We'll hear Jaylen's presentation, then we'll do the exam. I'll drop the lower exam score and double the points for the higher (up to 50). Submit your 500 word (optional bonus) imaginary conversation between yourself and characters from all three of our novels by Friday May 1. Also optional and for extra credit: a blog post summarizing your final report presentation.
- Why do people "believe what they have no evidence for"? 276
- What did James mean by calling rationality "a contest between our fears and our hopes"? 294
- Are you impressed by Cass's rendition of the argument from suffering? (309f.)
- What do you think of Cass's remarks about Abraham's willingness to commit filicide, or his argument from Plato [see the Euthyphro dilemma] (317f.), or his repudiation of moral childishness? 323
- What do you think of James's remarks on intoxication? 324
- In view of Lucinda's breakup with Cass (331-2), do you think she was joking about being only for herself?
- What does it mean to "inhabit our contradictions"? 344
Claude’s concluding questions
# Discussion Questions: *36 Arguments* — Chapters 28–36 & Appendix Arguments (Final)
-----
## Chapter 28
1. As the novel moves toward its climax, Cass becomes increasingly aware of the gap between his intellectual mastery of religious arguments and his own felt experience of wonder and meaning. Is that gap a problem to be solved, or a condition to be accepted?
1. Goldstein has been described as more interested in how people treat each other in their communities than in the theological debates that frame the novel. Do you agree? And if so, is that a strength or a limitation of her philosophical vision?
1. What does it mean to live *inside* a religious tradition rather than to analyze it from outside? Can intellectual understanding ever fully substitute for that kind of insider experience — or does it always remain, in some sense, a view from nowhere?
-----
## Chapter 29
1. The debate between Cass and Felix Fidley is the novel’s great set piece of intellectual combat. Does Goldstein suggest that such debates can actually change minds — or are they performances for audiences already committed to their positions?
1. Cass worries that Fidley can use his own Appendix against him. What does it mean when the tools of rational argument become detachable from the person who made them — usable by anyone, for any purpose? Is this a feature or a bug of philosophical reasoning?
1. Is a public debate about God’s existence closer to an intellectual exercise or a religious event? What does the Harvard “Agnostic Chaplaincy” as sponsor suggest about the blurring of those categories?
-----
## Chapter 30
1. Cass is “the atheist with a soul” — someone who understands religious experience from the inside without sharing its metaphysical commitments. Is this a coherent position, or does it ultimately collapse into a form of crypto-belief?
1. William James argued that religious experience, whatever its ultimate cause, is *real in its effects*. Does Goldstein endorse a Jamesian view — that the experiential dimension of religion is valid independently of whether its doctrinal claims are true?
1. Can someone who has never had a genuinely religious experience — a moment of felt transcendence, grace, or awe — fully understand what is at stake in the arguments for God’s existence? Or is intellectual comprehension sufficient?
-----
## Chapter 31
1. Roz represents a kind of aggressive intellectual confidence that Cass lacks. Is her certainty a philosophical virtue or a failure of imagination? Does Goldstein finally take a side between them?
1. The novel repeatedly stages encounters between people who inhabit radically different experiential worlds — the Valdeners, the academics, the secular Jews. Is genuine mutual understanding across those worlds possible — or only a kind of sympathetic translation?
1. We have asked throughout whether “having to deal with the world” threatens or enables a this-worldly spirituality. By Chapter 31, what answer has the novel earned?
-----
## Chapter 32
1. Azarya’s fate is one of the novel’s most emotionally charged questions. Does Goldstein treat his choice — or the choice made for him — as a tragedy, a necessity, or something more ambiguous? What is the philosophical weight of his situation?
1. The Valdener community’s survival depends on its insularity. Is there a meaningful difference between a community that sustains itself through voluntary commitment and one that does so through the suppression of individual flourishing?
1. Azarya is a child who experiences mathematics as something close to religious rapture. Does his experience support the argument from mathematical elegance — or does it illustrate that such experiences can be fully explained without invoking God?
-----
## Chapter 33
1. As Cass approaches the end of his story, does he seem to you like a happy person? Is the examined life — his life — a flourishing one in any recognizable sense?
1. Goldstein is a philosopher who chose fiction as her medium for this material. By Chapter 33, do you feel that the novel has done philosophical work that the Appendix alone could not — or has the fiction finally been subordinated to the argument?
1. Is intellectual honesty — refusing to believe what you cannot justify — itself a kind of spiritual practice? Or does it foreclose the very experiences that give religious life its depth?
