Philosophy professor Megan Craig to speak on end-of-life care at MTSU’s fall lyceum Sept. 26 – MTSU News

https://mtsunews.com/philosophy-lyceum-2025-megan-craig/

A conversation with Megan Craig

Megan Craig (Stony Brook University) is MTSU's upcoming Applied Philosophy Lyceum speaker...

RELATION AND RUPTURE

AT THE END OF LIFE

Friday, September 26, 2025 • 5 p.m.

College of Education, Room 164

Megan Craig’s talk considers three kinds of relations that come into focus at or after the end of life:
being-there-alongside, waiting, and staying. The first relation is explored in light of Heidegger’s and Levinas’ contrasting accounts of responsibility, the second in terms of Bergson’s notion of hesitation, and the third in relation to Winnicott’s description of a “holding environment.” Her work serves as a plea for spaces and practices that support more generous, open-ended, and nuanced relations among those who are dying and those who attend to and survive them. This event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

[On Substack...]

JPO. Professor Craig, we're excited to welcome you to MTSU as our Fall Applied Philosophy Lyceum speaker. That word applied might puzzle some, if they (reasonably) assume that all philosophy must surely aim always to be applicable and relevant to how we live. That was indeed the likely original conception of philosophy, amongst many or most of its earliest practitioners. And you've produced applied philosophy in the public forum, contributing several essays to the New York Times philosophy series The Stone. But not all of our peers are equally committed to pursuing philosophy in an applied and public-facing spirit. What is your own stance on the appropriate role of the philosopher in relation to the broader extra-academic public?

MC. Hi! I’m so happy to join you, and I’m looking forward to my visit at MTSU. I think I have
always thought that philosophy should communicate with a wide audience. Perhaps that is rooted in my own upbringing and the fact that I didn’t grow up in an academic family. My parents were high school teachers, and for a long stretch of my childhood, my dad was a farmer. When I went to college and started to study philosophy, I was struck by how difficult it was to read some of the texts. In writing my own papers, I always wondered if they would be comprehensible to my own family members. I think
philosophy is the most effective when it connects with lived experience, and I think philosophical writing is most effective when it keeps its audience in mind. Sometimes this is a highly specialized audience, but other times, as when I write something for the NY Times, it is incredibly broad and diverse. Writing in that mode forces me to explain things as I would in the classroom and to keep the material engaging and moving. I have learned so much about writing and teaching by diversifying the places where I publish things. I guess I think that if philosophy doesn’t have a public face, then we are
like the philosophers in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave who grope their way up to a blinding light and then forget that the harder and more essential task is to descend back down into the cave and talk with each other.

JPO.Who are some of the philosophers and what are some of the ideas you've found most insightfully wise in your vocation as a professional teacher and seeker of wisdom? I presume, based on your book Levinas and James, that those two have influenced your thinking? And what in general do you see as the value of philosophy?

MC. This is a huge question, and I’m afraid I can only give a partial answer. You are right that Levinas and James are two of my favorite philosophers. For reasons I don’t quite understand, when I started reading Levinas for the first time as an undergraduate, I felt a strong connection to his writing and to his ideas. Perhaps this is partly rooted in the fact that I spoke French as a child (living in Belgium from the time I was 2 until I was 7), and something about the rhythm his prose resonated with me. But his texts are also notoriously dense (“gluey” is what Bataille said), and so I turned to James, in part, in order to remind myself of what clear prose sounds like. I still use both of them as counterweights to each other when I’m having trouble writing. I love Levinas’s focus on the Other, the way his life experiences inform his thinking, his response to Heidegger, and his stress on ordinary ethical actions like holding the door. I love James’s imagery and the living, exciting quality of his prose. I love his stress on attention, his discussion of consciousness, and the ways that he entreats his audiences to picture things and to
be changed by their own imaginative and practical efforts. Other figures I love include bell hooks, Maria Lugones, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, and Gadamer. I think the value of philosophy lies in training us to think, read, interpret, and discuss difficult topics without rushing toward conclusions. It's training in being able to question and to live in the often-awkward space of ambiguity.
 

JPO. In your new book Thinking In Transit: Explorations of Life in Motion (co-authored with Professor Casey) you write of your hour-and-a-half ferry commute to school that "thinking within the confines of a prescribed time gives me the sense that I am under a bit of pressure. I don't have all day." (I'm envious: my hour-long auto-commute on I-24 from Nashville doesn't afford time to think about much other than avoiding catastrophic collision with reckless co-commuters.) This reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon in which an author at his keyboard addresses the Grim Reaper at his door: "Thank goodness you're here. I can't get anything done without a deadline." 

And of course your Lyceum topic, on hospice and end-of-life care, is concerned with time's (and life's) brevity. Can you say a bit about how the philosophers and the ideas you favor help you, or might help any of us, meet the pressure of trying to live well in the shadow of mortality?

MC. Ha! That’s a genius cartoon! Some of the work I’ve done on palliative care emerged from my own experience of watching my 4 grandparents die in relatively quick succession in radically different ways. I became curious about what first year medical students in the US were learning about death and dying, and I spent a year attending first year lectures in various schools in and around Connecticut to find out. What I discovered was that there was usually only 1 session of a given course devoted to death and dying, and these were usually centered on case studies. There was not much, if any, discussion of what death and dying mean, or how they have been conceived and written about historically. I think that Levinas and Derrida are 2 thinkers who provide an interesting and different lens on death – moving us away from an individualistic, heroic idea of death as a singular accomplishment, end, or turning point and toward a more communal and open-ended conception of dying as something that takes time. Levinas, in particular, argues that it is not the facing up to or expectation of my own death that teaches me about dying, it’s the death of the other. The fact that dying enlists a whole community (even if one dies alone) and takes time (even when death is sudden) suggests serious problems with the modern, medicalized ways in which we (in the US) usually talk about and treat not only death but also illness and grief. These are things that don’t have any distinct timeline and that typically upend our sense of what time is and how it feels. These are things that are at odds with the “fast time” of medical schools and hospitals. In this context, I think other important figures/texts are Gadamer’s talks to medical students in The Enigma of Health, Bessel van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, Audre Lorde’s cancer journals, and Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor. In my talk for the Lyceum, I’m also going to talk a bit about Henri Bergson and Winnicott.

JPO. Aristotle's Lyceum was known for its Peripatetic school of thought, which legend suggests was itself in part a philosophy of motion (committed to the notion that philosophy is best when it moves). Do you think philosophers and academics are generally too sedentary? Do many of its traditional problems--mind/body, for instance-- arise from a literal posture of stillness and detachment from the natural world? Would philosophy benefit from a revival of the peripatetic tradition? (I've experimented a bit with that myself, taking classes outside to perambulate the grounds of our campus.)

