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A recent thread on the ChristLit discussion list lead me to the following article: "Fighting the Noonday Devil," by R. R. Reno. Given the goals of USF and LAR, I found the article to be both convicting and fascinating. It focuses on the danger of acedia--"a lassitude and despair that overwhelms spiritual striving"--and explores the manner in which the modern academy, with its emphasis on critical distance, might be inflicting acedia upon students. Reno cites Dante's Purgatorio several times, and has prompted me to take a closer look. I ended up buying Merwin's translation not long ago.
In any event, the article is an intriguing read, and one that generates some questions in terms of LAR goals (particularly the search-for-truth aspect of the Christian liberal arts) and how LAR functions in the larger scheme of USF. Some quotations:
There are no intellectual solutions to spiritual problems. Like each of the seven deadly sins, acedia must be fought with spiritual discipline. Such discipline is profoundly alien to our culture, not because we have alternatives, but because we entertain the fantasy of life without spiritual demands. This fantasy is the most important legacy of modernity. For the great innovation of modern culture was the promise of progress without spiritual discipline.
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We should rush toward our Lord, for we can never become too intimate, and we should wait patiently with Him, for He always has something more to give. To do so, we must place the pedagogy of critical distance and the dictates of conscience within a larger vision of journey toward the truth, a journey in which the warm and enduring embrace of love is to be cherished rather than mocked or feared.
How--at USF, in LAR, or in the academy generally--do we place our instruction of critical distance into this larger context? Or, do we handle the critical distance stuff and let other parts of campus handle the larger vision?
gad
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