we recognize language, or even protolanguage, in our ancestors?

Or consider kinship. An ape may have a conception of “mother” but certainly none of “father” —much less of “uncle” or “grandma.” Apes mate, but don’t marry, which means that they do not have a conception of “inlaws.” Yet again, all of these new kinds of relations—father, grandmother, in-laws—originated somehow. But not only are they not fossilized, they are not even properties of humans themselves; they are relations between humans. We can’t excavate those relations, but they are human universals in one form or another and require some kind of a scientific origin story.

11

Or religion. Anthropologists tend to define religion rather more broadly than theologians, searching for a baseline that can incorporate the social, emotional, intellectual, and moral aspects of human life around the world. This often involves ideas such as animism (the attribution of sentience and agency to inanimate things); this might be an application of a novel property of the human mind, to think in similes. If my neighbor can be angry at me, maybe so can the wind.

Another basic idea is taboo, the assignment or recognition of spiritual power in things or acts—from not eating certain foods, which are nevertheless edible, to not mating with certain people who are nevertheless sexually mature. If our ancestors were perpetually on the brink of survival or extinction, it would seem to be supremely maladaptive to reject certain kinds of foods. Most fundamentally: Why bury Uncle Bob, when his corpse could feed us for a week? The answer must be that somehow the merits of seeing cannibalism as a symbolic act outweigh the merits of cannibalism as a nutritional act. A third idea relating to religion is ritual—the repetitive and coordinated activities that people perform, either alone or together, almost without thinking about the activities, simply because it is what they are supposed to do. As a recent advertising campaign for Bud Light tells us (while playing the old Stevie Wonder song, “Superstition”), “It’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”

These invisible aspects of human evolution all involve a division of the universe into ordinary things and special things, which are special for reasons that may be entirely recondite—yet, to violate that specialness is to incur terrible social and spiritual penalties. These aspects also obviously involve rule-governed behavior, which is a fundamental property of human social life, yet occurs in many different contexts other than simply religious, and, like many things, is recognizable at best in a rudimentary form in apes. The difference between not doing something because you know you can’t get away with it and not doing something because you understand it to be simply wrong is one of the critical differences between the behavior of apes and people.

‘‘Human evolution is thus fundamentally the transition from biological processes and properties to bio-cultural ones.’’

Again, this came from something, sometime. But from what and when?

And more importantly, how can we ever know, since these mental and social properties don’t leave a fossil trail?

This epistemological problem makes the scientific study of human origins quite unique. We strive for rigor, but our subject matter is the stuff of mythologies.

Scholars interested in human origins often don’t quite get that point, however— particularly if they are trained to imagine the biological or natural features of the human condition to be separable from the cultural or symbolic features.

But what makes the study of human origins so scientifically unusual is that it involves the loss of the subject-object distance that characterizes the practice of modern science. You simply cannot have the same relationship to your ancestors and relatives that you have with boron or fruit flies. One common trope in the biological literature, then, is to pretend that you are a Martian, for Martians would look at humans “objectively.” In practice, however, that usually involves simply being insensitive to the ethnocentric assumptions you bring to the study of human diversity and origins. Moreover, it involves paradoxically denying the

12

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

one unimpeachable biological fact about us: that we are humans, studying humans.

We study human origins by recognizing the biases earlier scientific generations brought and hopefully being more sensitive to our own biases. We are the custodians of a sacred narrative—the authoritative, scientific story of who we are and where we came from. We are obliged to be consistent with ethnographic data and with primatological

‘‘We are the custodians of a sacred narrative—the authoritative, scientific story of who we are and where we came from.’’ data. But more than that, we are obliged to acknowledge the reflexive and narrative aspects of our task.

The intellectual area that brings all of these elements together is anthropology, which can usefully be defined as the field that comprehensively studies humans as

group members—in groups ranging from as small as the family to as large as the species. It has been characterized as the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences, emphasizing the inability of contemporary academic classifications to pin it down. It brings the biological and the cultural aspects of the human species together with the material (or technological) record and the linguistic (or cognitive) aspects; and rather than treating them reductively or independently, treats them synthetically and holistically.

The Templeton Symposium on “The Invisible Aspects of Human Evolution” will take place April 14, 2014, and will bring together distinguished anthropological scholars from Notre Dame and across the country, to discuss the ways in which our ancestors transformed themselves from anatomical to social human beings over the last 100,000 years.

Jonathan Marks 2013-2014 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

13

The Invisible Aspects of Human Evolution A Templeton Colloquium at the NDIAS

led by Jonathan Marks, Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS

Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

April 14, McKenna Hall

“The Hunter gatherer“ copyright todd schorr

This colloquium brings together scholars from various fields and perspectives in anthropology to discuss the transformation of an anatomical human into a behavioral human, which seems to have taken place between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, a timespan notably impoverished of data, but whose eventual products would become art, kinship, morality, religion, and the myriad other features of what we call “humanity.” Some scholars have postulated an invisible, unknown genetic mutation lying at the root of this transformation, rendering a deus ex machina explanation.

However, as other scholars have suggested, these humans existed at the origin of a great learning curve. Although biologists and evolutionary psychologists have reduced the origin of morality and religion to altruism and cooperation, morality and religion more likely emerged from the classic anthropological domains of the sacred, the profane, and the taboo. In this colloquium, participants will confront these ideas and discuss the origins of human intellectual and social life that constitute the human “becoming.”

Scholars participating include: Jason Antrosio, Hartwick College; Rachel Caspari, Central Michigan University; Deborah Olszewski, University of Pennsylvania; Jill Pruetz, Iowa State University; Anna C. Roosevelt, University of Illinois at Chicago; Russell H. Tuttle, The University of Chicago; and Margaret Wiener, University of North Carolina.

For more information, visit our website: ndias.nd.edu or blog: blogs.nd.edu/templeton-colloquia-at-the-ndias.

14

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

on the foundation of the laboratory for the philosophy and psychology of rationality and decision by Philipp Koralus

T

he capacity to reason and make decisions is central to all advanced human endeavors. Pushed to its limits, this capacity can yield achievements like quantum physics, rational policy-making, or lunches at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Equally remarkable, we are subject to systematic failures of reasoning and decision-making, as described in Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s best-selling book Thinking Fast and Slow. What can explain these facts?

It is difficult to make sense of our successes and our failures in a way that gives due weight to both. If we begin with the idea that our thinking is based on heuristics, or “rules of thumb,” it is hard to see how the remarkable achievements of the human intellect could be within the grasp of our capacities. Likewise, if we begin with the assumption that we are fully rational, it is hard to see how to make sense of our persistent failures.

Having moved from NDIAS via Washington University to Oxford, we have begun investigating these issues in the Laboratory for the Philosophy and Psychology of Rationality and Decision (LPPRD – “Leopard”). Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow Matthew Parrott is doing work on the nature of reasoning in mental illness, and we will soon be joined by Junior Research Fellow Salvador Mascarenhas, who is currently finishing his doctoral dissertation at New York University. One of the approaches we will be investigating in “Leopard” is the erotetic (or “question-based”) theory of reasoning. We have proposed that intuitive reasoning proceeds by raising questions and answering them as directly as possible. We commit fallacies of reasoning if we jump to conclusions too quickly in treating bits of information we reason from as answers. However, if we raise enough questions as we reason, these fallacies disappear. In a certain light, the theory is formalizing what every philosophy instructor knows intuitively. Questions make us rational (even if it can sometimes be frustrating to students and instructors alike to be forced to consider them under close supervision when the sun is shining outside). A crucial innovation is that we have put this idea in the form of a mathematically precise theory.