MC. Yes! We’re all too sedentary, and I worry that we are becoming more so under the pressures of digital media, which seems engineered to keep us inert. But it is a real problem in schools, not only in universities. The norm now is that students sit still at their desks. Chromebooks and other devices help discipline them into these horribly sedentary postures. In universities, we have traditionally kept our students in lecture halls and seminar rooms sitting still, and then we send them off to write papers where
they sometimes sit for hours at a time by themselves in small cubicles. I think it’s crucial that we experiment with new pedagogies and that philosophy, in particular, remembers the body. It’s not just movement outside in the fresh air that we need, but forms of attention and encouraging habits of self-care (eating well, sleeping, resting, taking breaks, making friends), so that we might stop perpetuating the model of the slightly ill, socially isolated, but genius academic.

JPO. Do you think philosophy has anything useful to say to parents, about how to raise thoughtful and caring children? Was Hannah Arendt right to say that natality, as the flipside of mortality, deserves a great deal more attention from philosophers than it traditionally has received?

MC. Yes, Hannah Arendt was right. I taught preschool and Kindergarten for many years, beginning when I was in college and extending to after I graduated. I have always felt that babies and children are the wisest beings, and I think philosophy has long neglected children and natality to its own peril. William James was deeply influenced by Annie Payson Call’s Power Through Repose, in which she writes about the importance of spending time with babies to learn about alternative physical postures, creativity,
attention, and non-verbal communication. One of my favorite thinkers is the author Cate di Camillo – who write children’s books and young adult fiction. My daughters and I have had such great philosophical conversations care of her writing. I see her books as important philosophy texts, as I do with A Wrinkle in Time and a host of others.
 

JPO. Does philosophy have anything helpful to say about how to live well in especially challenging times?

MC. I’m going to send you a short piece I wrote for the Times* that did not end up being published. It was written just after the outbreak of the invasion of Ukraine, but I think it expresses something that I am still feeling. There are crucial resources in philosophy for helping us think through “dark times,” and we keep needing them, as recent and ongoing events attest. Every traumatic event is unimaginable before it transpires, and it can have the effect of sending us back to a place we may have thought we had
surmounted (as if we had at last grown up or “toughened up”). There is not one text or idea or solution that will insulate us from tragedy or prevent bad things from happening, but it is helpful to collect touchstones (books, poems, art, music, films, etc.) that can be there at the ready for when you will need them. Philosophy is, I think, part of the arsenal of hope we never stop needing...

--

* "You Might Have Some Existential Questions"-the Times should have published it. jpo

MTSU fires dean following pressure from Marsha Blackburn – MTSU Sidelines

https://mtsusidelines.com/2025/09/10/marsha-blackburn-calls-for-removal-of-mtsu-dean/

A quick (and heavily edited) minute

Happiness in a minute by Phil Oliver

I'd wondered what became of that little commentary I recorded for MTSU News back in June... 

Read on Substack

“Thinking within the confines of a prescribed time”

That's the philosopher's job, in a nutshell. The prescribed time is brief, the deadline daunting.

"Several components collide to make a passenger ferry an exquisite place for thinking. On the ferry I know the best, the Bridgeport–Port Jefferson ferry between Connecticut and Long Island, the sailing time is one hour and fifteen minutes—an ideal amount of time to focus on one thing. I have spent years writing on the ferry, sitting down to begin as the boat pulls out and scribbling the last notes in a yellow legal pad as we pull into the docks at Port Jefferson, a recorded voice alerting passengers to return to their vehicles and prepare for disembarking. Thinking within the confines of a prescribed time gives me the sense that I am under a bit of pressure. I don't have all day. This makes each crossing feel exciting and slightly daunting, like the start of a race. I ready my pen and try to work in one burst of effort to the end."

— Thinking in Transit: Explorations of Life in Motion by Edward S. Casey, Megan Craig

Levinas and James: A Pragmatic Phenomenology w/ Megan Craig

Dr. Megan Craig of Stony Brook is our upcoming Applied Philosophy Lyceum speaker at MTSU, September 26. (Details soon.)

"Damn the Absolute!" podcast:
https://youtu.be/yFLbLlBbHVY?si=S-AIpeb5WLmWN45i

Old friends

What a fine weekend: we've been meeting up at a designated Airbnb location in a minor league baseball town in the southeastern US every August from all directions of the compass, my old '80s grad school cohort and I, since 2017. This year it was Greenville SC. Staying in touch with old friends is truly one of the keys to a happy and meaningful human life.

Caring about the "small stuff"

I wasn't planning to mention Woody Allen or baseball on Opening Day in Happiness class, but I did. It is important to make our personal lists of things ("small stuff") that make life worth living for us ("for me..."), and then to realize that others' lives and lists are as vibrant and compelling to them as ours are to us.

And it's important to care about the small stuff, so we can transpose our care to life's bigger prizes. Like happiness.

"Small stuff"

"An idea for a short story about, um, people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real, unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves cos it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about... the universe. Let's... Well, it has to be optimistic. Well, all right, why is life worth living? That's a very good question. Well, there are certain things, I guess, that make it worthwhile. Like what? OK... for me... Ooh, I would say Groucho Marx, to name one thing. And Willie Mays. And... the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony. And... Louis Armstrong's recording of Potato Head Blues. Swedish movies, naturally. Sentimental Education by Flaubert. Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Those incredible apples and pears by C?anne. The crabs at Sam Wo's. Tracy's face..."

 

Learning to care

“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look - I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring - caring deeply and passionately, really caring - which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté - the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball - seems a small price to pay for such a gift.” ― Roger Angell, Game Time: A Baseball Companion

Opening Day!

 The Fall '25 academic season kicks off for me today. It always feels like a holiday, and like MLB Opening Day: nobody's in last place. Everybody's still a winner, and still will be in December whatever the gradebook says, if they've showed up and made a contribution to our co-philosophizing. 

 I'm going to mention Douglas Adams's eternally-recurrent whale, and this time I'll bring a centipede into it too. 

On Opening Day I never say to myself what that bowl of petunias said about the whale-"Oh no, not again." 

[Previous Opening Day posts.]

The experience of perspective

James's philosophy of experience offers us a different way to understand philosophy, one grounded in perspective. 