-----
## Chapter 34
1. The novel’s satire of academic life has been relentless. But Goldstein is herself an academic. Is she satirizing a world she loves, critiquing a world she has escaped, or something more complicated?
1. We asked earlier whether academic philosophy is a form of secular religion. By Chapter 34, does the novel confirm that suspicion — and if so, what are its sacred texts, its rituals, and its heresies?
1. Can the intellectual life provide what religious life promises — community, meaning, consolation, a sense of participation in something larger than oneself? Or does it always fall short in the experiential dimension?
-----
## Chapter 35
1. Goldstein has said that Cass’s book — and her novel — argue that religion is about much more than metaphysical claims. By Chapter 35, what do you think she believes religion *is* fundamentally about?
1. The number 36 governs the novel’s architecture — 36 arguments, 36 chapters, 36 Lamedvavniks. Does this formal symmetry feel like an intellectual imposition on messy human experience, or does it enact something true about the relationship between form and meaning?
1. We asked at the outset whether the chapter titles and the Appendix arguments enact a deliberate disjunction — a gap between lived religious experience and formal argumentation. By Chapter 35, has that gap been bridged, deepened, or simply accepted?
-----
## Chapter 36
1. The novel ends as it began — with Cass, alone with his thoughts, on the edge of something he cannot quite name. Is this ending a resolution, an irresolution, or a philosophical position in its own right?
1. What, finally, is Goldstein’s answer to the question her title poses? Does she think the arguments matter — or is the title itself ironic, pointing toward everything that argument cannot capture?
1. Cass is at peace, more or less, without God. Is his peace earned — philosophically, experientially, humanly? Would you call it wisdom, or a kind of productive resignation?
1. As the last chapter of our course on philosophy in recent American fiction: what has the novel of ideas — this novel, and the others we’ve read — given us that a philosophy lecture or a logical appendix could not? What is the philosophical work that only fiction can do?
-----
## Appendix Arguments (Final Selection)
1. **Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe (Arg. 28):** Why should the universe be comprehensible to human minds at all? Is this a genuine mystery requiring a theological explanation — or is it, as pragmatists might say, simply what we mean by calling something “the universe”?
1. **Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe (Arg. 28):** Einstein said the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Is that a religious sentiment, a scientific one, or both — and does the distinction matter?
1. **Argument from Beauty (Arg. 29):** The experience of beauty — in art, in mathematics, in persons — has been offered as evidence of a transcendent dimension to reality. Is beauty discovered or created? And does your answer affect the theological inference?
1. **Argument from Beauty (Arg. 29):** Can a committed atheist have an experience of beauty that is structurally indistinguishable from a religious experience? If so, what follows — for the atheist, and for the argument?
1. **Argument from the Perfect Island (Arg. 31):** Anselm’s ontological argument holds that a being than which nothing greater can be conceived must exist. Goldstein’s version updates this classic. Does the very *concept* of perfection point beyond the world — or is perfection itself a human projection?
1. **Argument from Miracles (Arg. 32):** Hume argued that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle. Does the experiential power of miraculous events — the felt sense that something extraordinary has occurred — constitute evidence independent of testimony? Or is Hume’s point precisely that such feelings are unreliable?
1. **Argument from Survival After Death (Arg. 34):** The near-universal human longing for personal survival is sometimes offered as evidence that such survival is real. Is a desire evidence of its own satisfaction? What would James say — and what do *you* say?
1. **Argument from the Consensus of Humanity (Arg. 35):** The near-universal presence of religious belief across human cultures has been offered as evidence for God’s existence. Does the *universality* of an experience validate it — or does universality only establish that the experience is deeply human, which is a different claim entirely?
-----
## Final Synthesis Questions *(for end of course)*
1. Looking back across our entire course — *Playground*, *36 Arguments*, and the other novels we’ve read: is there a philosophical position that emerges from this body of fiction as a whole? Or does good philosophical fiction resist any single conclusion?
1. Goldstein and Powers both use fiction to explore what argument alone cannot reach. What is the relationship, finally, between narrative and reason as paths to understanding? Can they be reconciled — or does each one, at its limit, require a leap that the other cannot make?
1. William James distinguished between the “once-born” — those for whom life feels naturally harmonious — and the “twice-born” — those who have passed through darkness and come out the other side. Which characters in the novels we’ve read this semester are once-born, and which twice-born? Where do you place yourself?
1. We began the course asking what philosophy could do that fiction could not, and vice versa. Having read these novels: has your answer changed?