‘‘...narrow questions in decisionmaking produce real damage..’’

The erotetic theory explains why certain fallacies of reasoning are surprisingly compelling. For example, given the premises ‘John and Bill are in the garden, or else Mary is’ and ‘John is in the garden,’ most people conclude ‘Bill is in the garden.’ The erotetic theory holds that naïve reasoners take the first premise roughly to pose the question, ‘am I in a John-and-Bill situation or in a Mary situation?’ The second premise is then treated as a maximally strong answer, leading to the conclusion ‘Ah, so I’m in a John and Bill situation!’ Unfortunately, this inference is fallacious.

We could have a situation in which Mary is in the garden and John is in the garden, but Bill is not in the garden. This would make the premises true while the conclusion is false. In treating ‘Bill is in the garden’ as a

maximally strong answer to our question, we ignore a relevant logical possibility. If we raised questions about the ignored possibilities, the fallacy would be blocked.

These fallacies of reasoning may seem like mere curiosities. However, similar patterns may underlie mistakes in decisionmaking with real consequences. Studies have suggested that many important decisions taken in corporate boardrooms are effectively chosen as answers to simple yes/ no questions, e.g., ‘should we acquire this company for a billion dollars or not?’ However, if we ask narrow yes/no questions, we again leave ourselves open to treating certain considerations “illusorily” as answers because we ignore relevant possibilities. For example, if we ask, ‘should we acquire this company?’ then ‘let’s do something!’ could subjectively count as a reason for making the acquisition.

However, if we consider that, say, hiring a new intern also counts as doing something, we may be less tempted to make a decision for this kind of reason. As it turns out, some studies have found that decisions resulting from yes/no questions in corporate settings have yielded what the decision makers themselves consider to be failures in the long run in over 50% of cases. In other words, narrow questions in decision-making produce real damage.

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

With “Leopard,” we have a new interdisciplinary lab studying those issues.

The mathematical tools we use derive from computer science and linguistics. Key theoretical ideas derive from the philosophy of mind and language. The experimental work we do is continuous with psychology.

Potential applications we are considering intersect with psychiatry, economics, and politics. “Leopard” illustrates how various disciplines across humanities and sciences, within the ambit of NDIAS, can in fact be integrated into one research program.

A key area of application for “Leopard” will be mental disorders. Our capacity for reasoning is crucial to our ability to function in society. Naturally then, the way this capacity is transformed in mental disorder is of particularly pressing concern. Some disorders

15

may be best understood as leading to a shift in patterns of success and failure in reasoning. Not all effects of mental disorders are impairments.

For example, for certain reasoning problems, enhanced performance in schizophrenia has been suggested. Similarly, patients suffering from depression may show increased resistance to certain reasoning biases. To improve our understanding of human reasoning in general, and especially in the context of mental disorder, we need to understand both the successes and the failures of reasoning. The erotetic theory models ways in which successes as well as failures come about. It may thus provide a promising foundation for a nuanced, quantitative account of reasoning in mental disorder.

Philipp Koralus 2010-2011 NDIAS Fellow Fulford Clarendon Associate Professor, University of Oxford

16

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

ndias fellows on the value of interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinarity plays a major role in the social sciences and humanities. Historians are more and more dependent on other disciplines including biology and anthropology, even extending to engineering and geology. However, the variety of disciplines involved in historical inquiry should not be an excuse—especially for young historians—to cast the “old tools” of the profession into oblivion. And by “old tools,” I mean first and foremost philology, with its long European tradition and strict affinity with historical inquiry dating back to the German Enlightenment and Romanticism.

Archival research and a rigorous critique of one’s sources— including a command of the languages utilized within the sources and the ability to discern the quality of the sources—are still at the basis of sound historical inquiry.

At the same time, the evolution of environmental sciences, the rise of globalization, and the expanding horizons of economics should be well understood by the historian, who, by telling us about the past, is enlightening the present as only she can do. Historians are, in a way, similar to astrophysicists. The latter observe the light of stars that no longer exist. The former works on documents that are similar to those lights, beacons of disappeared worlds.

Historians can learn a lot about their respective subjects of investigation by comparing outcomes as well as tools of their inquiry and discipline. Interdisciplinarity is a dialogue among disciplines in which, however, each and every scholar should be well aware of the basis, the fundamentals, of her own discipline, first and foremost.

Paolo L. Bernardini, Spring 2011 NDIAS Fellow

For a philosopher, like myself, interdisciplinarity is extremely important as a counterpoint to specialization.

Focusing on very specific issues and problems seems to be a precondition of serious scientific research. This is all well and good, except that if we all do only narrow, specialized work, we face the danger of losing sight of the big questions: Is there a God? (What does ‘is there’ mean here, by the way?)

What is existence? Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing? Is there free will, or is each event in the world deterministically caused by some other event? Are there incorporeal entities? Is the mind reducible to the brain? All of these questions have traditionally belonged in the domain of philosophy. If philosophy in its traditional form declines in the face of the impressive developments of the modern sciences, it might well be the case that those questions need to be addressed via an interdisciplinary approach, merging competences from physics, psychology, biology, or computer science. For the big questions matter: to advocate quietism on them because no special science can address them alone is to retire from rational inquiry precisely where reason has a lot to say.

Franz Berto, 2010-2011 NDIAS Fellow As a scholar in the humanities, I see the importance of interdisciplinarity primarily as a means to communicate with other scholars. Human societies are connected today at levels unprecedented in human history. To keep pace with the changing face of the world, scholars must connect with one another’s thoughts, methodologies, observations, and interests. But interdisciplinarity is not only about

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

keeping abreast of the trends in other fields. It is a way to participate in the new global community. In the same way that technology allows people to move beyond traditional boundaries of family, town, and country, interdisciplinarity enables scholars to move beyond traditional boundaries erected around disciplines. Communication, whether on a societal level or an academic level, is ultimately the way to bridge the perspectives of those who view the world differently and to open up new and unexplored avenues of thought.

Vanessa Davies, Fall 2012 NDIAS Fellow I like to think of interdisciplinarity according to the theme once expressed by a theatre educator and friend: diversity is for unity. The academy has served society well by deepening our perspective on branches of knowledge through diversifying and specializing into more and more branches and subdisciplines. However, we risk getting lost in the tangle without interdisciplinary approaches that aim to synthesize as well as analyze.

In my own field of theatre studies, an orchestra works as an analogy for the interdisciplinary event of a performance.

