Faculty Publications

The Rule of Benedict, one of the most influential documents in Western civilization, has its roots planted deeply in the scriptures. As a result, the forms of monastic life and the spirituality it engendered among lay men and women grew out of a loving reading of the Bible. In this book Benedictine scholar Demetrius Dumm traces those roots and shows how the Judeo-Christian scriptures shine through the monastic way of life, its attitudes and forms of praying. He points out that the hospitality often associated with the Benedictines begins with the entertainment of God's presence by quiet, trusting prayer, and he shows that the practice of Christian discipline is intended more for exposing and eliminating illusions than imposing order. Readers of all backgrounds who honor the wealth of the Christian heritage will welcome this wise and stirring book.

"The best books on politics offer us fresh insight into the way things are, and powerful arguments about how things ought to be. Jerome Foss's superb book accomplishes both of these ends, rescuing John Rawls's work from the dusty corners of overly abstract theorizing by emphasizing Rawls's dedication to a very practical reinvention of the American political experiment. This approach has the virtue not only of according with Rawls's mature interpretation of his work, but also of setting up a lively contrast between the constitutional republicanism of the framers and Rawls's constitutional democracy. This book is a trustworthy guide to the American constitutional tradition as well as Rawls's innovative alternative, offering a respectful treatment of the latter while providing an engaging and persuasive defense of the former." -Micah J. Watson, William Spoelhof Teacher-Scholar Chair in Political Science, Calvin College
"Foss's careful study of the transformative intention of Rawls's political theory brings extraordinary insights to our academic debates, and to the real causes of our polarized, dysfunctional politics. The analysis of Rawls's pragmatism reveals its breathtaking goal to elevate progressive-liberal judges as epitomes of public reason, seeking to construct a rationalist, egalitarian-minded democracy to replace the framers' complex republicanism. Rawls has partially succeeded; we increasingly are ruled by living judicialism rather than the rule of law, under novel power wielded by federal courts, law professors, and lawyers. Foss gives Rawls a fair hearing, but insists we confront the arbitrary and utopian bases of this radical project, and the costs of elevating equality and constructed theory at the expense of liberty, self-government, and natural rights. Those who care about the fate of constitutional self-government, and whether utopian theories produce sustainable polities or political-social disorder, must confront this book." -Paul Carrese, Professor of Political Science, U.S. Air Force Academy

"The text includes an abundance of data and actual model correlations that support the model as well as examples of how the model has been implemented and used to understand the effects of new strengthening mechanisms"--

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which began as The Children's Corner in 1953 and terminated in 2001, left its mark on America.

The show's message of kindness, simplicity, and individual uniqueness made Rogers a beloved personality, while also provoking some criticism because, by arguing that everyone was special without having to do anything to earn it, the show supposedly created an entitled generation.

In Mister Rogers and Philosophy, thirty philosophers give their very different takes on the Neighborhood phenomenon.

● Rogers's way of communicating with children has a Socratic dimension, and is compared with other attempts to cultivate philosophy in children.

● Wonder is the origin of philosophy and science, and Mister Rogers always looked for wonder.

● Did Mister Rogers unwittingly create the Millennials by his message that everyone is special?

● What Martin Buber's I-Thou philosophy can tell us about Fred Rogers's attempt to rehabilitate children's television.

● X the Owl obsesses, Daniel Tiger regresses, Lady Elaine displaces anger, King Friday controls--how puppets can be used to teach us about feelings.

● Fred Rogers's indirect communication is key to the show, and most evident in the land of make-believe, where he doesn't make himself known.

● How Mister Rogers helps us see that the ordinary world is extraordinary, if we're willing to open ourselves up to it.

● How does Mister Rogers's method of teaching compare with Maria Montessori's?

● Fred Rogers and Carl Rogers have a lot in common: The Neighborhood is observed in the light of Rogerian therapy.

● Mister Rogers's view of evil is closer to Rousseau than to Voltaire.

