American heresies and higher education / Peter Augustine Lawler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lawler, Peter Augustine, author.

Series:

Dissident American thought today series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education, Higher--United States.

Education, Higher.

United States.

Physical Description:

229 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

South Bend, Indiana : St. Augustine's Press, [2016]

Summary:

Peter Lawler is one of our most intelligent observers of higher education in America, and these essays demonstrate why. They range from ancient thinkers to today's 'futurists,' from the Puritan colonies to the 21st-century liberal arts college. Along the way, Lawler offers bits of wisdom worth saving, such as this: "The preference for diversity over truth and the common good depends on the detached attitude of the tourist." His work is a sweet and potent antidote to the deterioration of humanitas in the classroom-I've read it for many years. It is also a welcome change from the flaccid and predictable commentary on the university that tumbles forth daily. Mark Bauerlein, Senior Editor of First Things. Professor of Literature at Emory University, and author of The Dumbest Generation. Peter Augustine Lawler is our best national commentator today on higher education, a wise and deft essayist of the abiding importance of liberal education for souls in society. American Heresies and Higher Education overflows with truth, clarity, provocation, and humor. My wild yet sincere hope is that every reader might buy a second copy and send it gift-wrapped to Bill Gates, with the persistent message that the Gates Foundation should be funding and founding, all across America, new Lawler-inspired small residential liberal arts colleges. John Seery, George Irving Thompson Memorial Professor of Government and Professor of Politics, Pomona College, and author of America Goes to College among many other books. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 American Heresies and Higher Education: The Foundations

1 Modernity and Our American Heresies 12

2 Truly Higher Education 29

Part 2 Issues in Higher Education

3 Liberal Education as Respecting Who We Are 52

4 Esotericism and Living in the Truth 71

5 True Liberalism Versus Democratic Excess 82

6 Higher Education and the Morality of Capitalism in Our Time 94

7 History, Transhumanism, and the Emptying Out of Higher Education 119

8 Campus Safety: Reflections on Current Outragers 138

9 God, Political Science, and Werner Dannhauser 146

Part 3 America's Heretical Currents

10 Moderately Socially Conservative Darwinism 152

11 Originalism and Legislative Deliberation 167

12 Plato and the Man of Steel: What Superman Says about Our Humanity 177

13 Souther Discomfort 186

14 Why Republicans Should Watch More TV 200

15 Tocqueville and Keeping Our Countercultural Churches 208

16 Honor, Love, and Being a Father in Full 212

17 Atticus Finch's American Stoicism 218.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9781587310393

1587310392

OCLC:

933448977