Thanks for the question! I don't have any silver-bullet answers, of course, and I think the nature of transcendent experience makes it impossible to encapsulate in particular policies. For professors and institutions, however, I would recommend real attention to classroom demeanor (striving to know and "see" your students, creating space for them to reveal themselves; e.g., an optional end assignment for my undergraduate course is to have coffee with me and talk about a reading of their choice), as well as a focus on intrinsically meaningful questions (particularly about ethics, aesthetics, and virtue, in addition to disciplinary topics) that will elicit real introspection. As I try to hint in the essay, there is nothing wrong per se with identity, lived experience, "felt truth," etc., but I really worry that students are being (incoherently) encouraged to see the self as ultimate/inviolable/authentic at the same time that our impoverished moral language reduces everything personal to a medical issue and everything public to a crass exercise of power, neither of which provides any real grounding for personal attachments to truth, sacrifice, etc. I think students are very naturally drawn to higher causes than what they have been offered in public institutions (whether they are "religious" or not), and that real education has to fulfill that longing.
Very interesting essay! I was not familiar with the work of Phenix and I'm interested to know more.
I appreciate how you call our attention to the important roles of both deep interiority and external reality in shaping who we are as persons. What practical steps can higher education -- whether individual instructors or whole institutions - take to help students move past "the immanent, overgeneralized language of “mental health” or “identity""?
Thanks for the question! I don't have any silver-bullet answers, of course, and I think the nature of transcendent experience makes it impossible to encapsulate in particular policies. For professors and institutions, however, I would recommend real attention to classroom demeanor (striving to know and "see" your students, creating space for them to reveal themselves; e.g., an optional end assignment for my undergraduate course is to have coffee with me and talk about a reading of their choice), as well as a focus on intrinsically meaningful questions (particularly about ethics, aesthetics, and virtue, in addition to disciplinary topics) that will elicit real introspection. As I try to hint in the essay, there is nothing wrong per se with identity, lived experience, "felt truth," etc., but I really worry that students are being (incoherently) encouraged to see the self as ultimate/inviolable/authentic at the same time that our impoverished moral language reduces everything personal to a medical issue and everything public to a crass exercise of power, neither of which provides any real grounding for personal attachments to truth, sacrifice, etc. I think students are very naturally drawn to higher causes than what they have been offered in public institutions (whether they are "religious" or not), and that real education has to fulfill that longing.
Very interesting essay! I was not familiar with the work of Phenix and I'm interested to know more.
I appreciate how you call our attention to the important roles of both deep interiority and external reality in shaping who we are as persons. What practical steps can higher education -- whether individual instructors or whole institutions - take to help students move past "the immanent, overgeneralized language of “mental health” or “identity""?