Teaching in an Age of Ideology

In this collection of essays celebrating 11 scholar-teachers who opposed today’s dominant educational and political ideologies, and written by their students and followers, Heyking (Univ. of Lethbridge, Canada) and Trepanier (Saginaw Valley State Univ.) have constructed a biographical narrative of ideas that begins largely among secular Jewish philosophers in early-20th-century Europe and ends with conservative political theorists in US universities. From Edmund Husserl and Hannah Arendt in Germany through Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and Harvey Mansfield in the US, the essays examine how and why their mentors shaped ways of thinking that are a form of reflective action that enhances both human freedom and democratic citizenship. Both as teachers and as scholars, they employed ways of doing political philosophy that became models of liberal education itself–models that now occupy proud but beleaguered outposts even within the liberal arts in most colleges and universities. At a time when “theory” in academic life is often a dogmatic barrier to everyday experience, shared meanings, and opening to transcendence, this collection echoes similar responses by Harry Clor in On Moderation: Defending an Ancient Virtue in a Modern World (CH, Jan’09, 46-2925) and David Walsh in After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom (1983). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections.

The largely realized promise of this collection is that the human activity of political-philosophical inquiry is exhibited and helpfully illuminated not merely in what philosophers and scholars write and publish, but in their acts of teaching. These thoughtful reflections on the teaching work of scholars deserve the attention of scholars and students alike.

There may be no formula on how to be an outstanding teacher, but this splendid collection, mostly by younger scholars, provide intimations, insights, and reflections on master teachers they have known. Great teaching always contains an element of resistance -to the lie, to mere opinion, to deceit–and is invariably based on common sense even while it aspires to something more.

Travis D. Smith is associate professor of the Department of Political Science at Concordia University.