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§1. Introduction

Welcome incoming and returning students of 2024 to the University of Chicago Divinity School!  It is a delight for me and all of the faculty to see you here. And it is a special honor for me to speak to you today about the aims of education. I will note thinkers and theories, but I cannot, in fact, fully endorse any one of them. You'll hear later why that is the case. For the moment, keep an open mind and a hearty sense of humor about our age, the academic life, and our experiences, as we probe a weighty topic. 

A personal experience: I remember sitting in similar orientation events when I was entering the PhD program here at the Divinity School. That was, oh my goodness, in the last century--even the previous millennia! Still, I recall the excitement, the nerves, the bewilderment, and--well--the intimidation of entering the program. Truth be told, this place is and was and ought to be intimidating. Why come to where you're saved from questioning your ideas, beliefs, and values? Why come to learn nothing new and different or only think about your own identity?  Please read the Chicago Principles. 

You can take some solace in the face of those nerves and feelings in a great work of cosmology, philosophy, religion, and literature, namely, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. Maybe you know it. The Guide describes in mythic-comic terms the adventures of Arthur Dent as well as Zaphod Beeblebrox, the President of the Galaxy, and many assorted others. They even go to the restaurant at the end of the universe where nightly, due to time loops, patrons can witness the end of the cosmos. Important for us is that on the Guide's cover, written in large friendly letters, is the injunction: DON'T PANIC. Read it. It will help you. 

At many universities the opening days of a term or semester are filled with gatherings and parties. It is a distinctive fact, and some might think an odd one, that the University of Chicago begins the year, across graduate and undergraduate studies, with one of these "Aims of Education" talks, a tradition begun in the College in 1961. Maybe the slogan emblazoned on maroon T-Shirts is true, "The University of Chicago: Where Fun Comes to Die."  I think not; I hope not. But more on that later.

So, we have gathered at the beginning of our collective work to reflect on the aims or purposes of education, with some focus on the Divinity School. Let's travel in the galaxy of the study of religion, a wild ride, to be sure, through clusters of thought in the religions about everything from the origin of things, cosmogony, to their eschatological or apocalyptic ends, and ethics, and sociology of religion, and on and on. Think of this talk as a guide to the aims of education. 

First note that our work, collectively and individually, takes place at a specific time and in a specific place, even as we scholars of religion travel intellectually--and sometimes in person--to other places and we leap the centuries via interpretation and analysis. Yet we cannot completely escape our circumstances with the possibilities and limits they place on us. That fact is one reason, among many, that scholars differ on how to define our age and what that means for their work: postcolonial, postmodern, globalization, the age of AI, the Anthropocene, secularism, post-secularity, technocratic late-capitalism, voices from the margins and the subjugated, and so on. 

I can't enter into the debate about these descriptions of our time, but their sheer number should awaken us to the confusion of the age, and all the more so because religion--however we define it--is deeply involved in each description. Can we see how the world’s religions might be hermeneutical guides for the interpretation of our situation and, more profoundly, the human condition itself? For me, this possibility happened in middle school. Our church put new Bibles in the pews, so I started reading the lessons for the day. One Sunday, I thought, why is this text so interesting, confusing, profound, alien, and the preacher, well, so boring?  It had happened: an ancient text opened new insights into other worlds and our multiple worlds and times. I suspect that you, too, have been grasped by the insight and oddity of religious texts, thinkers, and thoughts. We're all here for a reason.

Mindful of our confusing times, let's now turn to explore the aims of education at this University with that thought about the study of religion held in the back of our minds. I begin with how we might, in fact, escape, at least partially, our time and why we need to do so with the hints of any answer already noted. 

§2. Escaping Our Time

The English poet and artist William Blake insisted on the importance of the imagination and attacked what he called "mind-forg'd manacles." Too often, categories of thought shackle free inquiry and even our deepest aspirations. They trap us in the present moment, the Zeitgeist. After all, European people in 1517 didn't wake up one morning and say, My God, we're living in the Protestant Reformation! The descriptions of our age just noted and past ones, like THE Reformation, can too easily shackle the mind. The manacles are widespread. And, believe me, people love their manacles, their illusions, to tidy up experience.  To escape those shackles is difficult, indeed, welded as they are through custom, desire, concepts and theories, the need to "fit in," and, let's be honest, fear of the unknown. That is the situation in this country, in the academy, and, alas, around the globe!

Honestly, we need accounts of our age and every age, and also theories about how texts and societies and the human psyche work. Surely, and emphatically, that is the case. Accounts of capitalism, colonialism, race, gender, and, sadly, post-truth culture, and white nationalism, as well as theories of meaning, have some role to play in our work. But when any one theory or any one description becomes a mind-forg'd manacle, then the freedom of thought, the zest for inquiry and discovery, and the advance of ideas are stopped in their tracks. They fail as guides to the galaxies we're exploring. Martin E. Marty, longtime member of this faculty, used to say that the University of Chicago is "creatively out of step." So--be out of step; smash the manacles; break the chains and claim the freedom of your imagination and your thought. Don't ride the Zeitgeist in order to make a name by recycling ideas, nor just tread along the path of a professor's thought. 

How, then, does breaking the manacles and being out of step with the whirl of intellectual fads relate to the aims of education? 

§3. On Aims in Study

Max Weber, the German sociologist, historian, and political economist, deeply influenced the modern study of religion. He identified a problem and yet missed the point, in my judgment. Weber distinguished science--Wissenschaft, as the Germans call any discipline of thought--from philosophy and art. Science, he argued, must banish from its work any value orientation, and, further, cannot and must not explore the basic questions of life, intertwined as they are with the values people hold dear. After all, values are what people care about in the orientation of their lives. They are aims and purposes that guide life. The question of value and the meaning of human existence, Weber thought, is the work of art and philosophy, and not Wissenschaft. Because of this division, science, including the scholarly study of religion, is unbound from the question of the truth or falsehood and the human value of its object of study. Beliefs, religious doctrines, metaphysical and epistemological claims, philosophies, and theologies--are smashed in the ongoing free work of inquiry because they don't scientifically matter in any case. This division allows the scholar freedom from the value orientations exploring past societies, other cultures, and religions. 

Let's grant something of Weber's insight: we don't want a scholar's personal values to infect intellectual inquiry, and who, after all, can pass judgment of the truth or falsehood of an entire culture or religion in one swoop? But for Weber, values are utterly subjective or grounded in some believed revelation. He held that values, including, ironically, the value of science itself, are beyond human reach and assessment. The scholar can't answer for what drove her, him, or them to study what is studied without loss of the nature of science. As an aside, it was Nietzsche who first rightly asked, in The Genealogy of Morals, why we value knowledge and truth at all, we scholars in our beehives of knowledge. If science, and certainly the study of religion, is a human activity, a work and profession, then it must be oriented by some end, some good, or several goods that it is meant to attain. An action, including study, that is aimless is not, in fact, an action. We would, Nietzsche said, rather will nothingness than not will at all, and willing is the engine of action. Humans are active, practical beings.

To engage in scholarly inquiry demands clarity about its aims, even when those aims also rein in the scholar's subjective preferences. Scholarly work weds the purpose of inquiry with wonder, even awe, about some subject matter. Here, the motto of this university rings true, at least for me. "Crescat scientia; vita excolatur – Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be [human] life enriched." The aims of education are at least twofold and interrelated: the growth of knowledge inspired by wonder and the enrichment of life, especially human life, making it deeper, freed from false consolations, even more alive. But for knowledge to grow and life to be enriched means that one must have the courage to question and, when needed, to smash mind-forg'd manacles and hammer out new, more complex guides for inquiry always open to reconstruction. Our work is not aimless, even if it is rigorously self-conscious about the place of values in scholarship. And since study takes time--a lot of it--our aims are out of step with a culture of speed and consumption that grasps and wastes the most precious thing we have, and that is our lifetimes.

