Higgins The Good Life: Worlds of Practice

In the second chapter Higgins identifies three domains of goods in which virtues are meaningful - moral traditions, individual life narratives, and practices. The web of connections among these give rise to our individual values and meanings. Practices are the main focus here, because his interest is in teaching as a practice, and Higgins distinguishes two sorts of goods internal to a practice. The first can be realized as a community, as when football fans watch an exciting and well played Superbowl. The second can be realized by a particular member of that community, which he refers to as 'internal goods located in the practitioner'. I find the discussion of goods and their interconnection with practices, life narratives, and traditions giving rise to meaning interesting and reflection provoking.

Professors, ideal versus typical

I'd be curious to hear reactions to a survey described by Maryellen Weimer. The survey asked college juniors and seniors to ascribe various characteristics to the "ideal professor" and to their experience of the "typical professor". Results below:

Higgins' "good life" — and internal and external goods

Thanks to Chris for getting us started with a very lucid account of the overall project of Higgins' book.

Like Jim Spence, I have reservations about the philosophical background that informs Higgins' book: the ancient ethics/modern morality contrast is (I believe) is overdrawn. But rather than be drawn into a discussion of moral philosophy, I'd prefer to focus on Higgins' more immediate project of investigating the goods of teaching.

Figures like Macintyre, Williams, Taylor, etc., get the greatest attention from Higgins, but I think we can all agree that the intellectual progenitor of Higgins' investigation is Aristotle. I understand Higgins' aim as trying to identified the internal goods of the craft of teaching. (Higgins talks of 'practices' rather than crafts, but I'll overlook whatever differences exist between those notions here.) If Aristotle was right and every craft has an internal good (or goods) that define it and at which genuine practitioners of the craft must aim, then it seems reasonable to suppose that teaching, since it seems to be learnable, to involve the development of various human excellences, etc., would also be a craft with its own internal goods.

Learning from each other

Reading Higgins’ book has made me think more about teaching as a practice and our relationship to other educators as a part of that practice, which has been timely, as I recently organized a teacher development workshop for the numerous adjuncts teaching our Introduction to Philosophy course. This is the second time I’ve run such a workshop. I’ve been very preoccupied in running these meetings not to waste the adjuncts’ time and they are not required to attend in order to teach the course. Fortunately, I was able to secure some money from the Office of Undergraduate Education to pay the adjuncts for their time and our department pitched in for food and coffee, but I did feel at the end of the meeting unsure as to whether we should continue to have these every term.

Higgins, Chapter 1: Work and Flourishing

I should probably start with an admission: so far, Higgins is preaching to the choir in my own case (I’m actually teaching a seminar on Charles Taylor this semester, so I find myself very sympathetic to Higgins’ way of organizing his discussion). Much of what he says resonates with me on a number of levels, particularly theoretically (in terms of ethics in general) and professionally (in terms of teaching). Since it's the first chapter of the book, my aim is not to be critical. Instead, I’ll simply summarize some of the key points of what I see Higgins’ project to be thus far (and it’s a big one) and then at the end of the post I’ll ask a few brief questions to get things started conversationally.

Humanities Think Tank

Those interested in reforming the futures of the humanities should check out the new blog, The Future of the Humanities: A Think Tank. It's overseen by Paul Jay and Gerald Graff, who have made a number of seminal contributions to this discussion, including a piece on "critical vocationalism" that I much admire.

Academically Adrift, the follow up

The authors of Academically Adrift (much discussed here last year) have released the findings of a follow up study concerning critical thinking, civic engagement, and post-collegiate employment. This looks like more good news for philosophy (if philosophy engenders critical thinking and civic engagement at least!) and bad news for business students: