Adventures in Philosophy at Notre Dame

Prologue

1 Prologue Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. —T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton Time passes at Notre Dame like everywhere else, despite the aura of eternal presence projected by the Golden Dome. Constructed of iron and steel with a thin overlay of almost pure gold, the Dome is probably the best-known campus landmark in the world. It is held in awe by generations of loyal ND fans, a good number of whom have been my students. I confess I had not heard of the Golden Dome before arriving at ND to begin teaching in the fall of 1958. And once on campus, a week or so must have passed before I even noticed it. I had come from a Protestant background and received degrees from distinctly nonCatholic institutions (Grinnell College, BA; Harvard University, MA, PhD). What is more, these institutions had failed to endow me with the slightest interest in college football. So when I arrived at ND to begin my new job, I had no prior association with its culture for the Golden Dome to symbolize. Prologue 2 The reader might well ask how such an unlikely prospect found his way to the home of the Fighting Irish in the first place. This is a question I used to ask myself. The answer begins with Fr. Henri Dulac, a diocesan priest who taught philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Fr. Dulac had arranged a leave of absence that enabled him to teach a year at ND and then to spend a year at Harvard (1956–57) as a visiting scholar. We often spent time together discussing philosophy. One day he surprised me by asking whether I might consider teaching at ND after completing my PhD. It seemed that ND was looking for a few people to teach contemporary philosophy, and Fr. Dulac thought I was a plausible candidate. Surprised though I was, the prospect of spending a year or so at ND was intriguing, and I decided to pursue the matter further. The next step came when Fr. Herman Reith, then chair of ND’s Philosophy Department, found room in a busy New England tour to interview me in a quiet corner of Harvard’s graduate student lounge. This conversation went well enough for Fr. Reith to arrange a subsequent interview with Fr. Ernan McMullin, another ND philosopher then spending a brief time at nearby Weston Seminary. Although only four years older than I, Fr. McMullin struck me as being very self-assured and worldlywise . This conversation also went reasonably well. Having been vetted by three priests, I eventually received an offer to begin teaching at ND the following fall. I decided to accept, and within a year became the first non-Catholic member of ND’s welcoming and congenial Philosophy Department. I hope the reader does not conclude from these remarks that I lack the proper background to write the account that follows. On the contrary , my initial remove from the ND mystique may well have imparted a kind of neutrality that will make the story I have to tell more compelling. The reader should realize from the outset, at any rate, that what follows is not an “official” account commissioned by the Philosophy Department or some other branch of the university. The account was written entirely on my own initiative, and I alone am responsible for the views its expresses. What follows, at least by intent, is a narrative history of ND’s Philosophy Department as it developed from humble beginnings over sev- Prologue 3 enty years ago into one of the most prominent departments in the country today. The development of any given academic department, of course, depends substantially on the development of the university including it. Accordingly, the account that follows has things to say also about the growth of ND University itself. During the years covered by the story, the university changed dramatically . When I first came, it was a relatively small operation run by a few dedicated and generally quite competent individuals. Administrators usually were drawn from the faculty or the CSC (Congregation of Holy Cross) order, to which they returned when their appointed times were over. Academic focus was on undergraduate teaching, and teachers could still count class preparation as a form of research in their annual reports. There was an actual community...