-----
*“The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.” — Borges*
*“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” — William James*
-----
## Chapter 28
1. As the novel moves toward its climax, Cass becomes increasingly aware of the gap between his intellectual mastery of religious arguments and his own felt experience of wonder and meaning. Is that gap a problem to be solved, or a condition to be accepted?
1. Goldstein has been described as more interested in how people treat each other in their communities than in the theological debates that frame the novel. Do you agree? And if so, is that a strength or a limitation of her philosophical vision?
1. What does it mean to live *inside* a religious tradition rather than to analyze it from outside? Can intellectual understanding ever fully substitute for that kind of insider experience — or does it always remain, in some sense, a view from nowhere?
-----
## Chapter 29
1. The debate between Cass and Felix Fidley is the novel’s great set piece of intellectual combat. Does Goldstein suggest that such debates can actually change minds — or are they performances for audiences already committed to their positions?
1. Cass worries that Fidley can use his own Appendix against him. What does it mean when the tools of rational argument become detachable from the person who made them — usable by anyone, for any purpose? Is this a feature or a bug of philosophical reasoning?
1. Is a public debate about God’s existence closer to an intellectual exercise or a religious event? What does the Harvard “Agnostic Chaplaincy” as sponsor suggest about the blurring of those categories?
-----
## Chapter 30
1. Cass is “the atheist with a soul” — someone who understands religious experience from the inside without sharing its metaphysical commitments. Is this a coherent position, or does it ultimately collapse into a form of crypto-belief?
1. William James argued that religious experience, whatever its ultimate cause, is *real in its effects*. Does Goldstein endorse a Jamesian view — that the experiential dimension of religion is valid independently of whether its doctrinal claims are true?
1. Can someone who has never had a genuinely religious experience — a moment of felt transcendence, grace, or awe — fully understand what is at stake in the arguments for God’s existence? Or is intellectual comprehension sufficient?
-----
## Chapter 31
1. Roz represents a kind of aggressive intellectual confidence that Cass lacks. Is her certainty a philosophical virtue or a failure of imagination? Does Goldstein finally take a side between them?
1. The novel repeatedly stages encounters between people who inhabit radically different experiential worlds — the Valdeners, the academics, the secular Jews. Is genuine mutual understanding across those worlds possible — or only a kind of sympathetic translation?
1. We have asked throughout whether “having to deal with the world” threatens or enables a this-worldly spirituality. By Chapter 31, what answer has the novel earned?
-----
## Chapter 32
1. Azarya’s fate is one of the novel’s most emotionally charged questions. Does Goldstein treat his choice — or the choice made for him — as a tragedy, a necessity, or something more ambiguous? What is the philosophical weight of his situation?
1. The Valdener community’s survival depends on its insularity. Is there a meaningful difference between a community that sustains itself through voluntary commitment and one that does so through the suppression of individual flourishing?
1. Azarya is a child who experiences mathematics as something close to religious rapture. Does his experience support the argument from mathematical elegance — or does it illustrate that such experiences can be fully explained without invoking God?
-----
## Chapter 33
1. As Cass approaches the end of his story, does he seem to you like a happy person? Is the examined life — his life — a flourishing one in any recognizable sense?
1. Goldstein is a philosopher who chose fiction as her medium for this material. By Chapter 33, do you feel that the novel has done philosophical work that the Appendix alone could not — or has the fiction finally been subordinated to the argument?
1. Is intellectual honesty — refusing to believe what you cannot justify — itself a kind of spiritual practice? Or does it foreclose the very experiences that give religious life its depth?
-----
## Chapter 34
1. The novel’s satire of academic life has been relentless. But Goldstein is herself an academic. Is she satirizing a world she loves, critiquing a world she has escaped, or something more complicated?
1. We asked earlier whether academic philosophy is a form of secular religion. By Chapter 34, does the novel confirm that suspicion — and if so, what are its sacred texts, its rituals, and its heresies?
1. Can the intellectual life provide what religious life promises — community, meaning, consolation, a sense of participation in something larger than oneself? Or does it always fall short in the experiential dimension?
-----
## Chapter 35
1. Goldstein has said that Cass’s book — and her novel — argue that religion is about much more than metaphysical claims. By Chapter 35, what do you think she believes religion *is* fundamentally about?
1. The number 36 governs the novel’s architecture — 36 arguments, 36 chapters, 36 Lamedvavniks. Does this formal symmetry feel like an intellectual imposition on messy human experience, or does it enact something true about the relationship between form and meaning?
