Teaching in an Age of Ideology

Contributions by Leah Bradshaw, Charles R. Embry, Molly Brigid Flynn, Bryan-Paul Frost, Lance M. Grigg, Michael Henry, Tim Hoye, Nalin Ranasinghe, Travis D. Smith, Michael Zuckert Edited by Lee Trepanier, John von Heyking

Not available to order

Publication date:

16 October 2012

Length of book:

268 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739173602

This volume explores the role of some of the most prominent twentieth-century philosophers and political thinkers as teachers. It examines how these teachers conveyed truth to their students against the ideological influences found in the university and society. Philosophers from Edmund Husserl and Hannah Arendt to political thinkers like Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss, and their students such as Ellis Sandoz, Stanley Rosen, and Harvey Mansfield, are in this volume as teachers who analyze, denounce, and attempt to transcend ideology for a more authentic way of thinking. What the reader will discover is that teaching is not merely a matter of holding concepts together, but a way of existing or living in the world. The thinkers in this volume represent this form of teaching as the philosophical search for truth in a world deformed by ideology.

Introduction: Teaching Political Philosophy, Lee Trepanier and John von Heyking
Section I: Thinking and Teaching against Ideology
Chapter 1: Edmund Husserl, Molly Brigid Flynn
Chapter 2: Hannah Arendt, Leah Bradshaw
Chapter 3: Raymond Aron’s Educative Legacy, Bryan-Paul Frost
Chapter 4: Bernard Lonergan, Lance M. Grigg
Section II: The Teacher’s Search for Order
Chapter 5: Eric Voegelin and the “Art of the Perigoge”, John von Heyking
Chapter 6: Gerhart Niemeyer as Educator: The Defense of Western Culture in an Ideological Age, Michael Henry
Chapter 7: Ellis Sandoz as Master Teacher
Charles R. Embry, Texas A & M University at Commerce
Chapter 8: John H. Hallowell, Principled Pragmatist, Tim Hoye
Section III: The Teaching of Natural Rights Today
Chapter 9: Leo Strauss’s Two Agendas for Education, Michael Zuckert
Chapter 10: Stanley Rosen the Nemesis of Nihilism. Nalin Ranasinghe
Chapter 11: Harvey Mansfield, Travis D. Smith

The largely realized promise of this collection is that the human activity of political-philosophical inquiry is exhibited and helpfully illuminated not merely in what philosophers and scholars write and publish, but in their acts of teaching. These thoughtful reflections on the teaching work of scholars deserve the attention of scholars and students alike.