Description:
Education is about learning to think. Much of what we call thinking, however, is a hodge-podge of repetitious self-talk, opinion, and cutting and pasting of second-hand ideas. Moreover, thinking in the present has often been alien to scholars who were tempted to think abstractly. But life and thought belong together and require each other, as Plotinus pointed out many centuries ago: ""[T]he object of contemplation is living and life, and the two together are one"" (Ennead 3.8.8). Presently, many women and men in the academic world are thinking concretely within the context of...