Monday, August 14, 2006
(12:26 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Mindset
I'm not currently "studying for exams" in the full sense of the word -- the 20th Century Theology exam can be taken basically whenever you're ready. I'm doing a lot of reading this summer and will definitely take it before the school year is out, but there's not a lot of urgency. I am, however, noticing that it is causing a shift in my mindset. The list for the exam, though huge and unrealistic, actually is little more than an introduction to what has been going on in theology in the 20th Century and among some of its more prominent forebears. So now, for instance, I have Schleiermacher's Christian Faith -- a 750-page tome -- out from the library in order to use it for the 20th Century course paper (on the Trinity), and I'm thinking to myself, "You know, while I have it out anyway, I might as well work my way through it, since I need to know it." Similarly, although I originally scoffed at the idea of reading the constructive part of Ritschl's Doctrine of Justification (of similar length), now I'm thinking, "Well, he represents an important development in liberal theology, so I probably need to read that, too."Don't even get me started on the amount of Whitehead I've read, far out of proportion of the amount that was explicitly listed on the reading list. You see, to really assess process theology, I need to know its ostensible roots... and now I'm scanning used bookstores for Hartshorne as well. Before long, you'll see me on the train reading Schubert Ogden. I also thought about reading Weber's Sociology of Religion, surely a worthy task -- but my reason was solely that Mary Daly cites it in Beyond God the Father. And I should probably read the later Mary Daly stuff, too, even though it apparently exists solely in order for other feminist theologians to have someone to reject for "going too far." I'm even thinking about reading some Carl Jung -- primarily so that I can one day teach a course called "Famous Karls and Carls of the 20th Century": Karl Barth, Carl Jung, Carl Schmitt... Plus, you know, I've got to squeeze in Bultmann's Theology of the New Testament at some point.
Reading Whitehead has also alerted me to the gaping hole in my knowledge of the history of philosophy, pre-Kantian modernism. Somehow I have to squeeze in Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume.... which reminds me that I have to delve a bit more into the later Plato if I really want to understand some of this patristics stuff -- and then there are all the church fathers I still haven't read. Plus I don't know Greek yet. Or Syriac!
All of a sudden, the whole world is full of books that I want to read solely because it would be good to know that stuff. I now know the function that my arrogant dismissiveness of whole swaths of knowledge was serving -- stopping the damn floodgates! When I already knew so much stuff was worthless, it was a lot easier to keep up and to maintain an air of "knowingness." Now I'm kind of trying to recover that "knowingness," except this time have it be earned.
On the other side, there are certain things that don't currently seem to be worth pursuing further than I already have: Lacan, for instance. "French theory" in general has been covered well enough for the moment. Plus, although I get the creeping feeling that I'm going to have to reread Being and Time, delving back into the rest of Heidegger's stuff doesn't really seem like a priority.
I can only imagine how this will be when I'm really intensely studying for five exams instead of somewhat casually studying for only one.
This is kind of off-topic, but I'm also taking a directed reading in medieval theology, and in my capacity as TA for Ted's "History of Christian Thought" course, I am slated to do lectures on Origen, Radbertus/Ratramnus, and a medieval Eastern thinker of my choice. What do we think? Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite? Maximus Confessor? John Damascene? Symeon the New Theologian? Gregory Palamas? Or the elusive Theodore the Studite? I feel like I have a good start on this because I know those names. What they actually think, though? (My first impulse is to say: "Same as every other damn Orthodox theologian," even though I know that's not true.) I'm really trying to avoid delving into Aquinas and scholasticism, because that seems like another massive floodgate that I'm barely keeping closed. Yet there's something odd about the idea of my knowledge of Christian doctrine basically leaving off with Anselm and picking back up with Schleiermacher. And eventually Luther and Calvin must be dealt with... though one is allowed to skip Protestant Scholasticism, right?
God, it's a good thing I'm not working!
