Teaching philosophy is in my blood. I don’t just know how to do it, but I love doing it. Most of the classes I’ve taught over the years have consisted of people not planning to become professional philosophers. There aren’t many of those.
Side Note- My last semester at Grove City College I got a call from its sole Philosophy professor, the much beloved Dr. Dick Trammell. He asked me in his thick Kentucky accent, “RC, aren’t you a philosophy major?” “Yes sir,” I replied, “I’ve been meeting all the requirements but I haven’t filled out the paperwork to make it official.” “Would you mind,” he asked, “going to the registrar and doing that right now? They’re about to cancel the major. You’ll be the only one.”
I typically begin each semester with Zeno’s Paradox. Zeno (or Xeno if you prefer) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who argued that motion is not possible. He points out that a tortoise with a head start will progress some distance in the time it takes the hare to get half way to where the tortoise started. To make up half that distance, again the tortoise will progress. He can therefore never catch up.
What follows from my students is one of two responses. Some are outraged. How ridiculous to waste time on something we know isn’t true! So I invite them to disprove Zeno. Which no one has done across thousands of years. I concede that hares do catch up to tortoises. But no one has refuted Zeno showing it can’t happen.
Others respond with sheer delight. To discover that the world carries mystery, that there is more than just what appears to the eye is a kind of awakening. Such raises the obvious question- what else have I not given a thought to? What else is the water I don’t notice that I’m swimming in? It can be like taking the red pill.
The same is true of theology. Like philosophy too many think that exploring theology is somehow unspiritual, a waste of time. It is likewise true that some study it in order to use their knowledge to beat down others. What is supposed to happen is that theology opens new vistas into beholding His glory. We’re supposed to not buckle down in our studies but lift up our eyes, to more fully see Him as He is.
Which brings us back to philosophy. Socrates wisely said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He gave profoundly practical advice here. You cannot answer the why’s, the question of the purpose of all that we do, apart from philosophy and theology. Without these disciplines, we are stuck under the sun, blown about while chasing the wind.
“Huh, never thought of that” opens a door into a world of mystery and imagination. Walk through and discover that the inside of our world is bigger than the outside.