A myriad of instruments can be played or can be silent at various points of an orchestral work. Learning how to optimize the potential of each one and to appreciate what each instrument has to contribute to the overall effectiveness and beauty of the piece is essential to a good musician and lover of music. Interdisciplinarity demands developing a good ‘ear’ and remembering that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

I hope that interdisciplinarity at the NDIAS will continue to serve as a harbinger for richer and more harmonized fields of study at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Margaret Garvey, Spring 2014 NDIAS Graduate Fellow The true value of interdisciplinarity is this: Reality does not come with joints fit for carving. Disciplines propose and then carve the world into cuts that are at worst freighted with ideology, at least historically contingent, and at best matters of scholarly convenience. The physical, chemical, biological, psychological, and socio-cultural aspects of our world are inseparably interwoven and exert constraints upon one other. In the future, interdisciplinarity will allow for a more holistic approach to whatever aspects of the world we choose to engage and will both fecundate and constrain the field with feasible theories we can propose, questions we can ask, and answers we can submit.

Jacob L. Mackey, Spring 2013 NDIAS Fellow I believe the true value of interdisciplinarity lies in the possibilities it opens up for the development of genuine friendship in the academy, beyond the exceedingly individualistic forms that academic work often takes, even

17

when it is collaborative. The flourishing of interdisciplinary work requires not only the exchange of ideas but an openness of mind, trust, courtesy, and the wisdom to speak and to listen with an awareness that our perspective on things may not be the central one. In these respects, interdisciplinary work can contribute significantly to our work in discrete disciplinary environments too. For in this sense, all academic work is interdisciplinary because no two scholars share exactly the same intellectual background and frames of reference. The virtues that interdisciplinary dialogue can nourish thus have a most beneficial effect in the academy as a whole. This could indeed be one of the brighter aspects of its future.

Vittorio Montemaggi, Spring 2013 NDIAS Fellow Academic inquiry has suffered the fate of Humpty Dumpty. The contemporary academy offers no unified understanding of what inquiry is, still less of what knowledge is. To answer that academic inquiry that aims at scientific understanding is, today, to beg the question.

For in a specific sense “scientific inquiry” sought nothing other than to disestablish the unified, hence doctrinal and misleading, picture of science offered by the medieval university. Rather than referring inquiry to disputed concepts such as truth, goodness, or beauty, scientific inquiry would not presume the unity of the whole and instead attempt better to understand the parts. In order to understand all the parts of the world, it was imperative to bring the fragile edifice (Humpty Dumpty is but an egg) crashing to the ground. This crash was brought about by leaving aside final causes or purposes in scientific inquiry, and focusing instead on efficient causes as they appeared through different sorts of matter. Everything operates, and science seeks to understand the code of its operation as well as it can. The apparent unity of the modern sciences— their agreement on mathematical physics as a model for analysis—imparts a superficial similarity that masks an overpowering centrifugal force. No guidance remains for translating the codes (the modern sciences) into one another. However a windmill or an animal or a city or a computer may operate, nothing relates their principles of operation to one another except the common language of codes. The sciences cannot be put back together because it was they who took the world apart. It was Francis Bacon who spoke of the “instauration” of the human sciences at the very moment that the human sciences were splitting up the world into little bits at which each could make an effort. The real “instauration” of the sciences, then, does not consist in the mere reassertion of an earlier worldview. It consists in an openness to that truth, goodness or beauty which would reunite the sciences, and which can never be noticed if we do not look.

Gladden Pappin, Fall 2013 NDIAS Fellow

18

NDIAS QUARTERLY WINTER 2014

student perspective

ndias graduate student fellow reflects on & looks forward to teaching religious ethics to notre dame students

by Bharat Ranganathan “Religious ethics.” If you’ve ever been to a meeting of the American Academy of Religion or the Society of Christian Ethics, you’ve probably heard this term being used. You may also have seen it advertised as a subfield within religious studies.

But what (if anything) is religious ethics? Despite its common usage, there seems to be little consensus about an adequate definition. Why? Some scholars lament the historical move, which occurred in the mid-twentieth century, from Christian ethics to religious ethics. Others believe that religious ethics shouldn’t be considered an independent subfield within religious studies; rather, it should fall within the ambit of the history of religions, the philosophy of religions, or theology. Others still think that nothing should differentiate religious ethics from ethics simpliciter—i.e., regardless of their religious commitments, ethical norms are binding on persons as such.

In our continuing seminar, “On the Concept of ‘Religious Ethics,’” we will attempt to develop an appreciation of religious ethics. In our first meeting last fall, we discussed the field of ethics more generally and made our first foray into understanding the theoretical questions surrounding religious ethics. For example, we discussed the distinctions among “metaethics,” “normative ethics,” and “practical ethics.” We also considered the ways in which different scholars— postmodern or otherwise—have attempted to do away with ethics. We then turned our attention toward religious ethics specifically. Focusing on James Gustafson’s 1998 article, “A Retrospective Interpretation of American Religious Ethics, 1948–1998,” we charted the shift from Christian ethics to religious ethics and the expansion of the field of ethics to include, in addition to normative ethics, comparative and descriptive ethics. We also discussed articles by John P. Reeder, Jr. and Jeffrey Stout. Here, our discussion focused on definitions about “religious” and “nonreligious” ethics and whether a religious ethicist needs to be religious him or herself. We will be meeting again in Spring 2014. Our projected topics of discussion include attempts to “reject” religious ethics and methodological issues pertaining to comparative religious ethics.

Bharat Ranganathan, 2013-2014 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University.

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

19

interview with hildegund müller

by Grant Osborn Hildegund Müller was a fellow at the NDIAS in fall 2012, researching “A Reading of Augustine’s Sermons.” She is currently Associate Vice President for Research in Notre Dame’s Office of the Vice President for Research and an Associate Professor in the Department of Classics.

GO: Just over a year ago, you were in residence at the Institute researching for your project on Augustine’s sermons. Concerning the genesis of your project, you mentioned at the Institute that the idea came about while editing Augustinian texts—can you go into more detail about this?

HM: I would like to start out by saying how grateful I am to be here today and that it is really quite an experience every time I come here after no longer being a Fellow. I have many fond memories of my time here.

I am in Latin Patristics—that is to say the study of the Church fathers—the late ancient authors of the Christian Church. This doesn’t make me special at Notre Dame because there are lots of us here, and it is a very good professional community for this sort of research. What does make me sort of different from most of my colleagues is that I am a classicist, and I am a philologist; so my interest is in the working of texts and literary questions concerned with texts, not primarily their theological content. I work on critical editions, that is to say I try to reconstruct Latin texts as closely as possible to their original form, and trace their textual transmission in manuscripts and early prints. Now this, in the case of Augustine of Hippo, is obviously a challenge because his works were widely read in the Latin Middle Ages, and were frequently corrupted or contaminated. The task itself is difficult and laborious. But it gives you a quite unexpected and unprecedented approach to questions of a literary and historical nature.

My interest in Augustine’s sermons started out with my work as an editor. As we know, his sermons were taken down by scribes in shorthand, and so they were not actually written or dictated by Augustine, but were delivered in church. Augustine improvised, and we can see in the text, if we look very closely, signs of this. This gives us a very close insight into the situation of preaching, with its specific challenges and opportunities.

