Table Of ContentGod, Education, and Modern
Metaphysics
The Western tradition has long held the view that while it is possible to
know t hat God exists, it nevertheless remains impossible to know w hat God
is. The ineffability of the monotheistic God extends to each of the Abra-
hamic faiths. In this volume, Tubbs considers Aristotle’s logic of mastery
and questions the assumptions upon which God’s ineffability rests. Part I
explores the tensions between the philosophical definition of the One as
“thought thinking itself” (the Aristotelian concept of noesis noeseos ) and
the educational vocation of the individual as “know thyself” (g nōthi seau-
ton ). Identifying vulnerabilities in the logic of mastery, Tubbs puts forth an
original logic of education, which he calls modern metaphysics, or a logic
of learning and education. P art II explores this new educational logic of the
divine as a “logic of tears,” as a “dreadful religious teacher,” and as a way to
cohere the three Abrahamic faiths in an educational concept of monotheism.
Nigel Tubbs is professor of philosophical and educational thought at the
University of Winchester, UK.
Routledge Research in Religion and Education
Series Editor:
Michael D. Waggoner,
University of Northern Iowa, USA
1 Religion in Education
Innovation in International Research
Edited by Joyce Miller, Kevin O’Grady and Ursula McKenna
2 Civility, Religious Pluralism, and Education
Edited by Vincent F. Biondo III and Andrew Fiala
3 International Perspectives on Education, Religion and Law
Edited by Charles J. Russo
4 Philosophies of Islamic Education
Historical Perspectives and Emerging Discourses
Edited by Nadeem Memon and Mujadad Zaman
5 Comparative Theology in the Millennial Classroom
Hybrid Identities, Negotiated Boundaries
Edited by Mara Brecht and Reid B. Locklin
6 God, Education, and Modern Metaphysics
The Logic of “Know Thyself”
Nigel Tubbs
God, Education, and Modern
Metaphysics
The Logic of “Know Thyself”
Nigel Tubbs
First published 2017
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Nigel Tubbs to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-415-74612-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-79755-7 (ebk)
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Contents
Foreword by Michael D. Waggoner vii
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
1 Introduction 1
PART 1
Know Thyself: Ancient Metaphysics 9
2 Socrates to Augustine 11
3 Aquinas and Maimonides 30
4 Avicenna to Ibn Arabi 45
5 Cusanus to Pascal 61
6 Descartes to Hegel 79
Intermezzo 100
PART 2
Know Thyself: Modern Metaphysics 107
7 The Logic of Tears 109
8 The Dreadful Religious Teacher 133
9 The Educational Concept of Monotheism 157
References 181
Index 189
Foreword
The opening years of the 21st century brought increased attention to reli-
gion as an important dimension of world culture and politics. The dramatic
attacks of September 11, 2001, came as a jolting reminder of the potential
for violent action that can have bases in religious motivations. Over the same
period, we came to see an increase in religious group activity in politics. In
the US we see this as an evolution from the Moral Majority movement led
by televangelist Jerry Falwell that emerged as a force in the late 1970s as
the beginning of the New Religious Right. On further reflection, however,
we can see the involvement of religion extending much further back as a
fundamental part of our social organization rather than a new or emerging
phenomenon. We need only recall the religious wars of early modern Europe
through to the contentious development of US church and state relations as
evidence of the longstanding role religion has played as a source of com-
peting values and beliefs. That said, there has been a significant upturn in
research and scholarship across many disciplines relative to the study of
religion in the last twenty-five years. This is particularly the case in the area
of the interrelationships of education and religion.
While religious education—study t oward formation in a particular faith
tradition—has been with us for millennia, study a bout religion as an aca-
demic subject apart from theology is more recent. Whereas theology depart-
ments proceeded from religious assumptions aiming to promulgate a faith
tradition, the religious studies field emerged as a discipline like history or
sociology that sought to bring a more disinterested social scientific approach
to the study of religion. The origins of this approach date back to the Euro-
pean research centers that influenced US scholars beginning in the 18th cen-
tury. The formalization of this trend, however, is a fairly recent phenomenon
as illustrated by the 1949 formation of Society for the Scientific Study of
Religion with its own scholarly journal and the uptick in creation of reli-
gious studies departments across the US in the wake of the US Supreme
Court decision in 1963 that encouraged teaching a bout religion (rather than
for ) in public education institutions. It was also in 1949 that the American
Academy of Religion was born out of a group of scholars that had since
1909 been meeting under the various names related to biblical study.
viii Foreword
It is out of this relatively recent increase in scholarly attention to the
academic study of religion and education that this book series came to
be. Routledge Publishers have long been an important presence in the
respective fields of religion and of education. It seemed like a natural
step to introduce a book series focused particularly on R esearch in Reli-
gion and Education . My appreciation extends to Max Novick for guiding
this series into being and now to Karen Adler for continuing Routledge’s
oversight.
God, Education, and Modern Metaphysics is the sixth book in this series.
Author Nigel Tubbs aptly situates his offering in the intent of the series not-
ing that “The Journal [R eligion & Education ] and the Series are committed
to exploring things that can happen when religious beliefs and religious
cultures come in contact with educational ideas” (p. xv, in acknowledge-
ments). His innovative contribution to the burgeoning literature of religion
and education here is to argue “that God, seen in the Western tradition as
thought thinking itself ( voησις voησεως, noesis noeseos ) [hereafter NN] is
experienced by the individual as the educational necessity to k now thyself
( yvῶθι σεαυτόν, gnōthi seauton) [hereafter KT]” (p. 1). He posits that the
truth of God in the Western tradition, as reflected in the ancient metaphysics
of Aristotle, is grounded in a logic of mastery. That mastery is vulnerable
to its own difficulties of logic. (After introducing Kierkegaard’s concept of
difficulties, Tubbs substitutes a porias as a less familiar placeholder term to
assist us in detaching preconceptions from the use of difficulties as the argu-
ment moves forward.)
In the vulnerability of mastery to its own difficulties or aporias of logic,
there is a negation and preservation of truth which expresses itself as
a logic of education. In turn, this is a logic of know thyself, and has its
actuality in learning or in culture, including in religion.
Clearly this asks a great deal of education, as much perhaps as was
asked of it as paideia in Ancient Greece or as humanism in the European
Renaissance. It asks education not only to bear the burden of retrieving
God from the logic of mastery, but also to express its learning of God
here as the truth of the retrieval. It asks education to find and then to
speak in its own voice with its own logic and its own truth. We will come
to see that this educational logic is, as Kierkegaard calls it, a new kind
of contradiction. In our study of God and education, within this new
contradiction and its modern metaphysics, we are commended to ask if
God is not in fact to be found in education, and more challenging still,
to ask if God i s education.
(p. 1)
Organized in two parts, the first part traces the ancient metaphysics of
“know thyself.” Part two introduces a modern metaphysics of this idea.
Foreword ix
Professor Tubbs’s work is ground breaking—a unique and provocative
vision. He demands much of the reader, but the work is well rewarded. These
ideas should inspire discussion and debate in classrooms and conference
venues.
Michael D. Waggoner
Professor and Series Editor, R esearch in Religion and Education
Editor, Religion & Education