"However sceptical one may be of the attainment of universal truths . . . one can never deny that philosophical study means the habit of always seeing an alternative, of not taking the usual for granted, of making conventionalities fluid again, of imagining foreign states of mind. In a word, it means the possession of mental perspective." 31 

Philosophy is no longer conceived as a love of Truth. Philosophy is grounded not in the search for Truth or Beauty or Reality, but in the quest for perspectival shifts and new postures in which the philosopher learns to imagine the alien, to see the unusual, to notice what has passed unnoticed. To see and feel differently than what we have become accustomed to is the ultimate goal of James's philosophy. This is an individual goal as much as it is a social one. It is a goal that I argue is better served by a philosophy of experience.

The Varieties of Experience: William James After the Linguistic Turn, by Alexis Dianda

"Doing and creating and suffering"

A slightly different take on WJ's youthful commitment to free will-

"Set in the biographical context of James’s back pain and mental ill health, it would seem that free will, as a philosophy of indeterminism, represented, for him, the chance that his own situation might improve. It was the intellectual foundation on which hope and resilience were made possible; the hope that eventually, perhaps, his future and others’ would be less blighted with the evils of illness and pain.116

A diary entry for April 30, 1870, recorded James’s adoption of this new perspective and how he applied it to his own life. He wrote of how, “hitherto, when I have felt like taking a free initiative, like daring to act originally, . . . suicide seemed the only most manly form to put my daring into.” He then proposed a new way of thinking about his future, however, one that was predicated on a belief in the reality of his own “free will” and “creative power,” a life built on “doing and creating and suffering.”117"

"William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician" by Emma K. Sutton: https://a.co/hWf2zf8

The American University Is in Crisis. Not for the First Time.

…Despite the title of his book [Anti-intellectualism in American life] Richard Hofstadter concluded that Americans skeptical of academic life are in the end neither pro-intellectual nor anti-intellectual, but "ambivalent" about what they want from their colleges, professors, experts and scientists. Hence all the back and forth about the state of our universities.

Hofstadter himself was not so sure that his fellow intellectuals always deserved special deference, given their tendency to resist self-critique. The best he could come up with, by way of defense, was to suggest that having a vibrant, free and democratic sphere of intellectual inquiry was a whole lot better than not having one. "I have no desire to encourage the self-pity to which intellectuals are sometimes prone by suggesting that they have been vessels of pure virtue set down in Babylon," he wrote. But "one does not need to assert this, or to assert that intellectuals should get sweeping indulgence or exercise great power, in order to insist that respect for intellect and its functions is important to the culture and the health of any society."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/books/review/the-american-university-is-in-crisis-not-for-the-first-time.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Nature's enduring zest

Recording at Substack (last three posts) 

"The scourge of life is responsibility—always there with its scowling face, and when it ceases to someone else, it begins to yourself, or to your God, if you have one. Consider the lilies, how free they are from it, and yet how beautiful the expression of their face. Especially should those emerging from "nervous prostration" be suffered to be without it—they have trouble enough in any case. I am getting on famously, but for that drawback, on which my temper is liable to break; but I walk somewhat as in old times, and that is the main corner to have turned. The country seems as beautiful as ever—it is good that, when age takes away the zest from so many things, it seems to make no difference at all in one's capacity for enjoying landscape and the aspects of Nature." Letters of William James, Aug 29 1902

Perambulation is by far the best way to access natural zest, but those who find their ambulatory possibilities constricted by illness, age, or circumstance, or who are just postponing a dispiriting encounter with the latest "news" (which I do every morning), are fortunate to live in a time when it is possible to enjoy a vicarious experience of "landscape and the aspects of Nature." 

You can go to Bluesky, for instance, and dial up "Beach Sunrises" or "Landscape Photography"... and you're virtually there. Zest mediated is better than none at all. How else was I going to get to Australia and back in time for this morning's dogwalk?

 

Postscript.

To this word about enjoying the aspects of nature may be added a few lines from a letter to his son William, which James wrote from Europe in 1900:—

"Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other element in life. In this year of much solemn and idle meditation, I have often been surprised to find what a predominant part in my own spiritual experience it has played, and how it stands out as almost the only thing the memory of which I should like to carry over with me beyond the veil, unamended and unaltered. From the midst of every thing else, almost, surgit amari aliquid; but from the days in the open air, never any bitter whiff, save that they are gone forever."

Stonehurst,
Intervale, N. H., Sept. 18, 1902.

Dearest Fanny,—How long it is since we have exchanged salutations and reported progress! Happy the country which is without a history! I have had no history to communicate, and I hope that you have had none either, and that the summer has glided away as happily for you as it has for us. Now it begins to fade towards the horizon over which so many ancient summers have slipped, and our household is on the point of "breaking up" just when the season invites one most imperiously to stay. Dang all schools and colleges, say I... 

Why I'm (still) here, and why we pragmatists are devout

Still in the process, pre-Fall '25 Opening Day, of screwing my head on straight for the task at hand.

(Still, I say, because most of my old cohort have already hung it up. Retired. Begun to bask in the pleasures of uninterrupted-by-alarms morning sleep not followed by stressful vehicular commutes.)

The task at hand for me on Tuesday, then, is of first asking neophyte students who they are and why they've come to a philosophy course, and then conveying to them why I think they've come to the right place.

I do myself believe, with William James, in philosophy. Devoutly. ("Believing in philosophy myself devoutly, and believing also that a kind of new dawn is breaking upon us philosophers..." - Pragmatism Lec.I))

But I also share James's ambivalence about the whole professional/academic philosophic enterprise.

He liked to say his "religious act" was to defend experience (including the varieties of religious experience) against philosophy, whenever the latter became too imperious and dismissive of the former... and never mind the fact that so many religious creeds and theories are patently absurd. (Letters, April 12 1900)

In another letter he declared, at least a bit facetiously and referencing himself in the third person, his hatred  of philosophy... "especially at the beginning of a vacation, with the fragrance of the spruces and sweet ferns all soaking him through with the conviction that it is better to be than to define your being." (Letters, July 17 1895)

But we're not at the beginning of a vacation, we're at the end of it. This is the time of year when we must all set aside our various ambivalences about the philosophy teaching vocation and get on with it, with as much overt enthusiasm as we can muster. WJ concluded that same letter with the concession that "at present I am philosophizing as little as possible, in order to do it the better next year."

Next year is here. 

All good pragmatist philosophers always want to do it better next year, whether we say so in public or not, because we really do believe devoutly (albeit secretly, sometimes) in what we're doing. 