So, I took the opportunity of my time at NDIAS to think about those larger and broader questions that came out of my editing. What does it mean for this author to be preaching in this specific historical situation, using his very skillful rhetoric for a specifically Christian message, and reinventing for himself a genre that had only existed for a

short time and had no clear rules? My research was more about the broad questions than the details, but it was, in typical philological fashion, coming from the details into the bigger picture.

GO: When discussing the meaning of Augustine’s sermons in one of your seminars at the Institute, you said Augustine, in his sermons, rarely spoke of anything practical or addressed the hardships experienced in the outer lives of those listening, and that was the point. The sermons were not about practicality, but transformativity, forgetting the external world. The sermons were about relearning and remembering that we are citizens of another world. Can you expand upon this, about what you found was the common aim or function of Augustine’s sermons?

HM: What I found striking when I read Augustine’s sermons for the first time was the relative absence of practical “usability” of these texts. If you compare Augustine’s sermons, for example, to other late ancient sermons, like the sermons of Caesarius of Arles, or even to our modern experience, you will find a scarcity of remarks that are either directly moralizing, to help us live in a certain way in this world as Christians, or directly related to current events—and there was a lot going on at the time in North Africa and the wider Christian world! At some point you ask yourself, “Why is that the case? What was the use of this type of sermon? Is this sort of a professor talking about something that his audience can hardly relate to?”

Now, why is that? Why is it that Augustine’s sermons are frequently what we would call abstract? One of the reasons for that is obviously that Augustine is strongly influenced

by Platonism. According to Platonism you find truth, you find God, not by looking at the material world, not by looking outside, but by looking inside, by looking into yourself. You could regard Augustine’s sermons as a group experience in this kind of process, in returning as a group from their daily challenges and problems to something different. So there is a Neoplatonic movement into the interior, looking with your interior eyes, and thus finding the strength to move upwards and to move towards God. Augustine’s homiletic

20

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

Augustine was a major player in the fight against Donatism, which should not be understood as the fight between a heresy and orthodoxy, but between two major groups— possibly social or ethnic groups, definitely politically divided groups—that were tearing North Africa apart at that time.

Now unity, in these circumstances, is a concept that is to be highly sought, and if we believe Augustine and modern secondary literature, then the Catholics were by no means on the winning side. This may be one of the reasons Augustine is shown as a preacher not just of his own church in Hippo Regius, but very much a preacher of North Africa; we find him all over the map in his part of North Africa, including, most importantly, in the capital city of Carthage.

GO: The monograph you are working on offers a unique treatment of Augustine’s sermons—what do you feel are the monograph’s greatest strengths and challenges?

rhetoric might be regarded as tailored towards this philosophical insight as opposed to the everyday life that people had outside of Church. But I think there is more to that.

On one hand, what I think is really important and ought to be looked into is the group building effort. What Augustine does in his sermons, specifically in his Psalm Sermons, is very much move from the single person speaking in prayer and from our single experiences of conversion, which is described in Confessions, towards the existence of the Church, us as part of the Church. In Augustine’s Psalm Sermons, his concept of totus Christus (the whole of Christ) allows him to interpret the Psalms as the voice of Christ,

‘‘My time at the NDIAS was a sharpening of the focus that had happened to me at Notre Dame already; my thinking about Augustine as a teacher, for example, became much clearer during my time at the NDIAS.’’ or of any one Christian, or us all, united in the Church. How exactly is that done as a literary process, as a rhetorical process? How is this used as a process of rhetorical persuasion? The sermon is not just telling people something and they listen to it. It is actually, as I said, a common group experience, a common movement of those listeners towards one goal, which is in this case becoming the one Church.

The second thing that I think has not been talked about is how this rhetorical concept fits in the social, historical, and political circumstances of Augustine’s time and age.

HM: To this point there are no monographs on Augustine’s sermons from a literary standpoint. Very good books that talk about Augustine’s role as a teacher, for example, or his rethinking of rhetoric in antiquity are usually short on specifics when it comes to the actual texts. What they usually will do is talk about the theory rather than the practice and, when they move towards Augustinian sermons, there is no attempt to connect theory and practice.

What I think my strength is in all of this is I am an editor and I am finishing off, at the same time as I am writing this monograph, my second volume of Augustine’s Psalm Sermons, Enarrationes in Psalmos, for the Vienna Corpus of the CSEL (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum), which is in Latin with a scholarly introduction in German.

This brings me in immediate contact all the time with the actual text of Augustine’s sermons while I am working on the analysis of the entire corpus. Since I am an editor, I have unprecedented access to the minimal details—I am not going into what you can read into the punctuation of an Augustinian sentence, or how much this can tell you about the situation, but I feel you have to come from the details to find out about the rhetorical performance and presence.

A secondary motivation for writing this monograph is that I have never written an English-language monograph, and now that I am here at Notre Dame, I think it is the right thing to do. To this day I have written more in German than I have in English, and I think I owe this place, this country, this Institute that I do my very best to write in English. As you can see, these are the strengths as well as the challenges of my project.

GO: Your research is clearly interdisciplinary, as you delve into the patristic world of classics, philology, theology with homiletics, history, and philosophy. How critical was this interdisciplinary research to informing your conclusions?

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

HM: I think that being in patristics I am extraordinarily lucky because interdisciplinarity is built into the system— you cannot ignore philosophy or theology when you talk about Augustine, and no one would think of doing so. It works the other way around as well—historical theologians are in many cases very good historians, and philosophers of history have a strong presence in late ancient theology, so the crossover in all directions is at this point working very well.

As a classicist and an editor you could conceivably be just that, looking at minimal details of medieval manuscripts and nothing else. I have avoided that cliff, and the NDIAS has been an important part of that. But I have had the great fortune, first of all, to be in the field of patristics from the beginning and, second, to be at Notre Dame. I am in an ideal place for that sort of research. Here, at Notre Dame, I have always taught mixed audiences. I teach a high percentage of graduate students, and I find it very enjoyable to have all these budding scholars from different fields

21

around me—each of them brings their own input. I teach historians, scholars in English and Romance Languages, and Theologians in Early Christian Studies. It entirely changes my own outlook of what I do as a teacher and as a scholar; and it opens my own research questions as well.

GO: How has your time at the NDIAS influenced your research—both while you were a Fellow and since?

HM: My one semester at the NDIAS very much helped me to move forward on my project and has influenced my research then and since. My time at the NDIAS was a sharpening of the focus that had happened to me at Notre Dame already; my thinking about Augustine as a teacher, for example, became much clearer during my time at the NDIAS. Also, being in an interdisciplinary context at the NDIAS was for me a great pleasure; interdisciplinarity is what I do, though the interdisciplinarity at the NDIAS obviously went further afield, as others were not researching late antiquity or the Middle Ages. That was for me quite interesting because it provided parallel phenomena to the texts I study.

More importantly, though, it gave me a mixed group of scholars to talk to and see how they would understand my project, what they would focus on, and what I was maybe too myopic about. Having the other Fellows as a test audience was of great value to me.

