Thinking about Things and Other Frivolities: A Life

This memoir records the story of the author's personal journey toward a life of university teaching and probes that story in reflective essays on a variety of subjects. One group of essays has to do with the characteristic activities and institutional setting of a professor. Other essays explore ways of experiencing the world as mysterious, beautiful, and tragic. One piece offers a rather somber account of current ways in which the American experiment in democracy is in peril. Scraps of what looks like an intellectual autobiography are scattered over the pages of the narrative, recalling the puzzles that gave rise to a number of writing projects. In a way this is a book of paradoxes and antitheses. Janus-like, it faces toward the past and the future. It offers generalized convictions and specific observations, treats both the ordinary themes of life experience and tangled esoterica, and presents both the experiences of an individual and an analysis of educational institutions. As a whole, the book invites readers to join the author in "thinking about things.""Farley's Thinking About Things and Other Frivolities is a superbly written memoir that is more than reflections on his interesting personal history and the history of his family; it is a window into his mind and soul. . . . Especially impressive to me . . . [is] his analysis of the core problems that have created what he labels a 'plutocracy' of the strong and the privileged that undermines any sense of service to the common good of all citizens."--Joseph C. Hough Jr., President Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary"What does it mean to be a theologian? As this scrupulous memoir reveals, the remarkable Edward Farley brings a rare sensibility to the pursuit of his vocation. He insists on an exacting investigation of the nature of the real world, while refusing to reduce experience to complacent abstractions. All the while he carries a poet's openness and a musician's high spirits to the unyielding mysteries of human transformation, and to the mystery behind the mysteries."--Ray Waddle, Editor of Reflections, Yale Divinity School"Thinking about things with Ed Farley leaves one always wiser and more thoughtful. Written with signature humility and subtle humor, this book is a true 'adventure in the concrete' in which Farley's own life is the warp through which he draws pressing questions about knowledge, religion, education, and democracy. The result is a tapestry of insight and a delightful record of one of the most profound thinkers of our time."--Laurel C. Schneider, Professor of Religious Studies, Vanderbilt UniversityEdward Farley is an emeritus professor of theology in the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University. He holds graduate degrees from Louisville Presbyterian Seminary and Union (NYC) and Columbia University. His general area of teaching and writing is philosophical and constructive theology, with special projects in continental philosophy (phenomenology), practical theology (education), and aesthetics. His books include Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition and Deep Symbols: Their Postmodern Effacement and Reclamation. Read more