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david naugle

Interview: David Naugle on Philosophy

David Naugle, Distinguished University Professor, chair and professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University

As I shared in Interview: David Naugle on Worldview, I’ve engaged in periodic conversation with David Naugle for quite some time to wrestle with “the heart” and the history of worldview. His recent publication Philosophy: A Student’s Guide (Crossway, 2012) caught my attention as a valuable and short introductory resource (128 pages). As with the previous interview, I take full responsibility for the related pictures and links 🙂

Philosophy: A Student’s Guide by David K. Naugle Jr. (Crossway, 2012).

Tom: David, Thank-you for once again sharing your time, gifts, and insights with us! I have really appreciated your earlier contributions regarding Worldview: The History of a Concept (Eerdmans, 2002) and Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Eerdmans, 2008).

Philosophy: A Student’s Guide (Crossway, 2012) came to my attention when a colleague handed me a stack of publications from Crossway’s Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition series. Wow!  Please share with Emerging Scholars the genesis of this series, it’s purpose, and the intended audience of your piece in particular?

David: Tom, my own involvement began when the chief editor of the series, Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition (RCIT), Dr. David Dockery, asked me to write the volume on philosophy. The original and continuing desire was to have a series of books on the major academic disciplines like the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) series (say, Music through the Eyes of Faith) and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) series on the major disciplines. [Read more…] about Interview: David Naugle on Philosophy

Interview: David Naugle on Worldview

David Naugle, Distinguished University Professor, chair and professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University

I’ve engaged in periodic conversation with David Naugle, Distinguished University Professor, chair and professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University, for quite some time. Why? To wrestle with “the heart” and the history of worldview, not only only in an “academic” sense, but also in the life and ministry to which I have been called as a part of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. As you may remember Mike Hickerson interviewed David on Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (William B. Eerdmans, 2008) at the 2010 CCO Jubilee Conference. Before digging into Worldview: The History of a Concept (William B. Eerdmans, 2002) a little more on David . . .

He is married to Deemie Naugle, the Associate provost at Dallas Baptist University and has been for many years; they have one daughter, Courtney who is working in West Dallas at a non-profit organization. He has two earned doctorates, one in theology and the other in philosophy and literature. He has written four books and three screenplays. He attends the Village Church in Dallas.

Alright, now let’s turn to the interview, with me taking fully responsibility for the related pictures and links 🙂 [Read more…] about Interview: David Naugle on Worldview

Academic Conferences for Undergraduates

Academic conferences are a fact of life for graduate students and faculty, but there are plenty of opportunities for undergraduates, too — especially if you’re considering a career in academia. Many conferences feature special rates or events for undergraduates, and there are also conferences intended primarily for undergraduate attendees and presenters. Two such conferences came to my inbox recently.

What other conferences for undergraduates do you recommend? Leave details in the comments or email them to me, and I’ll update this post with additional opportunities.

March 1−2: Spring Paideia and University Honors Annual Conference (Dallas Baptist University)

Philosopher and author David K. Naugle has been organizing this conference for many years, and his program at DBU has a strong reputation for sending students on to graduate studies. (See my 2010 interview with Dr. Naugle for more information.) This year’s speaker is Gideon Strauss, executive director of the Max DePree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary.

For more information, visit Dr. Naugle’s faculty page at DBU.

April 12−13: Joint Undergraduate Philosophy Conference (Calvin College and Grand Valley State University)

Calvin College has hosted an undergraduate philosophy conference since 2010, and this year is co-hosting the conference with Grand Valley State University. The featured speaker is Dr. Gary Gutting of the University of Notre Dame, speaking on the topic “Religion, Atheism and Agnosticism.”

The conference has issued a call for papers from undergraduate philosophy students. The deadline to submit papers is March 3.

Let us know about other undergraduate conferences in the comments or by email. I’ll update this post as receive details.

Interview: David Naugle on Love, Happiness, and Paideia

David Naugle is professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University and the author, most recently, of Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness. I had a chance to meet David at Jubilee 2010 and ask him a few questions about the nature of happiness, his life as a faculty member, and advice for students considering academic vocations. Originally posted on the ESN website.

Mike Hickerson: I don’t want to give too much away from the book, but what would be your capsule definition of happiness?

David Naugle: I think it’s the genuine fulfillment of human nature rooted in a relationship with God, whose mercy and grace demonstrated in the person and work of Jesus Christ enables us to love God and the creation well, in a rightly-ordered manner. That’s the definition in short. It has to do with the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor, rightly-ordered.

MH: This morning, I was thinking about how that would apply with my work with emerging scholars and Christian faculty. Academics often complain about the stress, the low pay and long hours and the high entry requirements of their profession. Yet at the same time, they sacrifice quite a bit of time, energy, and money in order to become an academic. Academic professions are typically ranked near the top as one of the most fulfilling jobs. Maybe this is too big of a question, but what do you see as the state of happiness in the academy, among faculty?

DN: Well I think that is maybe an impossible question to answer, actually. Obviously it would depend on each individual faculty member and where they’re coming from. My guess is that the happiness quotient among university faculty, broadly speaking, is probably roughly about the same as the happiness quotient of American society generally, if we’re thinking in terms of North American society, the U.S. and Canada. I don’t know if there’s anything that’s uniquely happiness-giving to being a university professor.

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives by David Naugle
Reordered Love, Reordered Lives by David Naugle

As a matter of fact, depending on the discipline, there are some cases in which professors would probably be tempted toward cynicism, skepticism, and despair unless there is a foundation of faith underneath all that. It’s pretty easy to get lost in the labyrinth of knowledge and to see no way out. An,d more or less, you pursue your job as anyone would pursue their job, as a source of livelihood, perhaps as a way to make a name for oneself, to scale the career heights in the academy, that kind of thing. Faculty are looking for something that fulfills and brings meaning, but perhaps struggling to find it, just like anybody else would. So I don’t necessarily put faculty members in any kind of particular special happiness category, by any stretch of the imagination.

As far as the profession itself is concerned, I think it’s the best job on the planet. I think that for a number of reasons. [Number] one, especially as a Christian professor, that if you’ve learned through the grace of God to love God and to love your neighbor as you love yourself, and to love all things in creation and culture, in a rightly or re-ordered way, in light of your love for God and love for neighbor, and that’s the framework or context within which you’re pursuing your academic discipline, then that is happiness giving.

Number two, it makes the academic enterprise seem to me profoundly meaningful. There’s a way of contributing to the academy, to the discipline, to the guild of your discipline, in a unique way, from a Christian perspective. And you get to have a ministry, which I think is really what the classroom actually is: a place of ministry in the lives of young, impressionable students. It’s a ministry that has a lasting impact. In that sense, if you put all of that together, I think that’s why it’s the greatest job on the planet. [Read more…] about Interview: David Naugle on Love, Happiness, and Paideia