My fellowship at the NDIAS was a great time; it was very enjoyable. I really loved being among the people: first of all the staff, and second the group of Fellows; it was a group of very nice, interesting and stimulating people. There were two things that I really liked about this group: one thing is we had graduate students so there was this broadening into not just established scholars; and the second is that in my semester there was a female grouping that I found very pleasant and very interesting. All of these women were a great addition. That subgroup of the whole group I thought was intellectually and personally very fulfilling for me. I will also note that I was like everyone else in the world, deeply impressed with Vittorio Hösle and that his presence at this place and his conversations with me, obviously some of them in German, which I particularly enjoyed, are memories that I will always cherish.

GO: Since leaving the Institute, you have become Associate Vice President for Research in the Office of the Vice President for Research—how has your time in this new role of higher administration gone thus far?

HM: It has been very exciting. While there is not a direct connection between my time at the NDIAS and my new position, there is very much a subjective connection and, perhaps, some biographical logic. What NDIAS meant for me was a broadening of my view, not only of my research,

Vergós Group, Saint Augustine Meditates on the Trinity when the Child Jesus Appears before him (C.1470/1475-1486)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Verg%C3%B3s_Group_-_Saint_Augustine_Meditates_on_the_Trinity_when_the_Child_Jesus_Appears_before_him_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

22

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

but of Notre Dame. In a way, I learned to understand much more about Notre Dame during my time here. NDIAS felt like the essence, the boiled down essence, of what Notre Dame is or should be, at least from a humanist standpoint.

This broadening of my view from the NDIAS of what Notre Dame is and should be, of what it can do, provides an organic connection to my new position and this is what I enjoy so much.

In my new position I am a representative for the humanities in the Office of the Vice President for Research, which means two things: first of all, it means being a liaison between the research administration and the people who do research and scholarship in the humanities at Notre Dame; second of all, it means developing visions that enhance the humanities at Notre Dame. When it comes to that, the first thing you learn is how much there is going on and how proud you can be of Notre Dame, and how great of a foundation you have to build on. There is no way you cannot be impressed when you see the big picture here, how successful we are in research activities and how broad and varied research is in the humanities. I have also become very impressed with the arts of Notre Dame, what is going on in music, the visual arts, and the performing arts.

What I really love about my job at the Office of the Vice President is that it brings me in contact with people who are not in the humanities, and that again goes back to the

interdisciplinary aspect. While at the NDIAS, I remember that Rebecca Wingert gave a lecture on her kidney cell regeneration research with zebrafish, and this was deeply impressive for me because it was along lines of thought that were quite different from what I was doing research on. However, looking back, I wish there had been more scientists at the NDIAS as Fellows and speakers. I think it is very good to be challenged by things you do not understand.

It has also become a challenge for me because I have never before been in a situation where I needed to think that clearly on the role of the humanities in our society.

What are we good for, to put the question very simply, and what do we do for society? While we don’t always know why we love music and arts and literature and history and archeology, we definitely know we do. And we do in very specific cases—we love this song, this symphony, this picture impresses us deeply, we are highly interested in reading about historical facts.

We are usually not in the situation where we have to bring it to a point, and, at least for me, being in a more varied environment has made this question very urgent and very interesting. This again has made me more aware of where I stand with my research—what I am saying on Augustine has to be relevant not just for a small circle of people who are interested in what went on in Carthage around 400 AD. The clearer I can be in what I say to a larger group of people, the happier I will be and the more I can make these texts

‘‘NDIAS felt like the essence, the boiled down essence, of what Notre Dame is or should be, at least from a humanist standpoint.’’

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

understood not just by a small group of scholars. In this way my research and my new administrative role are supportive of each other, though also challenging for each other.

Thus far, my takeaway has been enormous, and has contributed to the unsettling of my certainties. What has gone on through my life at Notre Dame has been a consistent change, a broadening on the one hand and on the other an unsettling of my fixed views that I brought with me when I came from Europe.

GO: Noting your research focus of patristics, what impact did researching at a Catholic institute for advanced study have for you? What is the importance of researching patristics at a Catholic university?

HM: I was raised a Lutheran Protestant, and my work has always been on Christian authors from a secular perspective, coming towards patristic studies from a classics background, rather than a theological background.

Since arriving here at NDIAS, I have become more aware of the Catholic nature of Notre Dame, and that means three things, two of which are quite easy to describe: the first is that it is just an ideal work environment—you have these great scholars to talk with, these great library holdings, you have students who are interested in patristics, and so from a practical standpoint this is ideal.

The second thing, which I find true at Notre Dame, but even truer at the NDIAS, is the simple conclusion that as a Catholic environment, Notre Dame has an element of humanity to it, of humanness, and there is a difference in the way people interact with each other, which is definitely linked to the Christian nature of this place. It is absolutely visible in how you feel more part of a whole, more taken care of in quite a different way, that feeling that you have become part of a family and this feeling that you are really, really well taken care of in this Institute and as part of a group that does not fall apart…and that has been an ongoing connection which I very much enjoy.

The third aspect is of course the really difficult one and the really interesting one: how does the intellectual background of Catholicism inspire and change my view of what I do as a scholar? That is difficult because I have always found it a type of double question. You need to be strongly aware of the ongoing tradition—in Augustine’s case this shaping influence that he has on the Middle Ages and on the modern age; you need to be in the present and aware of this, but you also need to be aware of it as a potential distorting influence. If you want to look at late antiquity, at some point you will have to close your eyes to everything but late antiquity, and say “what I am talking about is not what the Church looks like to this day, I have to think about something that took place in 400 AD.” On the one hand the tradition gives you all sorts of insights, a strong connection to the subject. On the other hand, you

23

will have to be very clear where in the timeline you actually stand, and how much for the time being you ought to ignore.

That said, I thought my time at the NDIAS was more strongly Catholic than my time at Notre Dame had ever been, as seen in the subjects of the papers presented and from the people who presented here. First of all, there was an impressive presence of Christian philosophy, including a presentation at the NDIAS by Robert Audi, who became a Fellow at the Institute in fall 2013. Second of all was how much research at Notre Dame is practically helpful to people in need and follows in this sense very strongly the Catholic spirit. We had a paper presented at the NDIAS by Paolo Carozza that very deeply impressed me. From the Catholic intellectual tradition at the NDIAS, I learned much more about Notre Dame and my involvement in this place than I had in my first years as a faculty member at Notre Dame. ***

CARLO CRIVELLI (C.1435-c.1495), ST. AUGUSTINE (1487/88)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carlo_Crivelli_-_St._Augustine_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

24

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

the earth is not flat

S

by Eric Bugyis

hortly after I began my graduate fellowship at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study in the fall of 2010, long-time Notre Dame Philosophy professor Karl Ameriks, who happened to be a faculty fellow at the Institute that semester, wandered into my office. Pointing out the window that looked north of campus beyond the power station toward Michigan, he commented on a faint rise in the distant landscape.

“Most people think that Indiana is all flat and uninteresting,” he said, “but there’s actually a little ridge over there, which is pretty nice.”

“Huh…” “Yeah, you should make your way out there sometime.”

“Yeah…”

“Ok, well, keep up the good work!”