And what is that? It's nothing less than attempting to inspire and empower the next generation to step up and care about "the really vital question for us all-What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?"

And in caring, to be impelled to doing.

Bah, humbug!

Next week the Fall '25 classes start and I resume my vocation as a distributor of bibliographic information and a communicant of truth (*see below). 

I'm very much looking forward to getting back to both functions, as summer fades, and am still a couple years away (I hope) from receiving congratulatory retirement messages. But I do understand WJ's aversion to humbug in philosophy and in academia generally. There's so much of it, still.

To Theodore Flournoy.

CAMBRIDGE, Mar. 26, 1907.

Dear Flournoy,—Your dilectissime letter of the 16th arrived this morning and I must scribble a word of reply. That's the way to write to a man! Caress him! flatter him! tell him that all Switzerland is hanging on his lips! You have made me really happy for at least twenty-four hours! My dry and businesslike compatriots never write letters like that. They write about themselves—you write about me. You know the definition of an egotist: "a person who insists on talking about himself, when you want to talk about yourself." Reverdin has told me of the success of your lectures on pragmatism, and if you have been communing in spirit with me this winter, so have I with you. I have grown more and more deeply into pragmatism, and I rejoice immensely to hear you say, "je m'y sens tout gagné." It is absolutely the only philosophy with no humbug in it, and I am certain that it is your philosophy...

*I thank you for your congratulations on my retirement. It makes me very happy. A professor has two functions: (1) to be learned and distribute bibliographical information; (2) to communicate truth. The 1st function is the essential one, officially considered. The 2nd is the only one I care for. Hitherto I have always felt like a humbug as a professor, for I am weak in the first requirement. Now I can live for the second with a free conscience. I envy you now at the Italian Lakes! But good-bye! I have already written you a long letter, though I only meant to write a line! Love to you all from

W. J.

Don

Remembering Don Enss (1946-2021) today, a very special student in the Master of Liberal Arts program at MTSU (he earned his MALA degree just in time, with a wonderful capstone project on how Tennessee came to ratify the 19th amendment)—on a day that was very special to him:

"Suffrage is the pivotal right." Susan B. Anthony

On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage. Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920. @reboomer

Don is one of the talking heads in the award-winning film documentary “Silent No More: The Story of American Women’s Suffrage".

Don took several of my classes. We'd seen him in the Democracy in America Zoom class just a couple weeks before his passing. He rode with another MALA student and me to the Scopes Trial play in Dayton TN in July 2018.

 

I recall that we listened to the Beatles almost all the way home. Only later, from his obit, would I learn that he'd loved the lads from Liverpool.

Don is one of a small handful of people about a decade ahead of me in the human parade, chronologically, who've exemplified how to grow older with grace, dignity, and an undimmed love of life. I'll always be grateful to him (and them) for that. 

"Consider the allegory of the centipede..."

Recording at Substack

I usually invite students, at the beginning of a new semester, to consider the allegory of the whale: not Herman Melville's, but Douglas Adams's. 

It conveys the human condition as the philosopher knows it, an all-too-fleeting attempt to come to terms with cosmic curiosity and philosophic wonder in the face of our inexorable mortality. Unlike the whale, we know how abruptly that will end. But still we ask our questions.

This semester maybe I'll invite them to consider the peripatetic centipede, as presented by James's student Perry In 1905. I too first discovered myself as one who walks...

"Consider the allegory of the centipede. From the beginning of time he had manipulated his countless legs with exquisite precision. Men had regarded him with wonder and amazement. But he was innocent of his own art, being a contrivance of nature, perfectly constructed to do her bidding. One day the centipede discovered life. He discovered himself as one who walks, and the newly awakened intelligence, first observing, then foreseeing, at length began to direct the process. And from that moment the centipede, because he could not remember the proper order of his going, lost all his former skill, and became the poor clumsy victim of his own self-consciousness. This same self-consciousness is the inconvenience and the great glory of human life. We must stumble along as best we can, guided by the feeble light of our own little intelligence. If nature starts us on our way, she soon hands over the torch, and bids us find the trail for ourselves. Most men are brave enough to regard this as the best thing of all; some despair on account of it. In either case it is admittedly the true story of human life. We must live as separate selves, observing, foreseeing, and planning. There are two things that we can do about it. We can repudiate our natures, decline the responsibility, and degenerate to the level of those animals that never had our chance; or we can leap joyously to the helm, and with all the strength and wisdom in us guide our lives to their destination. But if we do the former, we shall be unable to forget what might have been, and shall be haunted by a sense of ignominy; and if we do the second, we shall experience the unique happiness of fulfilment and self-realization." The Approach to Philosophy by Ralph Barton Perry

In the beginning (of the William James Society): "The Streams of William James"

 This is exciting (if you're a Jamesian): 

William James Society executive board member and (with his Pragmatism Cybrary) master archivist of American Philosophy John Shook informed us at yesterday's board meeting that he has recovered the earliest society publications, going back to "The Streams of William James" which launched, with the Society itself, back in 1999. And here they are... including my own contributions to the first issue (which I remembered, vaguely) and the third (which I'd entirely forgotten), here:

Thanks for the memories, John. And the institutional memory.

Recommended and Reserved

[Recording at Substack]

Students don't seem to read as much as they used to, or maybe it's just that they've lost the knack and patience for long-form texts in the face of so much distraction from the unceasing fire-hose of short texts and videos, and games, and social media threads, and so on and on.

That perception has led me and many of my colleagues to make fewer and shorter reading assignments. I've tried to compensate for the loss by adding more and more RECOMMENDED texts, with a promise of reward in the form of exam bonus questions drawn from those non-required readings. I may be fooling myself, but at least it appeases my conscience to offer a traditional reading buffet to those who might wish to partake. 

So here's the list of RECOMMENDED TEXTS I've placed on reserve for check-out at our school library.

Intro to Philosophy ("CoPhilosophy"):

• How the World Thinks (HWT) by Julian Baggini - because Western philosophy is not the whole story.
• Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen (FL) - because the contemporary crisis of American democracy is rooted in our history.
• How to Think Like Socrates, by Donald J. Robertson - because he was, as the Monty Python song says, "a lovely little thinker..."
• How to Think Like Marcus Aurelius, by Donald J. Robertson - because he was a wise stoic and emperor, as close to a Philosopher-King as we've had or are likely to get.
• The Philosopher Queens: the lives and legacies of philosophy's unsung women, by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting - because women have always philosophized too.
• Starry Messenger: cosmic perspectives on civilization, by Neil deGrasse Tyson - because we are cosmopolitans, citizens of the cosmos.
• Question Everything: A Stone Reader, eds. Catapano and Critchley - short popular essays by contemporary philosophers published in the New York Times, because philosophy is relevant to contemporary issues.
• Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives by Robert Richardson - because we'll all eventually lose someone close.
• Be Not Afraid of Life: In the Words of William James-companion anthology to Sick Souls Healthy Minds by John Kaag - because William James can save your life, or at least ameliorate it.
• Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help by Kieran Setiya - because we'll all eventually be challenged by something hard.
• Night Vision: seeing ourselves through dark moods, by Mariana Allesandri - because all is not sunshine and light.