Notice what the smashing of intellectual shackles means for us. We are not completely trapped in our time or place, no matter the facts of time and place. And so, we are free within the demands of evidence and respect for truth to explore other cultures and their religions; other people and their practices; other theories and ideas. One can and must submit their dear convictions to scrutiny. We do all of this because of the audacious conviction that exploration increases knowledge and somehow enhances life, a conviction that proves itself over time and not in an instant. In fact, we might find that the objects of our study add to, criticize, and reconstruct, our own categories of thought, our own values, theories, and methods. An ancient text or author then becomes our conversation partner under the same demands of criticism and self-reflection as we work, but also as a contributor to living thought and not just a dead object of inquiry. That is especially true, I am insisting, of the religions. 

The institution you are entering is, and should be, consciously and doggedly out of step with intellectual fads and the boxes our society and the academy use to categorize and define people and traditions and institutions and worldviews. This is why, properly understood, the University of Chicago is where fun comes to die. Listen now, and don't panic! 

§4. Where Fun Comes to Die

I've said that the imaginative and rational task of breaking free of mind-forg'd manacles is the task of this university, and so the Divinity School, in order to increase knowledge, enhance life, and free thought for open inquiry. Given that fact, you are about to begin, or to continue, an arduous course of study and writing. Long nights in Regenstein or at your desk pouring over texts that take hours and hours to read and understand; the often tedious work of learning languages; the struggle to grasp a modern social theory or an ancient cosmology or a moral theory; the encounter with the wild diversity of thought and practice in every religion, including, if you have one, your own; the demanding and daunting task of writing papers in which you must formulate your own thesis and own thought and therefore must not, under any circumstance or for any reason, manacle your mind to ChatGPT or Wikipedia; seminars and group sessions where your insight and understanding will be tested by other students and, of course, faculty. And, then, some of you will do it again with PhD examinations and dissertations.

Yet, dear folks, in breaks from this demanding labor you will find yourself at your own restaurant at the end of the universe: a friend's place or at Jimmy's or the University Pub or the Sit Down or Thai 55 or some other eatery, engaged in debate that goes on for hours about what you are reading and writing and so continue your inquiry that expands your mind and your life. Colleagues are being formed; you are becoming a scholar. And, irony of ironies, you will have discovered a new and different and enduring kind of fun. For me, this happened with friends, called "The Brain Trust" by other students. We met at Jimmy's every Friday around the calendar year at 4:00 pm to discuss a chosen article, ranging through topics and thinkers and methods, and only after talking, having some beers. The group lasted for years, in fact decades. It was the joy of living thought. Aristotle and other ancient thinkers held that contemplation was a distinctly human good, and one that ought to be pursued as a basic aim in life. Why? Because the zest and delight of thinking can be enjoyed through time and not limited to a few moments. Test this claim when you gather with friends. Report back to me at the end of the term. 

The fun that dies at this university is trifling amusements fed by commercial interests and cultural fads that have no real staying power to orient thought or life and no purpose other than to enslave your attention. People scroll on their phones, watch Tik-Tok after Tik-Tok, and think it is fun. Ancient thinkers didn't know about dopamine, a hormone and neurotransmitter in the brain that causes feelings of pleasure and satisfaction but can trap us in mindless habits. But classical hedonists, like Epicurus, knew that pleasure is short-lived and needs to be constantly fed. Basic pleasures can be shackles, too. Call them addictions. Better to seek release from suffering and seek peace in a mindful life with others. Thus spake Epicurus. And Kant too held that happiness can't be the purpose of life; that end, aim, is the unity of justice with happiness. 