Now, as a matter of fact, I think that the ridge in question is really in Michigan, but at the time I wasn’t quite prepared to split geographical hairs. Even now, though, as I look out on the same prospect from the northward-facing, 11th floor office that I share with our four Templeton Undergraduate Research Assistants as the Undergraduate Research Coordinator at the NDIAS, I’m sorry to say that I have not followed Karl’s

advice and made a pilgrimage out to the horizon that may well boast the highest point in Indiana. It does, however, serve as a reminder of the unexpected ways in which new perspectives on familiar sights are offered as part of everyday life at the NDIAS. How one minute you can be looking down on an ugly tangle of pipes and ventilation ducts flanked by smoke stacks and water towers or out over the peaceful lakes on the edge of campus, and the next minute your eyes are struggling to focus your gaze beyond your grasp.

This can be an unsettling experience, especially when it comes to academic research, where it is often thought that the more one ventures out beyond the boundaries of one’s field of expertise the further away one is from one’s object of study. This is the “flat earth” model of interdisciplinary inquiry, which plots various disciplines at fixed points in two dimensions with various routes running between them, bringing one closer to one field only in direct proportion to the distance taken from all others. There is another way to think about interdisciplinary work, however, as traversing the surface of a globe such that every horizon is just one more step on the way back home. Like an explorer navigating the Northern Sea Route, then, the scholar sometimes has to head west in order to end up in the east.

Particularly as a graduate student, one is often discouraged from these sorts of explorations for fear of being lost at sea—a casualty of becoming, as I heard someone once say, “more ‘inter’ than ‘disciplinary.’”

The danger, it is thought, is that in seeking a “God’s eye” perspective from which to survey the various routes that circumnavigate the world, one must necessarily sacrifice precise, if limited, knowledge to a vague, if comprehensive, view of the

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

whole. It is here that the commitment to asking deep questions, informed by the Catholic intellectual tradition, at the NDIAS forces one outside the limits of the surface-bound academic geographer to consider the geological dimensions of our investigations. This commitment means that one is not limited to seeking a merely two-dimensional overlap between disciplinary spheres, as in a Venn diagram, but rather, researchers can begin to consider whether the point at which their lines of inquiry intersect does not actually lie below the surface at some more original strata of knowledge. For example, the most fruitful basis for a conversation between science and religion may not necessarily lie in the space between them, where their descriptions of the world (i.e., what there is) seem to overlap and, therefore, compete. Instead, these disciplines might be found to converge on a more fundamental and primordial question concerning the explanation of the world as such (i.e., why there is anything at all).

Such considerations open up new routes that transform interdisciplinary exploration into intra-disciplinary excavation, as one is forced to interrogate the conditions that forced their particular branch of inquiry to sprout from the tree of knowledge in the first place. As one digs through the sediments of disciplinary tradition, pursuing the promise of answers to ever deeper questions, one traces an axis that leads from the spherical surface of the world toward the center where all such axes converge. Thus, it is not from the vantage point of some Olympian height that we meet to survey the flat surface of the earth, which could never be equidistant from any point above it and, therefore, must always privilege some point on it. Rather, it is only by meeting in a center that has the same regard for every point on its circumference, perhaps drawn by some singular Question toward which all inquiry tends, that we meet as equals in this common enterprise that we call a “university.”

As a graduate student at the NDIAS, I was privileged to be initiated into this practice of interdisciplinary research, which recognizes no conflict between the depth of one’s inquiry and the expanse of one’s vision. I was also grateful to

25

be welcomed as a partner in this common enterprise, neither immune from critique nor barred from criticizing. Now, as the Undergraduate Research Coordinator, I am honored to be part of passing on the NDIAS tradition, as ancient as it is new, to Notre Dame students from all majors, whose geographical locations are no barrier to their geological ambitions.

And, at some point, I try to remember to point out the Michigan ridge that Karl saw in Indiana, knowing that somewhere, deep down, there’s really no difference.

Eric Bugyis Undergraduate Research Coordinator Fall 2010 NDIAS Fellow

26

NDIAS QUARTERLY WINTER 2014

alumni fellow news Mark Alfano *mark Alfano, 2011-2012 NDIAS Fellow, has received a research fellowship at the University of Oregon for the fall 2014 term that will allow him to complete his research monograph, Nietzsche’s Socio-Moral Psychology.

ks.

Paolo Bernardini

*Since leaving the NDIAS, Paolo Bernardini, Spring 2011 NDIAS Fellow, has been involved, as a senior member of the founding faculty, in the creation of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan, one of the first Americanstyle universities of this scope in Central Asia. Paolo Bernardini served as a professor there in 2012, and will do so again in 2014. *In 2013, Bernardini was nominated by the Insubria University’s Rector, Professor Coen-Porisini, for an UNESCO Chair in Mediterranean Studies, with the selection process still ongoing. *In 2012, Bernardini received a nomination for the German “Gerda Henkel Preis,” a major research award for historians. The Preis was eventually awarded to leading world historian Professor Jürgen Osterhammel. *Bernardini has also expanded the scope of his NDIAS research project, “Circa 1773: The Suppression of the Jesuits and the Destiny of Europe,” for inclusion in his forthcoming book entitled The Enlightenment and Its Age: Optimism and Civilization from the Bank of England to Malthus (1694-1798) that will be completed, “si Deus vult—if God wills,” by the end of 2015. *In addition, Paolo Bernardini is pleased to announce the following publications: • “Nel ghetto, serenissimo. Rileggere Simone Luzzatto,” Studi veneziani, 2013, forthcoming in the spring 2014. Article.

• Caryl Clark, Haydn’s Jews: Representation and Reception on the Operatic Stage (CUP 2009), Il Saggiatore Musicale, XX, 1, 2013, pp. 319-323.

Review article.

• “Gli ebrei di Mantova tra rivoluzione francese e Restaurazione,” in Stefania Salvi, ed., Tra cultura, diritto e religione: sinagoghe e cimiteri ebraici in Lombardia, Milan: Corberi & Sapori, 2013, pp. 231245. Essay in a collective volume.

• Il liberalismo come visione del mondo. Otto studi di liberalismo classico, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2013, pp. 186. (Strumenti, 11). Collection of previously published articles, revised.

• “Trionfi del laicismo. Desacralizzazione della vita e morte volontaria nell’Ottocento italiano,” Nova Historica, 43, 2013, pp. 25-37. Article.

•

•

• • •

•

•

• •

‘Voglio morire!’ Suicide in Italian Literature, Society, and Culture in the Nineteenth Century, co-edited with Anita Virga, Newcastle upon Tyne: CSP, 2013, pp. XIII, 298. Collection of essays.

“I problemi giuridici dell’unificazione italiana nell’opera di Gianfranco Miglio,” in M.P. Viviani, ed., I problemi giuridici dell’unificazione 18612011, Giuffrè: Milano, 2012, pp. 77-89. Conference proceedings.

“L’ombra di Shylock sul Risorgimento mantovano: ‘Lia o la fanciulla ebrea’ di Giovanni Battista Intra,” Nova Historica, 42, 2012, pp. 104-121. Article.

