Abstract
Against our Western cultural backdrop of militantly secularized educational institutions and curricula, how refreshing to find God and education being considered together in the same volume! Through his big sweep of Ancient, Medieval, Classical, Enlightenment and Modern philosophies, Tubbs keeps alive the question of universal principles and learning, how they interact, and, even today, cannot be summarily dismissed as somehow inconsequential. The tension of noesis noeseos (NN or the One) and gnothi seuton (KT or Know Thyself) persists through the centuries and deserves to be brought forward as a critical educational question. Would that our educational leaders gave more credence to the question of the One as a unifying principle of education!
Tubbs makes the case for an evolution of the binary relation NN:KT, from the ancient metaphysical logic of mastery (NN) to the successive logic of mediacy (KT) through the Enlightenment, to what he believes may be a more promising modern metaphysical logic of aporia (education through difficulty). Instead of replacing one presupposition (NN or KT) with another (KT or NN), the educational project must be dedicated to questioning all presuppositions and feeling the sadness of knowing the “truth of eternity without knowing it” (p. 146).
In Part 1, Tubbs works his way through excerpts of over thirty historical Greek, Roman, Muslim, Jewish, German and French thinkers. The transition from mastery (NN) to mediacy (KT) is illustrated in the works of philosophers such as Aquinas, who argued that NN or “God is the pure and perfect actuality” (p. 31), Erasmus, who argued for self-examination (KT), Luther, who described the human’s KT as knowing one’s inner hypocrisy, and Descartes, with his famous conclusion, cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Tubbs’ constant attentiveness to the binary NN:KT tension throughout gives the reader some sense of cohesiveness, though his summary of this many thinkers overstates the claim that “God and the individual, truth and error, independence and dependence, free master and barbarian slave, are rent asunder” (p. 3). The varying lexical fields associated with multiple authors make it challenging to stay engaged in the arguments without first-hand prior knowledge of these authors and their particular uses of language. A more discrete number of historical authors would, in my view, have provided sufficient grounds for stating his case. Sometimes overly ambitious comprehensiveness of scope leads to unnecessary obtuseness.
Hegel helps make the shift away from the binary self-evident truth (NN) apposed to human self-knowledge (KT) to a third logic of education wherein presuppositions in NN and KT are uncovered. He advocates for a modern metaphysics of tears, pathos, dread and absolute paradox that lies “at the heart of things … educationally” (p. 113). Tubbs refers to a motley mix of authors such as Heraclitus, St. Paul, Montaigne, Van Gogh and Kierkegaard to highlight this new logic. Is this a metaphysics of feeling replacing thought?
This is where, in my view, things get a little muddled. On the one hand, Tubbs makes a broad-sweeping claim that the three big monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, should be “collapsed” (p. 176) into a “way of feeling” wherein we all somehow concur to “know” (intuitively?) the unknowability of God (p. 160). On the other hand, he promotes an educational process based on a “shared logic of KT” (p. 170) positing learning as the truth (p. 161). I ask: how do the mystical feeling and rational logic of doubting presuppositions work together toward undoing the distinct historical and theological absolutizing claims of each of the three monotheisms? Do we let go of our own monotheism’s presuppositions and enter the feeling of sadness, or do we experience sadness within our experience of our own religion and then let go of our religious presuppositions? What if neither mystical sadness nor the unknowability of God characterize the experience of a committed believer?
The scope and claims of this work are grandiose. On a positive note, its description of the centuries-old struggle to resolve the NN:KT imbalance reminds us that in post-deconstructivist, post-post-modernism we would do well to reconsider our Western intellectual roots. Current convenient historico-philosophical amnesia is no excuse for not taking the question of universal principles seriously. Nevertheless, Tubbs’ claim to be providing a pathway for One God “shared in the differences” (p. 170) and for a “shared religious education” (p. 179) falls short of being applicable to anything but a recycled invitation to the study of comparative religion. The truly committed believer would not easily yield her religious presuppositions to the educational process that will “re-define each faith” (p. 176), thus letting go of her specific faith commitment. Still, this volume is well worth the read as an overview of historical thought for readers interested in the history of thought as it pertains to metaphysics and religion.