The reading method

The reading method is turning out to be really excellent. We are following the readings on aesthetics from the reader edited by David Cooper, and it is quite amazing how questions come alive by reading the primary sources. The students seem to be enthusiastic. Of course, there is much practical work too: going through the many 'picture books' in our reference library, reporting on paintings, sculpture, architecture, listening to and learning to criticise music, poetry, drama, literature... There is the Wodehouse - Shaw - Shakespeare progression learned from Fr Joe Dhyrianathan, there is Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood read by Richard Burton, there are Urdu ghazals and poetry... and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and our chapels and churches...

There used to be a similar method used in Philosophy of God - learned originally from Lisbert D'Souza, who had come from Oxford with a degree on Wittgenstein.

Could we do something of the sort for Philosophy of Knowing? We might not be able to 'teach' Lonergan as we have been doing so far, but... it might just be worth trying to raise the questions by means of readings from the classical sources, East and West.