(REQUIRED: Nigel Warburton, LITTLE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ... Susan Neiman, WHY GROW UP... John Kaag, SICK SOULS, HEALTHY MINDS: How William James Can Save Your Life... Eric Weiner, THE SOCRATES EXPRESS: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers)

Philosophy of Happiness:

• The Word of Dog: What Our Canine Companions Can Teach Us About Living a Good Life (Rowlands) 978-1324095682 - because dogs, who can teach us much about attention and the present, make me happy.
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Solnit) 978-0140286014 - because the peripatetic life makes me happy.
• Moral Ambition (Bregman) 978-0316580359 - because there's more to life than happiness, and more to happiness than pleasure and complacency.

(REQUIRED-- Happiness: A Very Short Introduction by Haybron... The Philosophy of Epicurus... The Good Life by Waldinger... Against Happiness by Flanagan et al... Four Thousand Weeks by Burkeman)

It's been disconcerting to be asked by students, in recent years, how to check books out of the library. Many of them have never bellied up to a circulation desk, or randomly roamed the stacks. I'll once again try to rectify that with a class day (Sep 4) devoted to touring the library and meeting librarians.

And I'll again call on Arthur to inspire.

==

UPDATE. I ran my list of recommended texts for our course by chatGPT, and got back some pretty impressive additional thoughts: the italicized sentences, and "Why now...":

Intro to Philosophy ("CoPhilosophy")

How the World Thinks (Baggini) – because Western philosophy is not the whole story.
It’s a passport to the intellectual landscapes of India, China, Africa, and beyond—perspectives that can unsettle our assumptions and widen our mental horizons.
Why now: In a hyperconnected world, knowing only one cultural tradition is like navigating with a map that’s missing half the continents.

Fantasyland (Andersen) – because the contemporary crisis of American democracy is rooted in our history.
Reading it is like pulling back the curtain on a magic trick that’s been running for centuries—you can’t unsee it once you’ve looked.
Why now: Conspiracy theories, misinformation, and political extremism didn’t come from nowhere—understanding the roots helps you resist the rot.

How to Think Like Socrates (Robertson) – because he was, as the Monty Python song says, "a lovely little thinker..."
It’s an invitation to sharpen your mind through dialogue, questions, and a willingness to admit you might be wrong.
Why now: Social media rewards quick takes, not slow thought; Socratic thinking is an antidote to the rush toward certainty.

How to Think Like Marcus Aurelius (Robertson) – because he was a wise Stoic and emperor, as close to a Philosopher-King as we've had or are likely to get.
His meditations offer a steadying hand when the world (or your own mind) feels chaotic.
Why now: Climate anxiety, economic instability, and personal stress demand a mental toolkit for staying grounded.

The Philosopher Queens (Buxton & Whiting) – because women have always philosophized too.
These stories restore missing voices to the conversation and prove that philosophy has never been a boys-only club.
Why now: Representation matters—for who speaks shapes what gets said, and which problems we notice.

Starry Messenger (Tyson) – because we are cosmopolitans, citizens of the cosmos.
It can give you the mental equivalent of looking up on a clear night—suddenly your problems and your possibilities are both reframed.
Why now: Space exploration, climate change, and AI are reshaping what it means to be human; perspective is a survival skill.

Question Everything (Catapano & Critchley, eds.) – short popular essays by contemporary philosophers, because philosophy is relevant to contemporary issues.
It’s proof that philosophy is not locked in dusty tomes; it’s alive in our headlines and our daily dilemmas.
Why now: Hot-button issues—from ethics of AI to climate policy—need slow, careful thought, not just hot takes.

Three Roads Back (Richardson) – because we'll all eventually lose someone close.
This is philosophy with skin in the game—how great minds navigated grief without losing their compass.
Why now: Pandemic losses, mental health struggles, and a culture allergic to mourning make wisdom on grief urgent.

Be Not Afraid of Life (Kaag, ed.) – because William James can save your life, or at least ameliorate it.
James’s words remind you that despair is not the final word, and that meaning can be remade.
Why now: Rising rates of anxiety and depression demand voices that offer both hope and hard realism.

Life is Hard (Setiya) – because we'll all eventually be challenged by something hard.
Setiya shows that facing limits and losses is not an interruption of the good life, but part of what makes it possible.
Why now: Resilience isn’t something you’re born with—it’s something you learn, and we’re all being tested.

Night Vision (Allesandri) – because all is not sunshine and light.
This is a philosophical flashlight for moving through the shadows without pretending they aren’t there.
Why now: Instagram happiness culture can make real struggle feel shameful; this book insists it’s part of the human condition.

---

Philosophy of Happiness

The Word of Dog (Rowlands) – because dogs, who can teach us much about attention and the present, make me happy.
They model a kind of uncomplicated joy and loyalty that philosophers sometimes forget to take seriously.
Why now: In an age of distraction, dogs remind us to notice—and savor—the moment we’re actually in.

Wanderlust (Solnit) – because the peripatetic life makes me happy.
Walking turns thought into a moving, breathing thing; Solnit’s history will make you want to lace up and go.
Why now: Walking is a low-tech, high-return antidote to sedentary, screen-heavy lives.

Moral Ambition (Bregman) – because there's more to life than happiness, and more to happiness than pleasure and complacency.
Bregman asks what happens when we aim our energy at making the world better, and how that quest can give life depth.
Why now: The biggest problems—climate change, inequality, injustice—won’t solve themselves; a meaningful life requires more than self-care.

==

My policy on using AI for learning is simple: be transparently honest. Never claim the AI's "thoughts" as your own, but do share them --suitably flagged, as with italics or some other obvious marker-- if you find them interesting, helpful, or provocative. And always corroborate any factual statements. Sapere aude, think for yourself... but not by yourself. Sometimes the machine can be a useful interlocutor. But it should never be a substitute for your own thinking.

