I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the lecture and dinner celebrating the life and work of Alasdair MacIntyre and the 10th anniversary of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture this past Thursday. The Reverend John Jenkins, President of Notre Dame; Dr. John Cavadini, chair of ND's Theology department; and Dr. John McGreevy, dean of ND's College of Arts and Letters reflected on Prof. MacIntyre's latest book, God, Philosopy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition, with Fr. Jenkins situating MacIntyre's work alongside that of Aquinas and Newman. Cavadini noted that the relevance of a Theology Department (as opposed to Religious Studies) goes much further and deeper than the courses taught in that department. He suggested that the presence of Theology in the university curriculum orients the whole endeavor toward mystery, opening the university up to unity and integration of knowledge.
MacIntyre offered a very moving response to the three papers. His book grew out of his experience teaching a course by the same name (two of my children benefited greatly from the class). He argued that a problem with undergraduate education these days is that it doesn't develop good generalists. Specialists who have not been good generalists first become one-sided, lacking adequate knowledge of their own limitations. In other words, they don't know what they don't know.
MacIntyre concluded that even at a place like ND with a core liberal arts requirement, his students are not well instructed generalists. He offered two reasons for this (he said there were three reasons but I only caught two, so please fill in the gap). First, students look at courses outside of their area of interest as isolated units. Non-math or science majors are apt, for example, to look at the required math and science courses as boxes to check on a degree form, thanking God when the course is done and math and science are in the rear view mirror forever (I plead guilty to this attitude), rather than as an important and integral part of knowledge. Second, the gpa. Students are less inclined to take risks outside of their academic comfort zones because of the need to keep the gpa for graduate school applications.
In response to a student suggesting that this generalist knowledge base couldn't be achieved in a four year undergraduate education, MacIntyre responded that two years of focused study in an integrated curriculum ought to be enough to provide undergraduates the tools to become well instructed generalists.
I had the honor today of giving the 2010 Frank Irvine Lecture at Cornell Law School. What a pleasure it was to meet in person my MoJ brothers Eduardo Penalver, Bob Hockett, and Steve Shiffrin. They were exceptionally gracious hosts. It was also a pleasure to meet their distinguished colleague in jurisprudence Robert Summers---a scholar from whose writings I have learned a great deal. Over the years, Professor Summers has spent a lot of time in Oxford---where I did my doctorate under Joseph Raz and John Finnis---and he had many marvelous stories of the great figures in Oxford philosophy, including H.L.A. Hart, under whom Professors Raz and Finnis did their doctorates, Yet another pleasure was reconnecting with Stewart Schwab, the Dean of the Law School, with whom I attended college at Swarthmore. My lecture, entitled "Modern Legal Philosophy," was much too long, but members of the audience that assembled in the Moot Courtroom were exemplary in their patience. Here is my opening paragraph:
Although I confess to having chosen my title for today with a view to taking advantage of the resonances it would suggest with Elizabeth Anscombe’s famous paper, my purpose is distinctly different from hers. In “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Anscombe lamented the state of the discipline and sought (with some success, as things turned out) to redirect it to its Aristotelian roots.Modern legal philosophy, as I see it, began badly—precisely because it incorporated some of the key defects in the understanding of practical reasoning that Anscombe identified as afflicting moral philosophy in its then dominant forms.But Anglo-American analytic jurisprudence has in the past sixty years largely overcome these defects and gotten itself on track.An assessment of the condition of modern legal philosophy need not be a lament, nor (I’m glad to say) need the assessor adopt the stance of a prophet recalling the wayward from the path of perdition.
I just finished another semester teaching con law and another effort, which always comes toward the end of the semester, to explore the "life or health of the mother" exception that Roe and Casey require for abortion laws even post-viability. It always takes a while to explain how that exception has been construed in some (but not all) later cases to encompass a wide range of effects beyond physical harms. Did the exception ever really go so far as to guarantee "abortion on demand through all of pregnancy," as many pro-life people have claimed, and what's the status of the exception now? From here on it will be much easier for me to think through and teach these questions, because Steve Gilles (Qunnipiac) has written a great article, "Roe's Life-or-Health Exception: Self-Defense or Relative Safety?," 85 Notre Dame L. Rev. 525 (2010), a reprint of which just came in my mail. It's a model of how to work through an issue and identify how the Court's opinions have handled it, mishandled it, dodged it, etc. As Steve says, the article is essentially descriptive, but "it does make one normative claim: that the Supreme Court’s failure to explain the life-or-health exception’s rationale and scope is utterly irresponsible." Read the piece: it's a great resource.