Preface to: Paolo Gomarasca, Enjeu cartésien et philosophies du corps: études d’anthropologie modern, Bern: Peter Lang, 2012, pp. III-IX. “Imagined China. China in Italian literature and culture 1767-1866,” in F. Arato, R. Wilson, eds., Other Worlds. The Exotic in Modern Italian Literature, special issue of the Journal of Italian Studies in Southern Africa, Johannesburg, 2011, pp.

45-96.

The Jews: Instructions for Use. Four EighteenthCentury Projects for the Emancipation of the Jews, with Diego Lucci, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011, 220 pp. Monograph.

Letteratura, filosofia, politica. Scritti minori da ‘Il Pensiero Politico,’ ed. by E. Bianco, MediterraneaStudi e Ricerche, Palermo 2011, ebook (free access), pp. 122. Collection of review essays (http://www. storiamediterranea.it/public/md1_dir/b1662.pdf).

Minima libertaria. Meditazioni dalla libertà offesa, Leonardo Facco editore, Treviglio, 2011, pp. 206.

Book.

“Paolo Bozzato,” in V. Sgarbi, ed., Lo stato dell’arte. Il padiglione Italia alla cinquantaquattresima Biennale di Venezia, Milano, Skira, 2011, pp. 201202. Short presentation of the Italian artist Paolo Bozzato whom I sponsored at the Venice Biennale 2011.

Franz Berto *Francesco BERTO, 2010-2011 NDIAS Fellow, has just taken up a chair at the University of Amsterdam— the official name is “Structural Chair of Metaphysics” (http://www.uva.nl/en/news-events/news/ professorial-appointments/item/f.-berto-professor-ofphilosophy-with-a-special-focus-on-metaphysics-andthe-history-of-philosophy.html). *Franz Berto is also pleased to announce that he has a paper forthcoming in a major logic journal: • “Absolute Contradiction, Dialetheism, and Revenge,” Review of Symbolic Logic (forthcoming 2014) (http://www.academia.edu/3469538/Absolute_ Contradiction_Dialetheism_and_Revenge).

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

This paper is grounded in reserach Franz Berto completed in 2010-2011 while a Fellow at the NDIAS.

Carsten Dutt *Carsten Dutt, Spring 2011 NDIAS Fellow, has been appointed to the advisory board of the Staats- and Stadtbibliothek Augsburg, a major German research library. *With W. Martin Bloomer, Spring 2011 NDIAS Fellow, Carsten Dutt is organizing an international interdisciplinary conference titled “Conceptions of Philology: The Western Tradition and Beyond.” It will be held at the University of Notre Dame on September 2223, 2014 and will be co-sponsored by the NDIAS. *In addition, Carsten Dutt is pleased to announce the following publications: +Co-authored book: • Reinhart Koselleck/Carsten Dutt: Erfahrene Geschichte. Zwei Gespräche. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013. 73 pages [published on December 17, 2013]. +Critical edition: • Reinhart Koselleck: Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Geschichte. Vorträge und Aufsätze aus vier Jahrzehnten. Edited with an afterword by Carsten Dutt. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013. 388 pages [published on December 9, 2013]. +Edited collections: • Gadamers philosophische Hermeneutik und die Literaturwissenschaft. Heidelberg: Winter, 2012.

353 pages [published on November 28, 2012].

• (with Reinhard Laube). Zwischen Sprache und Geschichte. Zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks.

Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013. 293 pages [published on September 30, 2013].

Ulrich Lehner *Ulrich Lehner, Fall 2010 NDIAS Fellow, was elected a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, in the category “world religions.” It includes members such as Pope Benedict XVI, Prof. Hans Kung, Prof.

Sara Coakley (Cambridge), Cardinal Walter Kasper, and Prof. H.-J. Klauck (University of Chicago). The European Academy of Sciences and Arts brings together over 1200 scientists and researchers, philosophers and artists from Europe, Asia and the USA, including 29 Nobel Prize winners. This has resulted in a ‘think tank’ that analyzes ethical and scientific values in a society that is increasingly fragmented. Among the patrons of the academy are the kings of Belgium and Spain, the grand duke of Luxembourg, and the presidents of Austria, Russia, Greece, Slovakia, Slovenia and Montenegro.

The Academy focuses on interdisciplinary work across

27

specialist areas, ideologies and scientific cultures, as well as promoting transnational dialogue and visionary developments for new scientific knowledge and academic research. The European Academy of Sciences and Arts, based in Salzburg, focuses on three core areas, namely developing knowledge, disseminating scientific information and implementing major multi-national projects. *Ulrich Lehner is pleased to announce the forthcoming book publications: • Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, co-edited with Jeffrey D. Burson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming May 2014) (http://www. academia.edu/2054541/Enlightenment_and_ Catholicism_in_Europe_A_Transnational_History_ in_press_University_of_Notre_Dame_Press_ May_2014_ ). This book was conceived by Ulrich during his time at the NDIAS. • Monastic Prisons and Torture Chambers: Crime and Punishment in Central European Monasteries, 1600-1800 (S.I.: Cascade Books, 2013) (http:// www.academia.edu/2896570/Monastic_Prisons_ and_Torture_Chambers._Crime_and_Punishment_ in_Central_European_Monasteries_1600-1800).

Vincent Lloyd *Vincent Lloyd, 2012-2013 NDIAS Fellow, edited a special issue of the journal Telos entitled “Marcuse After Secularism” (http://www.telospress.com/store/#!/~/ product/id=32268589) that was published December 2013.

Vittorio Montemaggi *Vittorio Montemaggi, Spring 2013 NDIAS Fellow, was one of the organizers of two important events on Dante’s theology that took place the summer of 2013: • “Dante’s Theology.” Tantur Ecumenical Institute, Jerusalem, 16-29 June 2013. Organized with Anne Leone, Christian Moevs, Matthew Treherne.

International, interdisciplinary residential seminar. 28 particpants (faculty and advanced graduate students), 14 session leaders (leading experts in Dante Studies and Theology). Opened up unprecedented possibilities for collaboration, exchange and friendship in this interdisciplinary area of study.

• “Dante’s Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society.”

University of Notre Dame in London, 13-14 June 2013. Organized with Anne Leone, Christian Moevs, Matthew Treherne. International conference, bringing together leading experts in Dante Studies to reflect from a range of

28

NDIAS QUARTERLY WINTER 2014

alumni fellow news continued . . . methodological angles on Dante’s theology. 17 speakers, 30 participants. In conjunction with the AHRC-funded project “Dante and Late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society”, run at the Universities of Leeds and Warwick. *Vittorio Montemaggi is also pleased to announce the following publications: • “Dante and Gregory the Great,” in Reviewing Dante’s Theology, edited by C. Honess and M. Treherne, 2 vols (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013).

• “The Theology of Dante’s Commedia as Seen in the Light of the Cantos of the Heaven of the Fixed Stars,” in “Se mai contiga…”: Exile, Politics and Theology in Dante, edited by C. Honess and M. Treherne (Ravenna: Longo, 2013).