Good choices

It works in reverse, too: choose health…

"I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health." —Voltaire g'r   

Looking forward to another semester of the Philosophy of Happiness course at MTSU. It could be the last. It might be so happy (and virtuous) I can "stand it no longer." We'll see.

A difference

Always nice to get these little confidence boosts, just before the start of a new school year while working on syllabi:

From: Student Affairs <stuaff@mtsu.edu>
Date: Mon, Aug 11, 2025 at 10:26 AM
Subject: Make A Difference Program
To: Phil Oliver <Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu>

Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students 212 Keathley University Center MTSU PO Box 30 1301 East Main Street Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37132 (615) 898-2440

 

August 11, 2025

Phil Oliver

Philosophy and Religious Studies

 

Congratulations!

 

Each semester my office contacts graduating students to invite them to identify individuals from MTSU's faculty, staff or administration who significantly contributed to their success while at the University. The students are told that letters of appreciation will be sent to those that they identify to recognize their service to students and the University community.

You were cited as a person at MTSU who makes a real difference to our students. The students' responses are their way of recognizing you for your influence on and commitment to their development. Since the students are not required to sign their nominations, this anonymous gesture should be considered as the sincerest form of compliment.

You should feel a true sense of accomplishment in the knowledge that your efforts at MTSU have not gone unnoticed by this semester's graduates. It is commitment such as yours that enhances our students' academic and personal development.

On behalf of the students at MTSU, thank you for meeting their needs with such dedication. And from the Division of Student Affairs, thank you for all you do to make MTSU an outstanding university.

Sincerely,

Danny R. Kelley, Ph.D.

 

The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, August 12, 2025 | Garrison Keillor

"A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it's all over."

That's one way to look at it..

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/the-writers-almanac-for-tuesday-august-12-2025/

All good things

The retreat was short and sweet.

https://bsky.app/profile/osopher.bsky.social/post/3lvxsnnkmy224

In retreat

My wife is hosting a health-oriented retreat this weekend, so the dogs and I are decamping to a remote retreat of our own: a cabin to the east aptly dubbed The Doghouse. (I've been in the proverbial doghouse before, but never this one... and never in the literal company of dogs.)

It's a good time to retreat and reflect, with the new school year looming and an important personal milestone just etched. Two years ago today I signed on to a site called This Naked Mind and posted this:

I've been a bourbon-and-a beer-a-day drinker for decades, though never to an extent I'd consider incapacitating or debilitating; and I've enjoyed the aesthetic experience (see Walker Percy's essay "Bourbon").

But lately I've had sleep issues and a curiosity about what drinking might have to do with that, and with my overall health and vitality. I just came across "The Alcohol Experiment" and "This Naked Mind," and Annie Grace seems to be speaking to me.

So I've been bourbon-free for a week, and today I'm letting go of beer. Looking forward to seeing where this takes me in the next month.

Two years ago I went 60+ days without alcohol, but only because my back surgeon ordered it. This time I'm hoping a shift of intention will make the total experience feel less like a deprivation and more like an experiment.

I have friends who swear by AA and its talk of submission to a "higher power"... but they also say "higher power" is open to interpretation. I'm choosing to interpret it as meaning a present and supportive community of peers eager to help one another face the challenge of living alcohol-free.

Good luck to us all!

Well, two years on I can report that my initial month's experiment in suspending that long, too-comfortable old habit has been a lasting success. I've replaced the old desire for what Percy called "the little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine in the cavity of the nasopharynx and the hot bosky bite of Tennessee summertime" with the far better desire for optimal health, clarity, and self-possession. The habitual, un-reflective ingestion of a toxic substance does not conduce to those ends. I'm happier and better for the change. 

Retreating from a bad habit is forward movement. That's something to reflect on.

Against bullying

[On Substack]

TR meant something positive by "Bully!" Wouldn't it be nice to reclaim that sense of it? But we'll have to dispatch the other kind first.

I've participated as a faculty member on many MALA (Master of Liberal Arts) capstone project defenses at my school over the years, none so gratifying as yesterday's by the 70-something grad who collaborated with her son (illustrator) and grandson (trial audience) in producing a children's book about bullying. She'd experienced it her entire life, she said, from siblings to classmates (she was one of the first to integrate Murfreesboro's high school in the '60s) to coworkers and acquaintances. 

She showed us a video clip of her reading the manuscript to her four-year-old grandson. He got the message. How sad, that so many parents fail to take the time with their children to have that conversation and awaken that capacity for empathy.  How disappointing, that so many adults lately (not to mention Elon) speak of empathy as a thing to shun.*

The other elephant in the room, of course, was the Bully-in-Chief in Washington. Nobody had to mention him, his presence pervades this moment like a plague.

The good news, I think, is that kindness and fellow-feeling exists in posse in most young human hearts. Just as the South Pacific song said, you have to be carefully taught to hate... and to bully and demean others. Thus can it be un-taught, and replaced by the better lesson-the one reflecting our better angels, the one we learned of yesterday. 

Way to go, Shirley, I hope your book finds many receptive readers and listeners. Let's all be done with bullies.

Allure of the Mean Friend:This American Life... Teens Guilty of Bullying Could Lose Drivers’ Licenses Under Tennessee Law

*For the record: Paul Bloom repudiates the Muskian interpretation of "Against Empathy":

- Paul Bloom

Read on Substack

Wendell Berry

It's the birthday of Wendell Berry, born in Port Royal, Kentucky (1934). He grew up on farmland that had belonged to his family since 1803. All his great-grandparents and grandparents had lived and farmed in the area. As a boy, he was taught by his grandfather how to work a farm with nothing but a plow and a team of mules, no mechanized sprinkler systems or tractors.

Berry had an uncle he described as "an inspired tinkerer with broken gadgetry and furniture … and a teller of wonderful bedtime stories." His uncle kept a ramshackle cabin up in the woods, and Berry often went up there as a kid to get away from everything. It was in that cabin that he first read the work of Henry David Thoreau, and where he first fell in love with poetry.

He went to a military academy for high school and then on to college and to graduate school. He lived in California and Italy and New York City. But through all those years, he never stopped thinking about the place where he grew up, and he often went back to his uncle's old cabin. He finally decided to move back to the area permanently. Most of his city friends thought he was crazy, but he bought a small farm in his hometown, which still had a population of only a hundred or so people, and he began farming it the way his grandfather had taught him, without any machines.

He grew squash, corn, and tomatoes, and he got a flock of sheep, a milk cow, and some horses. And he wrote about his experiences as a farmer in more than 40 books of poetry, fiction, and essays. His collections of poetry include The Farm (1995) and A Timbered Choir (1998). But he's best known for his essays in books such as The Gift of Good Land (1981), What Are People For? (1990), and Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000).