1. We asked at the outset whether the chapter titles and the Appendix arguments enact a deliberate disjunction — a gap between lived religious experience and formal argumentation. By Chapter 35, has that gap been bridged, deepened, or simply accepted?
-----
## Chapter 36
1. The novel ends as it began — with Cass, alone with his thoughts, on the edge of something he cannot quite name. Is this ending a resolution, an irresolution, or a philosophical position in its own right?
1. What, finally, is Goldstein’s answer to the question her title poses? Does she think the arguments matter — or is the title itself ironic, pointing toward everything that argument cannot capture?
1. Cass is at peace, more or less, without God. Is his peace earned — philosophically, experientially, humanly? Would you call it wisdom, or a kind of productive resignation?
1. As the last chapter of our course on philosophy in recent American fiction: what has the novel of ideas — this novel, and the others we’ve read — given us that a philosophy lecture or a logical appendix could not? What is the philosophical work that only fiction can do?
-----
## Appendix Arguments (Final Selection)
1. **Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe (Arg. 28):** Why should the universe be comprehensible to human minds at all? Is this a genuine mystery requiring a theological explanation — or is it, as pragmatists might say, simply what we mean by calling something “the universe”?
1. **Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe (Arg. 28):** Einstein said the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Is that a religious sentiment, a scientific one, or both — and does the distinction matter?
1. **Argument from Beauty (Arg. 29):** The experience of beauty — in art, in mathematics, in persons — has been offered as evidence of a transcendent dimension to reality. Is beauty discovered or created? And does your answer affect the theological inference?
1. **Argument from Beauty (Arg. 29):** Can a committed atheist have an experience of beauty that is structurally indistinguishable from a religious experience? If so, what follows — for the atheist, and for the argument?
1. **Argument from the Perfect Island (Arg. 31):** Anselm’s ontological argument holds that a being than which nothing greater can be conceived must exist. Goldstein’s version updates this classic. Does the very *concept* of perfection point beyond the world — or is perfection itself a human projection?
1. **Argument from Miracles (Arg. 32):** Hume argued that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle. Does the experiential power of miraculous events — the felt sense that something extraordinary has occurred — constitute evidence independent of testimony? Or is Hume’s point precisely that such feelings are unreliable?
1. **Argument from Survival After Death (Arg. 34):** The near-universal human longing for personal survival is sometimes offered as evidence that such survival is real. Is a desire evidence of its own satisfaction? What would James say — and what do *you* say?
1. **Argument from the Consensus of Humanity (Arg. 35):** The near-universal presence of religious belief across human cultures has been offered as evidence for God’s existence. Does the *universality* of an experience validate it — or does universality only establish that the experience is deeply human, which is a different claim entirely?
-----
## Final Synthesis Questions *(for end of course)*
1. Looking back across our entire course — *Playground*, *36 Arguments*, and the other novels we’ve read: is there a philosophical position that emerges from this body of fiction as a whole? Or does good philosophical fiction resist any single conclusion?
1. Goldstein and Powers both use fiction to explore what argument alone cannot reach. What is the relationship, finally, between narrative and reason as paths to understanding? Can they be reconciled — or does each one, at its limit, require a leap that the other cannot make?
1. William James distinguished between the “once-born” — those for whom life feels naturally harmonious — and the “twice-born” — those who have passed through darkness and come out the other side. Which characters in the novels we’ve read this semester are once-born, and which twice-born? Where do you place yourself?
1. We began the course asking what philosophy could do that fiction could not, and vice versa. Having read these novels: has your answer changed?
-----
*“The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.” — Borges*
*“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” — William James*
1. In my opinion, we as humans are emotional and situational beings. Many are moved by feelings and intuition and do not only rely upon the tangible. Sometimes we get a feeling in our stomach to make a right turn and find out later we avoided a hardship. Likewise, we get a deep feeling that things are bigger and more divine than what we can comprehend. Many accept it and walk by faith and not by sight. Believing is a form of trust, not a position of chosen ignorance.
ReplyDeleteAs James said, we lead with our temperaments and then find reasons to support them. But as Aristotle's rational animals, that should probably embarrass us at least a bit. Getting the reason/intuition balance right is a big challenge, for a reflective but intuitive person. Faith AND sight is better than either alone, surely.
