Nathaniel Warne

In this article I utilize recent psychological and sociological studies on education along with Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper’s work on the relationship between sight, prudence and the perception of reality to show the importance of vision and experience for moral education. Drawing on the above, I then will look specifically at the importance of liberal arts education in universities and how this would relate specifically to disciplines like the sciences. What this article argues is that education needs to be more holistic. It needs to take seriously the tight integration of both the development of technical learning along with other important kinds of knowledge and experience. One becomes the scientific self not just through gaining technical proficiencies but by becoming a well-rounded and holistic person.

Warne's original study provides an insightful analysis of the role of contemplation and creation in the thought of Josef Pieper, illustrating the importance of this practice to earthly happiness and human flourishing. What is the relationship between creation, contemplation, human flourishing, and moral development? Nathaniel Warne's Josef Pieper on the Spiritual Life offers a sophisticated answer to this question through a systematic analysis of philosopher Josef Pieper's (1904-1997) thought. Warne's examination centers on the role of contemplation and creation in Pieper's thinking, arguing that contemplation of the created order is a key feature of earthly happiness. By emphasizing the importance of contemplation, Pieper illustrates the deep interconnections between ethics, creation, and spirituality. For Warne, to posit a binary between the contemplative life and active life creates a false dichotomy. Following Pieper, Warne claims that theology and spirituality cannot be bracketed from ethics and social action--indeed, our lived experience in the world blurs the lines between these practices. Contemplation and action are closer together than are typically assumed, and both have important implications for both our spiritual development and our engagement with the world around us. Ultimately, Warne's emphasis on creation and contemplation represents an attempt to resist a view of ethics and the spiritual life that is divorced from our environment. In response to this view, Warne argues that we need a renewed sense that creation and place are important for self-understanding. Contemplation of creation is, at bottom, a form of communion with God--we thus need a more robust sense of how ethics and politics are rooted in God's creative action. Taking Pieper as a guide, Warne's study helps to deepen our thinking about these connections.

In this article, I compare recent literature on theology of institutions with the ethics of philosopher Avishai Margalit. This article has two tasks. First, it shows that Margalit's understanding of a decent society provides helpful categories for moral and political theology. The second task, by putting theology and Margalit in dialogue, and focusing on the topic of labor and economic institutions, highlights where moral and political theology exposes potential weaknesses within Margalit's thought. Though his account of humiliation and the ‘decent society’ draws upon a rich theological and philosophical tradition, his rejection of a doctrine of creation weakens his claims.

This paper draws on the work of 20th century philosopher Josef Pieper (1904–1997) and explores the potential risks that follow from the estrangement of language from truth and reality. Extending from this discussion, the paper will make a connection between two medieval virtues, docility and justice. To do this I first look at the relationship between language, the mystery of truth and reality, and explicate the dangers of the sophistry to which Pieper draws attention in his work. The paper then connects the virtue of docility to a discussion of language and mystery by bringing out one of the key features of this virtue, which is the perfection of habits of openness through the free exchange of ideas in dialogue. This openness consists not only in being open to others ideas, but also in being open to the errors in ones own ideas. For Pieper, the fundamental form of speech is dialogue, which develops in the context of relationships. This includes dialogue between fields of study, for example the sciences and humanities. Speech that has forgotten this ceases to be speech and ceases to be human. In the last section of the paper, I bring the above strands together to address the issue of terminology. What will be shown is that the corruption of language by sophistry amounts to constructed artificial terminology. Artificial terminology is distinct from natural and historically developed language and can be damaging to dialogue and become a form of injustice.

In recent years there have been major shifts in how the role of science—and scientists—are understood. The critical examination of scientific expertise within the field of Science and Technology Studies are increasingly eroding notions of the “otherness” of scientists. It would seem to suggest that anyone can be a scientist—when provided with the appropriate training and access to data. In contrast, however, ethnographic evidence from the scientific community tells a different story. Scientists are quick to recognize that not everyone can—or should—be a scientist. Appealing to notions such as “good hands” or “gut feelings”, scientists narrate a distinction between good and bad scientists that cannot be reduced to education, access, or opportunity. The key to good science requires scientists to express an intuitive feeling for their discipline, but also that individuals derive considerable personal satisfaction from their work. Discussing this personal joy in—and “fittingness” of—scientific occupations using the fields of STS, ethics and science policy is highly problematic. In this paper we turn to theology discourse to analyze the notion of “callings” as a means of understanding this issue. Callings highlight the identification and examination of individual talents to determine fit occupations for specific persons. Framing science as a calling represents a novel view of research that places the talents and dispositions of individuals and their relationship to the community at the center of flourishing practices.