At this place I hope you discover, as I have during a long career, the zest of discovery and the spirit of inquiry that is not given in an instant, not by scrolling, but found by oneself and with colleagues through sustained work overtime. This is not a pipedream or romantic nonsense. It is why so many of our graduates, so many colleagues from other universities, and so many administrators and commentators recognize the distinctive intellectual atmosphere of Chicago. Despite how deeply despised it is in current culture, you will find here the joy--the fun--of the life of the mind not trapped in an ivory tower or ideological manacles but one that lives and acts with a purpose, with the aims of education.

We have now identified three aims of education: the growth of knowledge; the enhancement of life; and the hard-won joy of free inquiry. But that is not all, especially if we consider the fact that our work is not just a practice, but a distinctive social practice. 

§5. Persuasion not Force

The name for my talk today, and that given in the College and other departments, is taken from Alfred North Whitehead's famous 1912 lecture, The Aims of Education, given in Cambridge, England, at the International Congress of Mathematicians. Whitehead, along with Bertrand Russell, his former student, penned the Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), considered a major contribution to mathematical logic, a topic, a galaxy, clearly beyond my reach! But Whitehead also wrote Process and Reality (1929), which founded the school of thought known as Process Philosophy. He argued that reality is not composed of substances, an idea, variously construed, that had captivated Western thought since ancient times. Reality is a matter of processes and connections, "events" as Whitehead called them, and not isolated entities. He broke the mind-forg'd manacle of thinking about reality in terms of enduring essences and things that escape the ravages of time. 

The Divinity School had thinkers, Charles Hartshorne, Henry Nelson Weiman, and others, who used and adopted Process thought to develop Process Theology and also new takes on religion. In theology, this opened novel paths for thinking about divine reality. It can be seen as part of the so-called Chicago School that challenged traditional doctrines and explored religion within natural and social processes. That orientation of exploring how religion saturates human phenomena remains to this day in the Divinity School.

My concern here is not to explain Process Theology, which, admittedly, would be fun for me, but to pick up another theme. Whitehead also noted in his Adventure of Ideas that "civilization is the triumph of persuasion over force," and in Modes of Thought he wrote, "Civilized beings are those who survey the world with some large generality of understanding." The idea of the centrality of understanding through interpretation and persuasion is key to the development of hermeneutics in the Divinity School, and with it the claim, made by Paul Ricoeur, that religious symbols give rise to thought. The religions are not just dead objects to study, but can open new ways of thinking, actual civilizing forces by providing generalities of thought. That was my experience in a church pew long ago, and also with the Brain Trust here in Chicago.

Of course, Whitehead's idea of "civilization" is suspect in our postcolonial times and the work of persuasion is could be reduced to regimes of power. So, we need our critical chops in order. But as thinkers, if we can give Whitehead some benefit of doubt, we learn that his root concern was peace as a condition for the growth of knowledge, the enhancement of life, and the adventure of ideas. And peace, he thought, was a religious attitude. It was a trust in the efficacy of beauty within the processes of reality. Again, we can and should explore and contest what Whitehead meant by beauty and peace as well as his idea of a religious attitude. We should, again, be mindful of the abuse of persuasion when it devolves into sophistry or verbal bullying, the rhetorical acts that have come to characterize political and social discourse in this country. But such acts should never enter a seminar room. One aim of education is peace, concord, through conversation, debate, and argument by exploring cultural forms that give rise to thought rather than just the ignorant clash of forces. For the thinker, that peace takes the form of understanding through persuasion.  

We experience that intellectual peace in different ways. I recall being locked in my college's library one night while I read and pondered Martin Buber's Ich und Du only to emerged in the morning energized and not weary. Then, on another day, I came out of a class on Greek literature and walked across campus. It seemed, honestly, as if the world glistened with light and life, with wonder and beauty. Buber would call that an I-Thou encounter. The Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, I learned much later, spoke about the "luminosity of Being." A persuasive description. The symbol, religious or literary, gives rise to thought. And I know that these are not just my odd experiences, odd though they were. Many others who enter this school have had their universe of thought and value expanded, exploded, reconstructed by texts, ideas, and practices. They experienced intellectual peace. Maybe you have as well. It is probably why you are here. At least you should be prepared for that possibility this year.