Gladden Pappin *Gladden Pappin, Fall 2013 NDIAS Fellow, is serving as Myser Fellow with the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture for the spring 2014 term. *Gladden Pappin is pleased to announce the following publications: +Chapter in an edited volume: • “The Postmodern Environment,” chap. 13 in A World after Climate Change and Culture-Shift, ed. Jim Norwine (Amsterdam: Springer, 2014). +Reviews: • “Explaining Agamben,” review of three works by Giorgio Agamben, First Things no. 239 (January 2014): 57-59; • “A Dark Path to Recovery,” review of The Loss and Recovery of Truth, by Gerhart Niemeyer, University Bookman, Dec. 29, 2013 (http://goo.gl/UOt32z); • Review of Edmund Burke: The First Conservative,

by Jesse Norman, and Edmund Burke in America,

by Drew Maciag, Claremont Review of Books (winter 2014); and • “A Beneficial Confusion?,” review of Catholicism and Democracy, by Emile Perreau-Saussine, Modern Age (winter 2014).

Laura Porter *Laura Rominger Porter, 2011-2012 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, received her Ph.D. in history in May 2013, and is currently teaching at Collège Universitaire de Sciences Po, Campus Euro-Américain de Reims, France. *Recently, Laura has given conference talks in Ghent, Belgium at the Roosevelt Study Center, University of Ghent; and in St. Louis, MO at the Southern Historical Association. *In addition, Laura Porter is pleased to announce the

following publications: +Edited volume: • Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism, with co-editor Heath Carter (under contract with William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company). +Review: • Book review of Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America, by Catherine Brekus, The Catholic Historical Review (October 2013).

•

Scott Shackelford

*Scott Shackelford, Fall 2013 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: +Books: • Managing Cyber Attacks in International Law, Business and Relations: In Search of Cyber Peace (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2014); • Legal and Ethical Aspects of International Business, with Eric Richards (Wolters Kluer Law, forthcoming 2014). +Articles: • “Building the Virtual Courthouse: Ethical Considerations for Design, Implementation, and Regulation in the World of ODR,” with Anjanette Raymond , Wisconsin Law Review (forthcoming 2014); • “How Businesses Can Promote Cyber Peace,” with Tim Fort and Jamie Prenkert, Texas International Law Review (2014); • “Using BITs to Protect Bytes: Promoting Cyber Peace and Safeguarding Trade Secrets through Bilateral Investment Treaties,” with Eric Richards, Anjanette Raymond, and Amanda Craig , George Washington International Law Review (2013). ***

Vittorio Hösle, founding Director *Vittorio Hösle, 2008-2013 NDIAS Director, is pleased to announce the following publications: • Dante’s Commedia und Goethe’s Faust: Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede. Ein Vergleich der beiden wichtigsten philosophischen Dichtungen Europas, Schwabe: Basel 2014.

• Zur Geschichte der Ästhetik und Poetik, Schwabe: Basel 2013, 102 p.

• God as Reason: Essays in Philosophical Theology, University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame 2013, XVI + 407 p.

publication showcase

NDIAS Quarterly WINTER 2014

29

For more information on upcoming Institute events please visit http://ndias.nd.edu/ or contact ndias@nd.edu.

Minding the Modern

by Thomas Pfau I

n this brilliant study, Thomas Pfau argues that the loss of foundational concepts in classical and medieval Aristotelian philosophy caused a fateful separation between reason and will in European thought. Pfau traces the evolution and eventual deterioration of key concepts of human agency—will, person, judgment, action—from antiquity through Scholasticism and on to eighteenthcentury moral theory and its critical revision in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Featuring extended critical discussions of Aristotle, Gnosticism, Augustine, Aquinas, Ockham, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, and Coleridge, this study contends that humanistic concepts these writers seek to elucidate acquire meaning and significance only inasmuch as we are prepared positively to engage (rather than historicize) their previous usages. Beginning with the rise of theological (and, eventually, secular) voluntarism, modern thought appears increasingly reluctant and, in time, unable to engage the deep history of its own underlying conceptions, thus leaving our understanding of the nature and function of humanistic inquiry increasingly frayed and incoherent. One consequence of this shift is to leave the moral self-expression of intellectual elites and ordinary citizens alike stunted, which in turn has fueled the widespread notion that moral and ethical concerns are but a special branch of inquiry largely determined by opinion rather than dialogical reasoning, judgment, and practice.

A clear sign of this regression is the present crisis in the study of the humanities, whose role is overwhelmingly conceived (and negatively appraised) in terms of scientific theories, methods, and objectives. The ultimate casualty of this reductionism has been the very idea of personhood and the disappearance of an adequate ethical language. Minding the Modern is not merely a chapter in the history of ideas; it is a thorough phenomenological and metaphysical study of the roots of today’s predicaments.

Thomas Pfau is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English and professor of German at Duke University, with a secondary appointment on the Duke Divinity School faculty. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1790–1840.

Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge is available as a hardback from the University of Notre Dame Press. To purchase the book or read more: undpress.nd.edu/book/P03065.

THURSDAY, APRIL 10th, 4-6 pm in the Annenberg Auditorium of the Snite Museum – Symposium on Minding the Modern with Thomas Pfau. Panel discussants include: Victoria Kahn (Berkeley), Douglas Hedley (Cambridge and NDIAS), and Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame).

Reception to follow in the Atrium. This is a public event, and all are welcome to attend.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11th, 10-11:30 am in the Oak Room on the Second Floor of South Dining Hall – Undergraduate seminar discussion with Thomas Pfau led by the Templeton Undergraduate Research Assistants.

12-2 pm in the Oak Room – Faculty Seminar with Lunch. If interested in either session, email ndias@nd.edu.

30

NDIAS QUARTERLY WINTER 2014

‘‘Here, at the University of Notre Dame, our primary focus is the human intellect, our primary concern is the human being.’’

— Thomas G. Burish, Provost

ndias quarterly WINTER 2014

31

ndias spring 2014 class

Spring 2014 NDIAS Class 1st Row (L to R): Nick Ochoa, Iona Hughan, Cleo Kearns, Eric Bugyis; 2nd Row: Donald Stelluto, Grant Osborn, Sarah Lovejoy, Sean Gaudio; 3rd Row: Brad S. Gregory, Ethan John Guagliardo, Douglas Hedley, Jack Yusko, Carolyn Sherman; 4th Row: Jonathan Marks, James VanderKam, Justin Biddle, Brandon Gallaher; 5th Row: Margaret Garvey, Carl Gillett and Bharat Ranganathan.

call for fellows

The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study offers three types of fellowships: • Templeton Fellowships for distinguished senior scholars with extensive records of academic accomplishment, who have had a considerable impact on their discipline • Residential Fellowships for faculty and scholars in all disciplines—including the arts, engineering, the humanities, and the social, life, and physical sciences—with projects that are creative, innovative, or align with the intellectual orientation of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study.

• Graduate Student Fellowships for a full academic year (fall and spring semesters). As with Residential Fellowships, the Institute encourages graduate student fellows to address ultimate questions and questions of value.

2015-2016 online Fellowship applications will be available by 1 June 2014.

Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study 1124 Flanner Hall University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 ndias.nd.edu

Cover image: Raphael (1483-1520), Scuola di Atene (The School of Athens). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sanzio_01.jpg