Some gay rights organizations have stood up for the right of associations to make their own membership decisions, even if not everyone approves of those decisions. Hopefully more organizations will see the danger to group identity posed by the sweeping expansion and application of anti-discrimination norms, now that the focus is on the Gay Softball World Series, not the Boy Scouts. (HT: David Bernstein)
Apparently Earth Day is big business now, but I'm the last person who should be judging others about the corruption of the day. On certain occasions -- such as the annual post-Christmas-present-unwrapping stupor or the periodic realization that I carry my own Great Pacific Garbage Vortex in the back of my minivan -- I have a sinking feeling that my family's carbon footprint is more akin to a carbon crater or canyon. I gladly spend ten minutes a week sorting our recyclables, but an environmental friendly lifestyle only extends about as far as my personal sense of convenience will carry it. That's my problem, not the government's, but my own sense of environmental ineptitude is exacerbated by the political discourse, which has made environmental causes another Rorschach test for one's overarching worldview. Are "drill baby drill!" and "Earth First!" the only options? While I'm not sure how one is supposed to celebrate Earth Day, I do think it is an occasion for us to reflect on our care for the planet, and Catholics should be at the front of the line when it comes to taking environmental stewardship seriously.
If you are in "Chicagoland", or "Michiana", tomorrow, consider joining the community at Notre Dame as we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Center for Ethics & Culture with a wonderful event:
On April 22, 2010, we will celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture. The day will begin at 11:30am with Mass celebrated by The Most Reverend John M. D’Arcy, Bishop Emeritus, in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. At 4:00 p.m. in McKenna Hall Auditorium, we will host a symposium on the widely celebrated new book by our senior fellow, Alasdair MacIntyre: God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition. Commentators include: The Reverend John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. (philosophy), Professor John Cavadini (theology) and Dean John McGreevy (history). Professor MacIntyre will respond.
This article brings historical, theoretical, and doctrinal critiques to bear upon the current framework for the constitutional right of association. It argues that the Supreme Court’s categories of expressive and intimate association first announced in the 1984 decision, Roberts v. United States Jaycees, are neither well-settled nor defensible. Intimate association and expressive association are indefensible categories, but they matter deeply. They matter to the Jaycees. They matter to the Chi Iota Colony of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, a now defunct Jewish social group at the College of Staten Island that had sought to limit its membership to men. They matter to the Christian Legal Society at Hastings Law School, a student group denied official recognition because of its desire to limit its membership to Christians who adhered to its moral code (which included a prohibition on homosexual conduct). Each of these groups sought to maintain an unpopular composition and message in the face of anti-discrimination laws. Each was denied associational protections. Each was forced to change its composition – and therefore its message. Each no longer exists in the form it once held and desired to maintain.
The demise of associational protections is at least partially attributable to the Roberts categories of intimate and expressive association. These categories set in place a framework in which courts sidestep the hard work of weighing the constitutional values that shape the law that binds us. This article exposes the problems inherent in these categories and calls for a meaningful constitutional inquiry into laws impinging upon associational freedom. It suggests that the Court eliminate the categories of intimate and expressive association and turn instead to the right of assembly, which emphasizes the centrality of dissent to associational freedom.
It is often asserted, and -- it seems to me -- widely believed that "conservative" Evangelical churches and congregations are pervasively and distinctively politicized. Maybe not.
First, notwithstanding extensive media coverage of political mobilization within conservative churches, conservative white Protestant churches do not stand out in their level of political activity. Catholic and black Protestant churches, overall, are more politically active than either liberal or conservative white Protestants. About three-quarters of Catholics and black Protestants attend churches that engaged in at least one of these eight political activities, compared to about half of white Protestants, either conservative or liberal (Synagogues’ political activity rates, by the way, are as high as the Catholic and black Protestant rates).
This Essay explores what it would mean to disestablish the family. It examines a particular theory of religious disestablishment, one that emphasizes institutional pluralism and the importance of competing sources of authority, and argues that this model of church-state relationships has much to teach us about family-state relationships. Though substantial rights to what might be called "free exercise of the family" have been recognized in American constitutional doctrine, at present there is no parallel principle of familial disestablishment. The state is free to regulate families qua families, and to encourage or discourage certain kinds of familial relationships. This Essay suggests reasons to rethink these existing familial establishments. Disestablishment is a risky and unpredictable enterprise, but its risks may be the risks inherent in liberty.
A few days ago, Paul Moses blogged about the recently announced decision by the Archdiocese of Indianapolis to convert some Catholic schools into (public) charter schools . . . and to run those schools through "a corporation that it controls."
I realize that many well meaning people have a different view, but -- in my opinion -- this is a bad development. Catholic education is a treasure, and it is (to put it mildly) in crisis. This move by the Archdiocese of Indianapolis is not an effective response. There are exciting things happening -- glimmers of hope -- in Catholic education; moves like this are set-backs, I think.
Now, I do not think that the Constitution, well understood, prevents the Archdiocese prevents it from doing what it is doing. If it is willing to run no-religion schools, then the Constitution does not forbid them from doing so. But . . . why would the Archdiocese, given all the givens, what to run no-religion schools?
