A weekly inside look at the unique faces and personalities that make up The College of Wooster community.
Sally Kershner
Features Editor
Could you describe the role you’ll be filling at St. John’s University next semester? What do you hope to learn or accomplish?
St. John’s University in Queens, Ny. has appointed me to be the 2018 Peter P. and Margaret A. D’Angelo Chair in the Humanities. In essence, I have been asked to share my current line of research with the university for one semester. I will teach one course, give two public lectures and offer myself as a resource to the various programs and departments around campus. Ideally, both the course and the public lectures will help me complete a book project that is underway.
Where are you from, and how did it compare to living in a town like Wooster? Has that contrast informed your study of American philosophy?
I was born and raised in Sacramento, Ca. Wooster has been nice. My family and I have found good people, nice things (e.g., Flex Yoga, YMCA Natatorium, Spoon and JAFB) and an excellent place to work. That said, I do miss the cultural and ethnic diversity of California.
What is something you’ve learned from students in your time at Wooster?
I gain perspective from my students at The College of Wooster. It is fascinating to get to know students (and their provincialisms), to see how they think and to see how they grow over four years. Our students come from all over, from Barberton to Vietnam. It broadens me; it helps me see the various ways people experience the world.
What do you think is the place for insurrectionist ethics in Wooster — as an institution, a town and a community?
Whenever you have an oppressed group (that is, a group that faces a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce and mold them, rendering them subordinate to a dominate group and a hegemonic order), insurrectionist ethics, as I conceive it, may offer resources.
In brief, insurrectionist ethics has four basic tenets: 1) A willingness to defy norms and convention when those norms sanction or perpetuate systemic injustice or oppression, 2) A conception of personhood that militates moral action against obvious injustice or brutality, justifying militancy and radical action on the behalf of oppressed peoples, 3) Promotion of social agency via (contingent) representative heuristics, working toward ameliorative changes in institutional and material conditions, 4) Esteem for insurrectionist character traits (e.g., indignation, irreverence or guile).
If you could recommend one or two philosophy classes for a non-major to take at Wooster, what would they be?
One would be Ethics, Justice, and Society, and another would be Ancient [Greek] Philosophy.