Questions about a book

[Alyosha76]

I was wondering if any one is familiar with the book “From Socrates to Sartre” by T.Z. Lavine I am taking a philosophy course at a secular college and this is the text we are using. The beginning of the book is excellent but it’s starting to concern me. It is starting to portray the church in an unfavorable light. I am considering dropping the class. I don’t want to take a class that will encourage me to doubt. I could use some suggestions if anyone has any. Thank you

 

[hicetnunc]

I was wondering if any one is familiar with the book “From Socrates to Sartre” by T.Z. Lavine I am taking a philosophy course at a secular college and this is the text we are using. The beginning of the book is excellent but it’s starting to concern me. It is starting to portray the church in an unfavorable light. I am considering dropping the class. I don’t want to take a class that will encourage me to doubt. I could use some suggestions if anyone has any. Thank you

Hi Alyosha;

I have not read the book you are referring to, but I have a general observation…which may or may not be useful to you!

I teach philosophy in a secular university. I am a committed Catholic, and want to lead my students to the faith. But this doesn’t preclude my using texts which are not favorable to the Church. In fact, I am currently using both Nietzsche and Christopher Hitchens as texts.

If you have the faith, you have no need to fear any text books which a professor throws your way. In fact, books which challenge the faith are very often the sources that lead people to a deeper faith. If our faith is True, which we know it to be, there is nothing anyone can say to disprove or discount that appeal to the truth. There may, however, be things to give us pause for thought, or to expose areas where our faith is not explained well.

St Thomas Aquinas begins all of his questions in his Summa with objections; he first examines the reasons to reject a particular position in order to explicate it more fully.

Confonting your teacher is another thing; you will have to weigh up whether or not he/she is the kind of person to encourage criticism and dialogue; you’d expect nothing less in college or university, but sadly this is not the climate we live in today! But if there is room for challenge, take what you find objectionable in the book and raise it in class. You may be surprised at the way in which this will open up a genuine dialogue and deeper exploration of the what the Church is really all about!

Pax

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I was wondering if any one is familiar with the book “From Socrates to Sartre” by T.Z. Lavine I am taking a philosophy course at a secular college and this is the text we are using. The beginning of the book is excellent but it’s starting to concern me. It is starting to portray the church in an unfavorable light. I am considering dropping the class. I don’t want to take a class that will encourage me to doubt. I could use some suggestions if anyone has any. Thank you

Hicetnunc already brought up some good points but I’ll add my two cents. If your professor decides to use only books that aren’t favorable to Christianity then I would only look at them as offering ONE perspective as opposed to some rational consensus. Being in a secular college and having the perspective reinforced by professors will make it seem as if there’s a rational consensus, but there’s really not one. I’m sure that for each argument or anti-Christian perspective, there is at least some Christian response to it. If professors are unwilling to cover multiple perspectives, like those from theists, then it’s up to you to research more on your own time.

From my own experience, I had a humanities professor who was an atheist and very vocal against the Bible. If anything, it turned me off to atheism because the professor was basically preaching his ideology - no different than Christians. Eventhough he stressed that it was backed by reason and critical thinking, but using that standard I could’ve come up with other conclusions. Either way, I never challenged him and I just saw it as him expressing his opinion as he was entitled to. He knew I was a Christian at the time, and I thought he wouldn’t give me an A grade just because of that but I ended up with an A+. I just wrote essays demonstrating that I understood the philosophers that we covered, like David Hume and others.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

Ideally the class should use - or allow the use of - a range of texts to cover more viewpoints and issues.

It partly depends on the level of the course - at elementary levels one is supposedly not “allowed” to look at issues and arguments in an all-round way but only rehash the spoonfed line.

It’s hard work. At best one may have to resort to continually inserting the phrase “in (name of author’s) perspective” and being allusive rather than comprehensive about snags in the argument.

Hopefully you have more scope than that though.

Of course if there’s another subject you’re itching to take in its place, that could sway you. It would be a pity to have to leave philosophy if there wasn’t another course you are equally itching to take.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I was wondering if any one is familiar with the book “From Socrates to Sartre” by T.Z. Lavine I am taking a philosophy course at a secular college and this is the text we are using. The beginning of the book is excellent but it’s starting to concern me. It is starting to portray the church in an unfavorable light. I am considering dropping the class. I don’t want to take a class that will encourage me to doubt. I could use some suggestions if anyone has any. Thank you

How does this book portray the Church in an unfavorable light?

At Amazon I notice that the index for this rather large book refers to only 2 pages for Aquinas and 4 pages for the Catholic Church.

That tells us about all we need to know about the author and your professor.

I am reminded of Bertrand Russell’s History of Philosophy skipping entirely over Aquinas and the Middle Ages.