Publication Type
Transcript
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
9-2015
Abstract
Pfau opens with the point that the concepts in the book aren’t tools to be used. For Pfau, a concept is like a person. You can’t use concepts; you have to engage them. You have to know their histories, the way they passed on their traditions and their stories, because concepts are a remembrance of the past. They also grow—or, as John Henry Newman put it—they develop. You have to let a concept breathe, talk, walk. To use a concept—indeed, to be complicit in the modern academic culture’s practices of applying theories and skimming books—is what (for Pfau) is paralyzing the humanities.
Discipline
Arts and Humanities
Research Areas
Humanities
Publication
Syndicate: A New Forum for Theology
First Page
1
Last Page
2
ISSN
2378-1769
Publisher
Cascade Books
Citation
TSE, Justin Kh, "Symposium introduction: Minding the modern: Human agency, intellectual traditions, and responsible knowledge by Thomas Pfau" (2015). Research Collection School of Social Sciences. Paper 3381.
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3381
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3381
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://syndicate.network/symposia/literature/minding-the-modern/