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 Assumption College, Travis D. Smith author of Superhero Ethic, Michael Zuckert University of Notre Dame Edited by Lee Trepanier Assumption University, John von Heyking

Publication date:

12 October 2012

Length of book:

268 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

236x160mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739173596

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

There may be no formula on how to be an outstanding teacher, but this splendid collection, mostly by younger scholars, provide intimations, insights, and reflections on master teachers they have known. Great teaching always contains an element of resistance –to the lie, to mere opinion, to deceit—and is invariably based on common sense even while it aspires to something more.