Steve Naragon

Professor of Philosophy
Dept. of Religion and Philosophy
Manchester University

Phone: 260.982.5041
ssnaragon@manchester.edu

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SCHOOLING

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Ph.D, University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, Indiana) 1987.

Philipps-Universität (Marburg, Germany), 1980-82.

B.A., Manchester College (N. Manchester, Indiana), 1982.

Informal Schooling (books and ideas that caught my attention early on)

Socrates, as presented in Plato’s Apology Socrates, as presented in Plato’s Apology
Gentlemen of the jury, I am grateful and I am your friend, but I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practise philosophy, to exhort you, and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet: Good Sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul? (29d-e)

Aristotle, Metaphysics Aristotle, Metaphysics
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but every one says something true about the nature of things; and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.

Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this way it is easy; but the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it. Perhaps, as difficulties are of two kinds, the cause of the present difficulty is not in the facts but in us. For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all. [Book II (993a30-b11)]

Georg Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind (1807) Georg Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind (1807)
Those who invoke feeling as their internal oracle are finished with anyone who does not agree: they have to own that they have nothing further to say to anyone who does not find and feel the same in his heart — in other words, they trample under foot the roots of humanity. For it is the nature of humanity to struggle for agreement with others, and humanity exists only in the accomplished community of consciousness. The anti-human, the animalic, consists in remaining at the level of feeling and being able to communicate only through feelings. [from the “Preface”]

William Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief” (1877) William Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief” (1877)
If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (1945) Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.  It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them.  To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it. (p. xiv)