stanley hauerwas on {christian} education

A friend sent me an email about Mars Hills Graduate school, a few weeks back. As I was trying to clean out my inbox, I finally got around to looking it over. At the end of the forwarded email, there were a few links to some articles from The Other Journal, which I’m guessing is the school’s journal/online newspaper/something or other. The gem was an interview with theologion Stanley Hauerwas, on {christian} education. Here are some quotes and comments from the interview:

The university is the great institution of legitimation in modernity whose task is to convince us that the way things are is the way they have to be.

The very divisions in which theses disciplines are now configured reinforces the presumption that the role of education is to maintain the status quo. For example, the idea that you can separate economics from politics and create departments of economics and departments of political science that are separate from one another reinforces the presumption that economic relations are fundamentally relationships of exchange that don’t have anything to do with questions of the overarching and common good. Hence, this structure never leads you to the idea that human and social relations—whether they be of the economic or political sort—don’t have to function the way that they currently do. For example, the explanatory models for understanding relationships between nations and foreign policy in terms of balances of power write into those narratives the necessity of war so that you don’t even know how to begin to think of a world in which war is not a necessity.

I think that the reason I was initially drawn to philosophy is because of the understanding historically of thinking of philosophy as first thought on such a variety of topics, basically at one time philosophy was all of the liberal arts & sciences. There is still a sense within the discipline of a connectedness of thinking. But it is still entrenched into that status quo as much as any other department none the less. It seems from what I have seen of academia, that the inter-discipline conversations are the exception definitely not the rule.

I don’t think it’s primarily in regard to economics and political science. More so, I think it has to do with the priority of science and the scientific disciplines as having overriding veridical (or truth-bearing) status. There’s a presumed importance given to these disciplines because in a sense we tend to think of them as “really true” in a way the humanities are not. I think that this veridical status has much to do with reinforcing the idea that the legitimacy of the modern state resides in its responsibility to keep people safe from death just as the sciences seem to offer a way to postpone the inevitable and control the uncontrollable.

This idea definitely follows out in the world. When you meet someone who is a doctor, of whatever kind, everyone is enthralled by them. There is a certain weird mystique about doctors. Recently my wife and I were at the store, we saw the doctor who delivered our recent child. I had this weird feeling over me, she had some kind of weird rock star type aura about her. I mean this is the one who allowed this baby to come into the world.
This is linked to this idea of medicine and the r & d behind it being the only avenue for health. That puts the doctor in a position of divinity in society, they have the keys—no longer do we need to talk to the reverend, he’s been replaced.

After hundreds of years of slavery and segregation, on the heels of the civil rights movements, African Americans now have the legal protection to move to the suburbs, have two cars, three TVs, and not to have to worry about Jews moving into the neighborhood! It’s all an attempt to forget the past in order to let things remain as they are. This allows white folks to quickly move on by saying, “What was a little slavery between friends?” The upshot is that we don’t have to come to terms with the continuing challenge of the injustices embedded in the memories we fear threaten to bring future violence.

I came across a statement about Obama’s election recently, stating how we shouldn’t consider now that we have voted a black man into office that the work of minority rights over. It is exactly the same situation as he is talking about above. You give a little here, to pacify them, so you don’t have to really change anything fundamentally.

Inclusivity is a way of forgetfulness. I often suggest that egalitarianism is the opium of the masses. This is simply because inclusivity is often nothing other than the direct attempt to eradicate difference. Therefore, I think that the presumption of inclusivity is exactly a way of preventing the conflicts we need to have in order to have healthy communities. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but I just think that’s the way it works.

I have been reading Caputo lately, who draws heavily on Derrida. Two themes of Derrida which have come up so far are hospitality and friendship. In both cases Derrida central concern is with keeping the otherness of the Other intacted.
I had a conversation recently with some friends about church, during this conversation I said about the trouble with so many churches is that they are trying to be everything to everybody and in the process watering down what is most important to who they/we are.
It is okay that we are different, even to the point that we will argue and fight about it. But, and this is an important but, at the end of the day we need to be able to still come together as friends in our complete otherness giving the gift which can’t be given (to use some Derrida garble).

I really do think it’s not just that theology needs to have a place in the university, but that the church has to have confidence enough in our practices to change the very notion of what knowledge looks like in economics, political science, and possibly, even biology.

If there ever was a place for me, I think this is it. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it much, but I know that is because it isn’t currently there. I know my place is to be in the middle of where culture/philosophy/new theology meets the church or rather where the church meets those areas. There definitely needs to be more of this stuff going on. I would love to be on staff with a church doing exactly this kind of work.

I think it is absolutely crucial that we are serious in terms of the formation of students in these knowledges, and this may well make them extremely dysfunctional and unsuccessful. We have to create dysfunctional graduates, that is, dysfunctional with regard to the fact that they will have been formed in such a way so as to not easily fit into the modern economic and institutional projects of the state. Education itself is a practice concerning the formation of lives, and that’s what we’ve got to get very serious about.

I am definitely one of those Hauerwas would call dysfunctional, not easily fitting into the economic & institutional projects around me. Since graduating I haven’t been able to get a full-time job at all, and only jumping from part-time job to part-time job. I feel very capable, just not into the forms that I am expected to fill.