● Fred Rogers gave a non-philosophical interpretation of the philosophical approach known as personalism.

● Daoism helps us understand how Fred Rogers, the antithesis of a stereotypical male, could achieve such success as a TV star.

● In the show and in his life, we can see how Rogers lived "the ethics of care."

● Puppets help children understand that persons are not isolated, but interconnected.

● Mister Rogers showed us that talking and singing about our feelings makes them more manageable.

Based on archival sources, this study considers political activities in Suffolk's two main constituencies over the course of the 18th century. Mining the records of an unusually rich provincial press, Sommers addresses many key questions of Hanoverian political historiography: the press, popular political expressions, women in politics, deference, and elite behavior. She focuses primarily on the second half of the century, a time marked by an increasingly sophisticated electorate that left considerable documentary evidence, to determine how politics actually developed in East Anglia, as recorded in public and private documents.

In addition to a description of the variety and nature of Suffolk politics, the work elaborates upon a number of important collateral themes. These include the appearance of intense political awareness and enthusiastic participation in popular activities among those not possessing the vote, coupled with a political use of the press that grows dramatically in scope over the course of the century. Other sections detail the sustained development of the independence of the electorate and the connection between religious affiliation and partisan identification locally, as well as that between local and national parties.

A collection of reflections on the wisdom and grace that we need to lead healthy, happy lives rooted in the teaching of Jesus Christ. These stories from Father Philip M. Kanfush provide a framework for illustrating life's lessons and the opportunities for spiritual growth that can result from being attentive to the voice of God in the surprisingly ordinary moments of daily life. Beginning with the choices we make each day and progressing through brief essays on "coming home" to the Lord, the power of God's love working in our lives and more, these reflections provide practical wisdom, gleaned from both Scripture and contemporary life, which can be easily applied in our daily lives. Softcover, 262 pages.

Ebenezer Sibly was a quack doctor, plagiarist, and masonic ritualist in late eighteenth-century London; his brother Manoah was a respectable accountant and a pastor who ministered to his congregation without pay for fifty years. The inventor of Dr. Sibly's Reanimating Solar Tincture, which claimed to restore the newly dead to life, Ebenezer himself died before he turned fifty and stayed that way despite being surrounded by bottles of the stuff. Asked to execute his will, which urged the continued manufacture of Solar Tincture, and left legacies for multiple and concurrent wives as well as an illegitimate son whose name the deceased could not recall, Manoah found his brother's record of financial and moral indiscretions so upsetting that he immediately resigned his executorship.

Ebenezer's death brought a premature conclusion to a colorfully chaotic life, lived on the fringes of various interwoven esoteric subcultures. Drawing on such sources as ratebooks and pollbooks, personal letters and published sermons, burial registers and horoscopes, Susan Mitchell Sommers has woven together an engaging microhistory that offers useful revisions to scholarly accounts of Ebenezer and Manoah, while placing the entire Sibly family firmly in the esoteric byways of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Siblys of London provides fascinating insight into the lives of a family who lived just outside our usual historical range of vision.

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. They detail the life and rather sad times of the American university, its relationship to democracy, and the place of the liberal arts within it. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. But they also point toward a renewal of the university by redirecting it toward those things that resist the passions of the moment, or the pull of mere utility. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

Book by Sommers, Susan Mitchell

In The West at War, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together renowned scholars and public policy experts to reflect on perhaps the most pressing problem of our time―the West's increasingly bloody conflict with forces that seek nothing less than its destruction. In eleven provocative chapters, contributors deal with the internal challenges and external conflicts facing Western civilization in the context of the "war on terror." Ranging from the nature of Islam and the West, to ethics and terror, to the western way of warfare, the volume deals thematically with major issues raised by this conflict in a way that no other single-volume does. Contributors bring to bear arguments on the philosophic, political, religious, ethical, and policy dimensions of the war. As the title of the book suggests, this conflict implicates all of Western civilization, demonstrating that this not merely an "American" concern.