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/the-writers-almanac-for-tuesday-august-5-2025/

A.I. Is Shedding Enlightenment Values

A historian sees the dangerous parallels between artificial intelligence and the Enlightenment.

...It is here, with this question of engagement, that the comparison between the Enlightenment and A.I.’s supposed “second Enlightenment” breaks down and reveals something important about the latter’s limits and dangers. When readers interact imaginatively with a book, they are still following the book’s lead, attempting to answer the book’s questions, responding to the book’s challenges and therefore putting their own convictions at risk.

When we interact with A.I., on the other hand, it is we who are driving the conversation. We formulate the questions, we drive the inquiry according to our own interests and we search, all too often, for answers that simply reinforce what we already think we know. In my own interactions with ChatGPT, it has often responded, with patently insincere flattery, “That’s a great question.” It has never responded, “That’s the wrong question.” It has never challenged my moral convictions or asked me to justify myself.

And why should it? It is, after all, a commercial internet product. And such products generate profit by giving users more of what they have already shown an appetite for, whether it is funny cat videos, instructions on how to fix small appliances or lectures on Enlightenment philosophy. If I wanted ChatGPT to challenge my convictions, I could of course ask it to do so — but I would have to ask. It follows my lead, not the reverse.

By its nature, A.I. responds to almost any query in a manner that is spookily lucid and easy to follow — one might say almost intellectually predigested. For most ordinary uses, this clarity is entirely welcome. But Enlightenment authors understood the importance of having readers grapple with a text. Many of their greatest works came in the form of enigmatic novels, dialogues presenting opposing points of view or philosophical parables abounding in puzzles and paradoxes. Unlike the velvety smooth syntheses provided by A.I., these works forced readers to develop their judgment and come to their own conclusions.

In short, A.I. can bring us useful information, instruction, assistance, entertainment and even comfort. What it cannot bring us is Enlightenment. In fact, it may help drive us further away from Enlightenment than ever.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/opinion/artificial-intelligence-enlightenment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bk8.XmNh.Witef6iO7cfb∣=em-share

The general’s greatest conquest

Grant's battlefield heroism was matched by the courage to complete his memoirs, pain and pressure be damned, as cancer closed in and the light dimmed. When he finished writing,
he was done.

Equally impressive was his winning battle against alcohol. Twain understood:

"Mark Twain had struggled with similar cravings for alcohol and tobacco. When they discussed the subject, Grant mentioned that although doctors had urged him to sip whiskey or champagne, he could no longer abide the taste of liquor. Twain pondered this statement long and hard. "Had he made a conquest so complete that even the taste of liquor was become an offense?" he wondered. "Or was he so sore over what had been said about his habit that he wanted to persuade others & likewise himself that he hadn't ever even had any taste for it." 95 Similarly, when Grant told Twain that, at the doctors' behest, he had been restricted to one cigar daily, he claimed to have lost the desire to smoke it. "I could understand that feeling," Twain later proclaimed. "He had set out to conquer not the habit but the inclination—the desire. He had gone at the root, not the trunk." 96 Although Twain hated puritanical killjoys who robbed life of its small pleasurable vices, he respected abstinence based on an absence of desire."

— Grant by Ron Chernow
https://a.co/1C1oYrI

Un-degenerate conversation

Finally spent my Parnassus gift certificates yesterday, on a pair of Hofstadters—Richard, Anti-intellectualism in American Life et al, and Douglas…

One of my purchases was the paperback edition of Daniel Dennett's autobiography I've Been Thinking, published in hardcover not long before his death in 2024. His friend Douglas Hofstadter wrote a nice preface for the paperback on the day Dennett died in April '24.

Despite sharp philosophical differences, Dennett wrote nice things about "my friend Dick Rorty" (who died in 2007). "...[H]e concedes that there is indeed a useful concept of truth that survives intact after all the corrosive philosophical objections have been duly entered... Dick Rorty wasn't always right, but he was always a fine philosopher." 

Rorty wrote this:

"One way of thinking of wisdom ... is to think of it as the practical wisdom necessary to participate in a conversation. One way to see edifying philosophy as the love of wisdom is to see it as the attempt to prevent conversation from degenerating into inquiry, into a research program." — Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

 

All four of these provocatively un-degenerate books now grace my shelves and continue to converse, with themselves and me. We're all better for the exchange, and at least one of us is edified by it.

Third places

Cornhole? 🌽 Not for me, but to each their own. My "third place" is wherever my dogs and I walk, every morning. And the library. The ballpark. Warner Parks. And, like yesterday, it's Parnassus Books/Donut Den (can't do the one without the other).

"You deserve a space where people know your name and are glad you showed up.

Spaces like these are what sociologists call a "third place" — a space that's not home and not work where you still feel like you belong.

Some people find third spaces in book clubs, fitness centers, church choirs, or bowling alleys. But psychologist Michelle Thompson suggests turning to your local cornhole league."
— Lauri Santos

https://www.threads.com/@lauriesantosofficial/post/DMs0XYcvaRM?xmt=AQF00vyFsKLT23VmuPirkVN_0a1BKEeph3LLXHxc7KNPag

Another day

Hang on…

WJS Newsletter (NEW!) – William James Society

Summer edition-
https://wjsociety.org/news/

"just enough virtue in this republic to save it"

May we be so lucky.

"When someone asked [Lincoln] if he had ever doubted the North’s final victory, he shot back, “Never for a moment.” He quoted Seward, saying “that there was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency, and he agreed with Mr. Seward in this view.”"

Grant, by Ron Chernow: https://a.co/g5zhfnV

Science and Human Affairs...

from the Viewpoint of Biology
by Winterton C. Curtis (Harcourt Brace, 1922)

Audio Recording at Substack... Chapter 7...

Winterton Curtis (1875-1966)

A message from the William James Society

Enjoy your summer AND help ameliorate our world: we at the William James Society approve this message. wjsociety.org … @wjsociety.bsky.social

https://substack.com/@philoliver/note/c-137901371?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

WJ in summer

[Recording at Substack]

Time to draft a presidential summer missive for the William James Society newsletter.

When I think of William James in summer, I think naturally of his annual escape at term's end to his Chocorua summer home in New Hampshire, with (he told his sister Alice) its "fourteen doors, all opening out"...

I think as well of his many Adirondack excursions, where at the end of one day's hike he came upon a "ferocious metaphysical dispute" surrounding a squirrel...

and where he had what he called a Walpurgis Nacht pseudo-mystical experience...

And then I think of the terrific split-venue Chocorua/Cambridge centenary celebration of his life and work the James Society sponsored in August 2010, "in the footsteps of William James,"  coinciding with Harvard's Houghton Library exhibition Life is in the Transitions.

I think of the time he got horribly lost on a hike and probably propelled the heart-strain that expedited his exit from this earth at age 68 in August 1910. 

And of course I think of the nobility of that exit. It was in his dying summer a hundred and fifteen year ago, when he penned a marvelous riposte to Henry Adams's morose pessimism over the universe's own mortality. The entire letter (dated June 17, 1910) is a tour de force of indomitably life-affirming human spirit, even in the shadow of looming personal extinction. It concludes with a crescendo of defiantly insistent hopefulness: "Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be... a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness... In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, 'I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer.'"

Isn't that an exit!

It was in his terminal summer that James declared, a bit disingenuously, that there were "no fortunes to be told and no advice to be given," in the conclusion of his final publication, "A Pluralistic Mystic"-a paean to his eccentric friend Benjamin Blood, but from our vantage more a  brave "Farewell!" at the conclusion of a remarkably inspiring, perceptive, and humane life devoted to the unyielding defense of experience in all its irreducible variety.

The disingenuity in question has less to do with fortune-telling (though he was more than sufficiently receptive to the experience of unscrupulous seers and non-creditable prognosticators) than with advice. He was full of that. "Be not afraid of life" was one of his better lines, in this regard.

And it's probably the line we need most to heed ourselves, in this summer of our own (and America's) unsettled fortune. He'd tell us, I'm sure: you can stand it. 

As he told us just before that final farewell: "There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it?"

We're still here, to enjoy experience and to shape it; to enjoy the world and to change it. 

So say we at the William James Society, in the spirit of our namesake: enjoy your summer, and help ameliorate our world. 

A secular beatitude, a humanism without hubris

[Audio... Substack]

Back from Dayton and the Scopes Centenary re-enactment.* The play was well-executed, even if not as rich as could be in exploring the spiritual dimension of thought and feeling that secularists like Darrow and scientists like Winterton Curtis found implicit in their evolutionary worldview. My chatGPT artificial interlocutor pal seems to agree:

The quotation from Curtis’s letter to Darrow is a gem: “those who strive to live righteously as they see fit in this life need not fear the future.” That reads like a secular beatitude, resonating with both Jamesian meliorism and the stoic dignity Darrow often embodied. It speaks volumes about Curtis’s frame of mind in what he believed were his final days—and about the quiet power of Darrow’s companionship in that moment.

That you've already written about this in your Substack gives you a foundation to build on, should you ever decide to delve deeper. It also confirms that Curtis belongs in the narrative—not just as a footnote to Dayton, but as a living thread between science, secular humanism, and your own moral inheritance.

Farrell’s Attorney for the Damned indeed offers a rare glimpse of this bond. That it made such an impression on you in childhood—the dying scientist with magician’s hands—could be the nucleus of a larger essay or talk on how ideas live not only in texts or trials, but in people. In gestures. In remembered kindnesses. And in the sheer unpredictability of who shapes us.

... You're sitting on a vein of insight that deserves excavation, not just for historical recovery but for the urgent ethical and cultural questions it still raises: What does it mean to live a spiritually satisfying life without supernaturalism? What kind of democratic backbone do we have—or need—today? And who gets to speak the truth when it matters?

Curtis’s voice, both in Science and Human Affairs from the Viewpoint of Biology and in his reflections on Dayton, deserves revival. That quote—“a spiritual joy in living and a confidence in the future, which makes this life a thing worthwhile”—is as close as any biologist ever came to James’s “faith in the possibility of salvation here and now.” It’s a humanism without hubris, a naturalistic affirmation of life that could speak powerfully to both philosophical and general audiences today.

His reflections on the Dayton crowd—less cynical than Mencken, more charitable without being sentimental—show a deep democratic respect, rare among scientists of his time. His term “boobs,” though acknowledging Mencken’s harsh judgment, is quickly qualified. Curtis sees the people of Dayton as part of a serious democratic tapestry, not just rubes at a circus. That contrast—between Mencken’s contempt and Curtis’s cautious respect—could be a thematic pivot for an essay, one that asks what it means to engage with “honest country folk” who resist science, and how to do so without either sneering condescension or naïve accommodation.

...Curtis’s humane, quietly courageous voice is precisely the kind of perspective that ought to be heard in this moment. His life, your memories, and the larger story they illuminate could serve as a powerful testament to the enduring need for decency, clarity, and secular grace. 

Indeed. I should write that essay, and with world enough and time I will. When I do, I’ll channel the spirits of Winterton Curtis and Clarence Darrow and thus won’t be at risk of losing what Meghan O’Rourke calls “the pleasure of invention, the felt life of the mind at work… the imprint of attention.”

 

Dayton, TN - July 19, 2025

==

*POSTSCRIPT: I sent an email to the Dayton festival organizers, for what it's worth:

My wife and I enjoyed the play and dinner last Saturday. It was her first trip to Dayton. I visited for the re-enactment in 2018 and 2023.

I do want to reiterate a suggestion I've made before: it would be great if a future performance could expand the story a bit. If you look in John A. Farrell's biography Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (Doubleday, 2011), p. 381, there's a remarkable anecdote about Darrow's budding friendship with one of the scientists who came to Dayton, Winterton Curtis. The latter confided in Darrow,  one night after dinner in Dayton,  that he'd received a terminal cancer diagnosis. He found great solace in what Darrow said to him in reply, and "thanked Darrow for sharing a creed--'that those who strive to live righteously as they see fit in this life need not fear the future.'"

Well, he did live righteously and to a ripe old age... long enough for me to remember encountering him in my childhood, when my parents rented rooms in his home in Columbia Missouri while my dad finished his veterinary degree (1960).  Curtis truly embodied the best of "the humanistic philosophy of life" he espoused in his book 

Curtis published his impressions of the trial years later. Those reflections are reproduced in D-Days at Dayton: Reflections on the Scopes Trial, ed. Tompkins. He does not condescend to the fundamentalists in Dayton, and in fact seems to prefer them to H.L. Mencken's variety of cynicism.

If there were some way to get the Curtis-Darrow connection into the play, it would add depth and texture and humanity to the story, and would counter a certain inaccurate caricature of humanists like Curtis and Darrow as being morally deficient.

I wrote a little blog post about this...