Excarnation and teaching

Last updated on: September 4, 2014 at 3:55 pm by Tim Muldoon

Excarnation and teaching 2014-09-04T15:55:40-04:00 Tim Muldoon

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

NYT

JESSE DRAXLER, NEW YORK TIMES

My Boston College colleague Richard Kearney has written a thoughtful piece in the New York Times, “Losing our Touch.” He laments the loss of physicality, of the body, in the collective consciousness of our society.

Are we perhaps entering an age of “excarnation,” where we obsess about the body in increasingly disembodied ways? For if incarnation is the image become flesh, excarnation is flesh become image. Incarnation invests flesh; excarnation divests it.

Among students, sex is increasingly mediated by the virtual world, through online dating or pornography. He traces this tendency from Plato’s disembodied world of forms, and Aristotle’s response, positing that touch is the most universal human sense. Plato won the day in Western philosophy; “I see” is now our way of saying “I understand” (rather than, say “I feel”).

Something is lost here, Kearney writes.

Full humanity requires the ability to sense and be sensed in turn: the power, as Shakespeare said, to “feel what wretches feel” — or, one might also add, what artists, cooks, musicians and lovers feel. We need to find our way in a tactile world again.

Read the whole thing.

If education is only about “taking a look,” (as Kant might have it), then education is disembodied. Minds can study during the week; bodies can party on the weekend (you know, that period from Wednesday evening to late Monday afternoon). What will a robust education of mens sana in corpore sano really look like in a world of iCloud and a nearly completed Circle?

Previous Post

September 3, 2014

The discerning university

Next Post

September 8, 2014 College and citizenship

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category academic freedom Catholic intellectual tradition epigenetics humanities mission politics science teaching Theology Uncategorized university life

Select a Month November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I built a 75-foot gallows for my enemy, but I was hanged on it instead. Who am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Bigthana Haman Mordecai Ahasuerus