In spite of some theories, we can and must distinguish genuine persuasion from brute force, peace from war, concord from violence, always mindful of our own biases, fears, and blindness. How to do so in our scholarly work? We must conduct the work of scholarship with certain norms intrinsic to inquiry lest our aims be thwarted: respect for others, the clear and honest advancing of arguments, the willingness to consent to the stronger case, to admit when one position clears up problems in another position, even one's own, and to seek resonance with experience. If we conduct our inquiry in that way, then scholarly practice brings peace, not violence, and the advancement of understanding that enhances life. Violate those intellectual norms, and the aims of education are destroyed. Why? Because aims are what we care about, values that orient our conduct, they also serve as grounds for criticism through the norms for our work. This is why we must define and defend the aims of education in a culture driven by force, not persuasion.

Yes, we must break mind-forg'd manacles, yes, we must scrutinize texts and thinkers--present and past--but persuasion and not force must characterize the scholarly life. This is true no matter what program you are entering: AMRS, MA, MDiv, PhD. A preacher ought not brow-beat a congregation in order to indoctrinate them any more than the professor or a student should in a classroom. We are interpreters of the oldest and currently the most populous social and cultural forces on this planet, what we call the religions. Granted, the religions--all religions, if we are honest--have too often resorted to force and indoctrination. That fact has led to the smug denial of their human importance and the abysmal ignorance about them in social life that flattens and cheapens them.  That smugness and denial is not the aim of education with respect to any human phenomenon. In the unlikeliest of places, the religions, we in the Divinity School of this great University seek peace through persuasion, serving to enhance life even as one joins the fun of living, thought to increase knowledge of the universe of human experience.

Freedom of thought, the joy of inquiry, the increase of knowledge, the enhancement of life, and understanding through peaceful persuasion, these are surely aims of education. Please, remember and practice them. You must care for them if they are to orient your scholarly life. But now, if you will humor--or at least endure--me a bit longer, we have to turn to what has been bracketed in order to think about education's aims. What is education itself at this University and this Divinity School? I hope you take my remarks as only that, my remarks, offered as a guide.

§6. To Be Educated

John Dewey, a member of the University faculty many years ago and founder of the Laboratory School, is a crucial figure, along with Maria Montessori in Italy, Paulo Freire from Brazil, in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and others, in shaping contemporary philosophies of education. But education is basic in every society and every religion from time immemorial. Plato's Republic is centrally concerned with the education of the Guardians; Confucius', Kong Qiu's, teachings shaped education in China; Rabbis and Jewish sages formed the study of Torah; in Islam, one has the madrasa; many of the universities in this country, including this University, were established by Christian and other religious communities, and so on and so on. Religions are processes of education.

                  Dewey, to return to his work, notes in his Philosophy of Education, something basic. He wrote,

                                    There are issues in the conduct of human affairs in their production

                                    of good and evil which, at a given time and place, are so central, so

                                    strategic in position, that their urgency deserves, with respect to 

                                    practice, the names ultimate and comprehensive. These issues

                                    demand the most systematic reflective attention that can be given. . 

                                    . . It is of immense human importance that it be given, and that

                                    it be given by the best tested resources that inquiry has at command. 

Folks, please recall that I started this guide to the aims of education with different pictures of our age. How do we respond to them when we see that each of them denotes an urgency about the issues that produce good and evil, oppression and justice, in the conduct of people's lives? Those "issues," and so good and evil for actual people, should be--must be--named comprehensive and ultimate values. No matter what else religions entail--priests, practices, texts, demons, demi-gods and gods, saints, fetishes, angels, liturgies, prayers, and so on--the religions make some ultimate and comprehensive claims for the conduct of life. Remember Whitehead's comment: "Civilized beings are those who survey the world with some large generality of understanding." At their best, religions are civilizing forces, the most widespread and powerful on this planet, that develop large generalities of understanding about the world, the human condition, and conduct of life that produces good and evil.

