de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 0:00 This is Episode Two of Ethics and Culture Cast from the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. Welcome to Episode Two of Ethics and Culture Cast from the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. I'm Ken Hallenius, the communications specialist at the Center. In this episode, we sit down with Sean Kelsey, Associate Professor of Philosophy and the chair of the Center's faculty advisory committee to learn a bit about his teaching, the book he's writing on Aristotle's De Anima and how he sees the Center for Ethics and Culture having a positive impact on students and on the Catholic identity of Notre Dame. Let's head into the Maritain Library for this delightful conversation. I'm here with Sean Kelsey an Associate Professor of Philosophy and the chair of the Center for Ethics and Culture's Faculty Advisory Committee. Hi, Sean. Sean Kelsey 1:09 Hi, Ken. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:10 Sean tell us a bit about yourself? What do you teach? Sean Kelsey 1:13 So, I'm in the philosophy department. And so I teach philosophy courses both to undergraduates and to graduate students. And to undergraduates at all level, both introductory courses and more advanced courses for students who are majoring in philosophy. I specialize in ancient Greek philosophy. So in those advanced courses, I'm mostly focused on Plato and on Aristotle. I also teach a survey course of on the history of ancient and medieval philosophy. And I teach quite a bit of intro to students both in small seminars as well as in big lecture courses. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:51 How big is one of your big lecture courses? Sean Kelsey 1:53 It's 200 students. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:54 And are you peripatetic when you do so? Sean Kelsey 1:56 Yes, I can't think very well without moving, particularly walking, de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 2:02 So, sitting here in a chair is really killing you. Sean Kelsey 2:04 It puts me at a disadvantage. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 2:07 This year, however you're on leave, what are you doing this year? Sean Kelsey 2:10 Well, this year I'm on leave, sabbatical leave. And I won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, to write a book on Aristotle's De Anima. The De Anima is about life, about what it is that separates living things from non living things. And Aristotle, in that book is trying to give an account of what life is that would make intelligible, why it is that living things do some of the characteristic things that they do. And in my book, I'm focused in particular, on their cognition, both sensory cognition, perception, imagination, memory, and so on and also, what we might call rational cognition. The kind of understanding they have of why things are the way they are the kind of insight they have. They, we people have into the nature's of things into what those things are, that makes it intelligible to us why, given what they are, they should have the qualities and characteristics that they have. And I'm interested in tracing out how Aristotle thinks that his own account of what life is, helps make our cognitive life intelligible, and in particular, helps make it intelligible how it is that we come to have, both through perception and through reasoning, objective knowledge of the world as it actually is. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 3:44 It's man thinking about himself as a thinking person. Sean Kelsey 3:47 Yeah, in a way it is. You know, as I kind of see the background that Aristotle is responding to, there are ways of explaining You know why things appear to us the way they do, where we appeal to facts about ourselves, our upbringing, our socio economic, political environment, all those kind of contribute to giving us a kind of particular take or slant or perspective on things and things appear to us the way they do, because we're looking at them from a particular perspective. And it's not too hard to see how that idea kind of drawn out can lead to a kind of skepticism or relativism, about the possibility of human beings or other animals for that matter. Seeing the world so to speak, as it is in itself as opposed to through the distorting lens of the particular perspective that they happen to occupy. So one of the things Aristotle wants to do and giving an account of how we attain objective knowledge is to not tumble into that trap. But at the same time he also doesn't want to make it as if we the knowing subjects and the world which we know are so to speak completely other or alien to one another, impervious to not affected by my physiology and my background and culture. Because in that way it's going to start to turn out to seem mysterious that the world should appear to me in any way at all, let alone as it is in itself in its own right. So that's kind of the other situation that Aristotle wants to avoid. He wants to explain why things appear to us as they are without making it like in principle mysterious how and why they should do so. And his basic ideas, I understand it, which is encapsulated in his claim that what life is is the very form of living things their very nature or substance or essence, is to say that life is a kind of normal measure, not just for the living things themselves, in light of which we judge whether they are doing a good bad job, good or bad job at being what they are, but it's also a normal measure for the objects that they deal with, in living their lives, predators and prey, obstacles and paths, offspring and mates. And in the cognitive realm, the perceptible qualities of bodies in the world, and the natures of the things that are. So Aristotle's ideas to kind of see our own nature as a kind of rule or measure of reality. So that for Aristotle, there's a sense in which actually, it's true that man is a measure of all things, not just any man and all his idiosyncratic, de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 7:07 Not really individual man. Sean Kelsey 7:10 Yeah not individuals in all their individuality, but individuals insofar as they come up to and fulfill the mark that's set by their own nature as human beings. And the idea of the book is to kind of--of my book--is to read the De Anima as kind of developing an account of life, which is going to have this result. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 7:34 In your introduction kind of that, which I assume is the thing that you sent to get the grant, right? Sean Kelsey 7:40 Yeah, well, a smaller version in a way. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 7:43 So there you talk about how Aristotle first presents the various answers to these questions of his of his predecessors. Sean Kelsey 7:52 Correct. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 7:52 And those kind of set the stage for him to give his own answers? Sean Kelsey 7:56 Yes, that's right. They kind of set the problems which any satisfactory answer is going to have to steer clear of. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 8:06 Sure. Sean Kelsey 8:06 And those problems are essentially the two that I mentioned. On the one hand, making it turn out that actually we don't have. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 8:14 A kind of skepticism. Sean Kelsey 8:16 That's right. And you know, it's not just human beings, but also animals. And Aristotle just takes it for granted. Animals wouldn't be able to navigate their environments successfully if they couldn't tell offspring from mate, predator from prey, obstacle from path, and so on. Animals clearly do that. How is it that they do that? So we can't give an account of what life is, which has the consequence that actually they don't do that. And the other obstacle is by to avoid making it like in principle mysterious, because the knowing subject is just completely other and alien doesn't interact with is not shaped and formed by the world that it encounters, in perception and in reasoning. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 9:03 These are, of course, philosophical positions that continue to, you know, exist in our day too, right? All the way down through history of philosophy. Sean Kelsey 9:12 Yeah, they are. And that's part of what I think makes the De Anima so interesting. You know, there has been a lot of--many people are interested in the De Anima, in particular, and in Aristotle in general, for what light he might have to shed on current philosophical problems and preoccupations. And in the case of the De Anima in particular, and what it has to say about cognition, perception and reasoning, I would say, I don't know in the last 50 years or so many scholars have been particularly interested in whether or not the De Anima supplies us with the resources to make sense of our cognitive life, the fact that we represent the world as being in certain ways, and also of consciousness. That we're, so to speak, aware of how we represent the world as being without falling into a kind of dualism, which is associated, for example with Plato, or much later with Descartes. And part of the angle that I'm exploring in the in the book is that Aristotle's problem is not really how to explain intentionality and consciousness without falling into dualism, but rather how to explain objectivity, not how we represent the world at all whether correctly or incorrectly, nor How is it that we are aware of how it is that we represent it as being, but rather how on earth is it that we represent it as it is? That we get things right. And so part of the book is to make the case on the basis of the problematic he inherits from his predecessors. That this is the $64,000 question that he's trying to answer. And then the other part of the book is to try to look at how and why it is. He thinks he succeeds in answering that question where his predecessors account have failed, either by collapsing into a kind of relativism, or by making objectivity, in principle and inscrutable mystery. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 11:25 Okay. Well, so let's turn to your work with the Center for Ethics and Culture. And by the way, good luck writing. Sean Kelsey 11:33 Thank you very much. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 11:34 Can't wait to read and begin to grapple with these things. Sean Kelsey 11:38 Yes, that's right. You know, it will prove a very effective remedy for insomnia. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 11:44 For those who don't respond to it. Sean Kelsey 11:47 Yeah, I mean, if I actually could open a parenthesis, I mean, I do think that the problems that I'm dealing with, that I think Aristotle's dealing with, are problems we face today, but because the book is its technical in some ways, you know, it's a, it's a book of Aristotle, Aristotle scholarship addressed to specialists. And a lot of what it is doing is making the case that this is the problematic that Aristotle is dealing with. And this is how Aristotle thinks he can solve it. And so there's lots of detailed textual work and also lots of Aristotelianese. In terms of which I discuss the problems, which I'm finding in Aristotle, I have to set those problems in his own language if we're going to recognize his treating of them. And that's an acquired taste. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 12:39 So, is there a possibility? I mean, you know, Adler did "Aristotle for Everybody." Is there a possibility that down the road, once you get this major work done, that you translate this into English for me? Sean Kelsey 12:51 It's not impossible. I mean, it's something that I do in a way in the classroom, I mean, one of the De Anima Aristotle in general, the De Anima in particular is kind of part of the canon, that an undergraduate philosophy major, or in fact, any undergraduate, get some exposure to. And the great thing about teaching to undergraduates, particularly non majors who are non specialists is that they have the fundamental question, which is why should I care? And that's a question which when you're addressing an audience, a specialist, you don't necessarily need to answer because they already care. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 13:32 They're already in. Sean Kelsey 13:33 Yeah. And so I find the, the stimulus of trying to answer that question, to be a real source of creative scholarship because it forces me to think in terms that my students will understand about, so what questions is this text asking? Why are these questions supposed to be important? What answers is it considering what are those answers seem plausible? What answers is it except What answers is it discarding? And for what reasons? To think about those questions and how to formulate them in terms of that will be intelligible to the non specialist. That's what happens in the in the space of classroom. And it's, for me, exciting and stimulating in the extreme. The bit of writing that now all up, it's different in a live dynamic, where you have a living human being on the other side who asked questions, who you can gauge whether the unjust is quite different than the space you're in when you're addressing yourself to a professional audience and trying to make your points clear and support your points and so on. According to the standards, standards internal to that specialized discipline, that's quite a different space. So it would be the translation work would not be trivial, but it is something that I have an interest in a way. What I'm doing now is translating from the idiom that I tend to use in the classroom into an idiom that has commonalities and overlap with ourselves on technical vocabulary and ways of thinking. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 15:12 Sure. So let's turn to your work with the Center for Ethics and Culture. Sean Kelsey 15:15 Yes. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 15:16 How did you get involved with the Center? Sean Kelsey 15:18 Well, I think I first got to know the Center under the stewardship of the previous director, David Solomon, who was, at the time, my colleague in philosophy, now my colleague, Emeritus, and I also came to know Carter through some mutual friends in the law school. So when Carter took over the directorship of the center, it was very we were out by that time, close friends and with many values, and so on in common and so it was very natural for me to be a kind of supporter and friend of the center and when he asked me first to join the advisory board, and then to be the chair, you know, as very pleased and honored to accept. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 16:06 How does your affiliation with the Center affect your work with students? Sean Kelsey 16:10 It keeps me in the know about the Sorin Fellows program about the annual Fall Conference about the Edith Stein Conference and so on. And occasionally, when I'm teaching students, you know, there are a small handful of students who I get to know a little bit better through office hours or chatting after class and so on, I get to know a little bit about where they're coming from and what they're looking for. And you know, I do meet students who are looking for some kind of supplementary programming, whether because they have rather quite technical major in engineering or in business or, or even because they're looking for something, even if they have a major in the humanities, but oftentimes in majors courses you're working on particular texts and so on. And the kind of contemporary setting and reflecting on big themes that are important to one as a human being, and as a Catholic and as an American, and so on. Those are not necessarily the thematic content of the courses that you're taking. So when I find students who are looking for that something else, I can kind of put them in the way of the Center, "Ah you should know about the Center. You should know about this conference and so on." There are lots of opportunities available for this program but you also get to meet like-minded students and like-minded faculty members and you know, eminent distinguished speakers who come in and so on. So it's in that way, that my affiliation, it's not so much what happens directly in the classroom, but rather, in a kind of more informal, mentoring is too strong a word, but I can kind of match students whose own interests and proclivities would be a good fit with what the Center has to offer, with the Center itself. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 18:05 Helping them find a community too. Sean Kelsey 18:07 Yes, that's correct. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 18:08 From your perspective as the chair of the faculty Advisory Committee, what role do you see the the Center playing on campus? Sean Kelsey 18:16 So I think I see two roles. One is really just continuous with what I just mentioned, which is to offer a forum outside of the classroom, in which students can kind of take a step back and think about big questions, questions, which are maybe here and there approached from within the context of a particular disciplinary perspective, but in a way that's addressed, so to speak to every man to the ordinary person on the street to the person who is going to take up their place, in public life and in business or in law or medicine or in science or whatever it might be. But persons who are standing in the community is such that it's desirable for them--and frankly, it's desirable for the rest of us--that they're not mere technicians. But they kind of have a broader perspective of who they are and where they've been and where they're going. Both in the first person singular and the first person plural. Okay, so one impact on campus and by extension on the broader community de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 19:28 In the wider public sphere. Sean Kelsey 19:29 Is through the Center's impact on students. The other thing I think, is that I think there's a healthy, substantial strain in Catholicism in the United States and frankly in Notre Dame in particular, where Catholics have a kind of inferiority complex about their Catholicism, a kind of craving to be accepted. It's a little old fashioned to say now but like as an American. Or in the university context, as a scholar, as a scientist or as a historian or as a philosopher, and I think this feature of American Catholicism is also a feature of Notre Dame's institutional personality, this kind of almost embarrassment about its Catholicism. And I think that the programming that the Center offers and also its new undertakings in terms of research and so on, is to try to kind of have the impact of kind of clearing the air. That being Catholic, it's not a liability, but it's an asset in intellectual and civic pursuits. And to kind of help boost within the university, a kind of sense of pride and independence and self confidence about who we are and what we do. And in American Catholics in general, kind of, again a sense of pride and self confidence about who we are and what we do and what we have to contribute to a common undertaking, in the service of values, which are held in common by Catholics and non Catholics, by Christians and non Christians alike, but where our Christianity and our Catholicism offers a unique angle and perspective that can enrich and deepen and actually further these kind of fundamental human values. And so I think that the Center's place on campus, and by extension in the public sphere more generally, it has the potential to help overcome and turn what is a source of embarrassment and self loathing into a source of energy and pride not in the sense that we're out to paint everybody in our own image, but in the sense that we are who we are. And we're proud of that. And we think we have something to contribute something to contribute to our brothers and sisters and the human family. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:21 Thank you very much for your time, Sean. Sean Kelsey 22:22 Thank you for having me. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:23 Thank you to Professor Sean Kelsey. You can learn more about the Center for Ethics and Culture by visiting ethicscenter.nd.edu. You can subscribe to Ethics and Culture Cast, which is released every other Thursday during the academic year by visiting ethicscenter.nd.edu/podcast. Our theme music is "I Dunno" by grapes licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. We'll see you next time on Ethics and Culture Cast. Until then, make good decisions.