DeleteChapter 36 - Question 3: I would say Cass's peace is earned humanly through his experiences and his realization of his part in failed relationships. I would call it wisdom through experience. Without the breakup and distance from Klapper, he would have never found peace. Instead, he would have continued chasing the next person to idolize and follow.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lesson for us all, in Cass's experience: cultivate mentors but beware gurus. And prima donnas. And lunatics with power/influence
DeleteChapter 34 - Question 1: I think she is giving a glimpse into the side of academia she has encountered, which needs to be addressed. I believe one can love the works and impact but not the politics it is framed within. She shed a great deal of light on academia through favoritism, status, power, self-fulfillment, and fanging. She is making a noticeable statement in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThat's a more sympathetic portrayal of Lucinda than I'm inclined to offer, but it's definitely true that women in academia (as in most professions) have historically had to fight harder for recognition and respect. I do think I have observed a change for the better, in my own time in academia.
DeleteCh. 28 - Q3: What does it mean to live *inside* a religious tradition rather than to analyze it from outside? Can intellectual understanding ever fully substitute for that kind of insider experience — or does it always remain, in some sense, a view from nowhere?
ReplyDeleteTo live inside a religious tradition is to be embedded in it to the point where one’s existence is inextricable from it. A devout Catholic, for example, might have a secular life outside their religious community but still lives “inside” the Catholic tradition if they pray, attend mass, take communion, and/or confess their sins to a priest. In a more extreme case, the Valdeners of New Walden live inside the Hasidic Jewish tradition. They have their own community that’s insulated from mainstream American society, practice rites that are unique to their sect (and that seem strange or backward to outsiders), and generally only interact with people who live in that community. Also, most of them are born and live their entire lives in New Walden without ever leaving. When insider experience is predicated upon belief - whether in a higher power or a certain doctrine - I don’t think intellectual understanding can ever fully substitute for that. An outside analyzer might come to understand why certain rites or beliefs are valuable to people of the tradition. But unless they believe what the insiders believe and feel the same emotions that they feel, they won’t fully grasp it.
And yet, the Waldeners seem to place more emphasis on ritual and daily practice than on belief per se. That's what Gideon appreciates about them. Either or both (practice and belief) can have the effect of unifying a community. The trick is to be unified but not isolated or segregated from the larger society. We all have to live both inside and outside our various traditions, on pain of exclusion or irrelevance.
DeleteCh. 29 - Q1: The debate between Cass and Felix Fidley is the novel’s great set piece of intellectual combat. Does Goldstein suggest that such debates can actually change minds — or are they performances for audiences already committed to their positions?
ReplyDeleteI think Goldstein suggests the latter, that these debates are more performative than persuasive. People who either believe in God or don’t tend to be certain in their beliefs and unwilling to modify them. No matter what argument Cass Seltzer or Felix Fidley comes up with, neither of them would be able to convince an atheist to believe in God or a religious/spiritual person to stop believing in God. The only people who could possibly be swayed to change their minds are agnostics, those who believe “that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena.” So, if someone is undecided whether God exists or not, they could theoretically be persuaded either yea or nay on the matter. It makes perfect sense, then, that the Agnostic Chaplaincy of Harvard would sponsor the debate.
Yes, Agnostic Chaplaincy is an ironic winking moniker. I do think Harvard has, or had, a Humanist Chaplain... which, as a card-carrying humanist myself, doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. But that's because humanists generally believe in believing, but don't specify the content. Agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve. They're totally on the fence. There's something intrinsically amusing about that.
Delete"No matter what argument Cass Seltzer or Felix Fidley comes up with, neither of them would be able to convince an atheist to believe in God or a religious/spiritual person to stop believing in God." Well, conversions in both directions have happened historically. But they're the exception. I can't really see the point of attending a debate unless one is prepared to at least consider the possibility of hearing something persuasive AND contrary to their preconceptions... unless the debaters are exceptionally entertaining "performers" (like the late Hitch).
Hello, below is my Final Report Presentation Summary:
ReplyDeletehttps://mtmailmtsu-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/mtyler_mtsu_edu/IQC3is4dPLW9ToSf1jNu9FKmAZ8QMgIhxXRhY4cqXfLfZPA?e=cAVEDg
Please use this updated link: https://mtmailmtsu-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/mtyler_mtsu_edu/IQC3is4dPLW9ToSf1jNu9FKmAZ8QMgIhxXRhY4cqXfLfZPA?e=S5STdj
ReplyDeleteThanks, Markeem. Good luck to you, as you graduate from the MALA program!
ReplyDeleteBell Hooks has written wisely about love and passion. For instance: “To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.” And: “I am passionate about everything in my life--first and foremost, passionate about ideas. And that's a dangerous person to be in this society, not just because I'm a woman, but because it's such a fundamentally anti-intellectual, anti-critical thinking society."
Delete