Now, my most controversial claim: you are being formed, shaped, by yourselves and others, past and present, into those people who can, and I think must, give systematic reflection on the religions in their complexity and how they entail ultimate and comprehensive orientations for people's lives and conduct. The urgency of our time, no matter what you call it, is that the religions are interacting everywhere on the globe for good and for evil. All the religions spread and have spread immeasurable good but also, to be honest, horrific evil. If one thinks that ultimate and comprehensive values are beyond the pale of rational examination and assessment, as Weber and much of our society does, then the study of religion makes little sense, or scholars scramble to place it among the "sciences" by adopting those forms of analysis while bracketing the driving force of religion from reflection and analysis. I am obviously contesting those positions.

But listen: no one discipline of the study of religion--the history of religions, theology, history of Islam or Christianity, ethics, and so on--can by itself comprehend the total scope of the study of any religion. The idea of the individual scholar working away in a study somewhere is only partly true. We are also engaged, and must be engaged, in collaborative work, a joint journey to wild, bewildering, and also inspiring places. For instance, to study the ancient writings of a religion in their time and place is also to understand sources for contemporary conduct, even if that connection, past to present, is left to thinkers in other fields, say, theology or the sociology of religion. To examine the social structures and practices of a living community today, is to grasp how and why their lives are oriented in some way, even if the assessment of that orientation is handed over to the ethicist or philosopher of religion. To examine and critique the woeful treatment of women or the poor in any religion demands that one engage the work of historians, literary critics, anthropologists of religion, and many others. You are learning how to marshal the "best tested resources that inquiry has at command," to cite Dewey again, for the sake of the growth of knowledge and the enhancement of life and all our other aims.

The point I am making is that education, including the education given here in the Divinity School, is the mastery of a discipline and understanding how it can and must interact with other disciplines in order to study the religions in their power and complexity. Whitehead made the point in his Aims of Education talk. "The solution which I am urging," he said, "is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum." This school, with its many Areas and Committees, is, in fact, a guide to the galaxies of the religions oriented by the aims of education, out of step with the fragmentation of too many universities. To be educated, then, is to be shaped--by one's studies, one's colleagues, one's teachers--in order to grapple with the mind-forg'd manacles that fuel the triumph of force over persuasion, that are the enemies of peace, that restrict the freedom and joy of thinking, and that impede knowledge and demean life. One needs to get a text or practice or thinker right in their own terms, but we must also explore and assess how they release ideas and values that shape character, community, and conduct. 

 In a word, you have to read widely, outside of your specialty, and join the multifaceted, interdisciplinary inquiry into the religions that is this Divinity School and thereby overcome "the fatal disconnection of subjects." This kind of inquiry requires the humility and expertise in order to collaborate with scholars in various disciplines. To be educated, in one's own way, is to profess and defend the endangered values that are the aims of education, the values and norms of education. And, folks, endangered they are in our divided and violent times. In this situation, we must profess the aims of education that enrich life in the face of the tyranny of ignorance, injustice, and violence. 

To summarize what I have been saying as succinctly as possible: The threats to truth, peace, and life itself are everywhere. In our intellectually shackled age, we must take as our purpose to increase knowledge of the religions, to foster peace by persuasion wherever possible, do so by means of the joy of inquiry, and for the sake, above all, of enhancing life.

§7. Conclusion

Let me conclude, a blessing for you, I am sure! As the Presidents of this University often say at graduation, welcome to the ancient and honorable company of scholars. Don't just attend this university. Be this university. Explore and contribute to its many events, programs, lectures, workshops, study groups, clubs, departments. Explore the city of Chicago and its many riches. Seek the growth of knowledge, and your life and the lives of others will be enriched.

Once again, welcome to the University of Chicago Divinity School, where fun comes alive! And remember, DON'T PANIC.