Friday, October 3rd
I have not done much writing this week, so I will try to summarize the activities that took place these last fews days.
Much to my disbelief, Monday commenced the beginning of week four. It is hard to believe a month has passed. I know time will continue to speed up as the end of the semester nears. Morning classes started off with a vigorous discussion on abortion. We set up an outline of possible reasons and scenarios that people use as justification for getting abortions. One by one, we refuted each claim and backed it up with scripture. Some of the basic premises we considered were:
- Health of the mother
- Health of the child
- The baby is “not human”
- Killing for population control
- Rape/Incest
- Quality of life
- Financial obligations
- Legality
- Fertility(in the case of multiples)
I will discuss this topic more thoroughly when I have more time to write. This subject supplied us with ample discussion in politics class all week, and has been talked about most outside of class. I feel as though Dr. Bauman has provided us with more answers regarding this subject than in any of our previous classes. It is encouraging finally be getting some firm answers.
Monday night launched us into our definitions of art in the classroom(yes, the same definitions that have been dominating our thoughts for the past two weeks!). Not much can be said about them, except that the level of doubt, mixed with anxiety regarding the subject has risen to an all time high.
My free time during this week has been spent reading two books in preparation for J.P. Moreland’s classes, which start next week. He will be teaching on Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult by DeWeese/Moreland, and Moral Choices by Scott B. Rae. We are all anticipating J.P. Moreland’s arrival. He will be teaching our classes until the 10th of October, while Dr. Bauman takes time off.
Twice a week(Tuesdays and Fridays) we have work crews; for several hours, the students and staff do basic upkeep of the property. My job today was to dig a drainage trench leading down to the ravine. This has been an ongoing project since day one, however I have managed to avoid doing the work for it by getting assigned to different projects. I have a new found love for the pick-axe. It was quite fun. To much my dismay, we were overzealous in our efforts and finished the job today. Needless to say, no more pick-axe for me…
Wrapping up the remainder of the week, discussions soared in morning classes; arguments about Nicolo Machiavelli and his stance on political power: should we construct policies based on human evil or human goodness? Is our world built to be run by morality? Ultimately it led us to the idea of “political virtuosity” and the definition of truth.
English Literature class has been focused on Sir Philip Sydney. More specifically, his poems The Arcadia and Astrophil and Stella. We have incorporated his works into answering the four diagnostic questions that were posed to us at the beginning of the semester:
- What is a good life, and what good is life?
- What is a good death, and what good is death?
- What is a good love, and what good is love?
- What is a human being?
Sydney believed that in the course of learning, three things were important: Philosophy, history, and poetry. He considers philosophy to aid in learning by teaching with precepts, and history to be a “great teacher” in which gives support to education. Poetry, however, he believed to have the biggest impact on culture. “Poetry has general principles of philosophy but puts them forth more easily. Poetry gives life and breath to perfect precepts.”
In addition to reading about Sydney, we also were assigned to write our own sonnet as a parody to Sydney’s works. Some took the assignment more seriously than others. Topics such as “How to win the heart of a woman” and “The agony of writing sonnets” were common themes. It was entertaining to hear them read aloud in class today.
Those are the abridged headlines of the week, I apologize for the lack of writing; I intend to write more later. There are several events planned for the weekend, including a trip to Ouray! I shall write about that in the coming week.
