CANCELLED "From the Love of Wisdom to the Wisdom of Love: Rethinking Thinking" CANCELLEDFebruary 21, 2011 at 7–9 p.m.

Thomas Kasulis, Professor of Comparative Philosophy/Religion at Ohio State University, to speak at Gustavus on Monday and Tuesday, February 21-22. He's the author of the classic book Zen Person, Zen Action. Most of his research is on comparative ethics, particularly the comparison of Western ethical thinking with Asian (Japanese) approaches to ethics. His recent book, Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference, is a good example of his approach.

Kasulis will give a public talk titled, "From the Love of Wisdom to the Wisdom of Love: Rethinking Thinking." Who better knows clay: a potter or a geologist? Clearly, there are different kinds of knowing, but I will argue that in the past two centuries or so, we have increasingly placed an emphasis on one kind, what we might call the Wissenschaft or "-ology emodel. Originating in the physical sciences, this model is now applied ever more frequently to all our attempts at understanding ourselves and our world. In one sense this is unsurprising: scientific thinking has remade our world; its power to explain and manipulate is undeniable. Yet, perhaps we have also lost something along the way: the idea that knowledge can be something other than a detached observation of external reality, something more than submitting the "data eto predesigned templates of fixed categories. Cannot knowing, as the potter suggests, be a way of engaging reality"fully engaging it with body and spirit as well as mind? Such engaged knowing creates a transformative, interresponsive intimacy between knower and known and becomes the basis of value-laden knowledge and creative responsiveness. If my analysis is right and we do indeed want to recapture something lost, how should we rethink the institutions of our society, especially education?

For information contact: Professor Deane Curtin, Department of Philosophy (curtin@gustavus.edu, x7644)