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EDMUND F. BYRNE
EDMUND F. BYRNE
REMEMBERING
MY SELF
REMEMBERING MY SELF
Priest, Philosopher,
Human Being
BARCODE
EDMUND F. BYRNE
REMEMBERING MY SELF
There are now 41,500 Catholic priests in the US. Some 25,000
have left in the past 60 years, while over 120,000 have left world-
wide. is book is a personal account by one man who left the
priesthood and transitioned into a successful career as an academic.
It is no fairy tale, however, as it details the problems he encountered
rst in the religious and then in the secular world as he grew to
become a lover and a parent. Enhancing the story are a collection of
poems by the author and other writings by him or about his work.
EDMUND F. BYRNE
REMEMBERING
MY SELF
Priest, Philosopher,
Human Being
www.mascotbooks.com
Remembering My Self
©2017 Edmund F. Byrne. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any
means electronic, mechanical, or photocopying, recording or otherwise without
the permission of the author.
For more information, please contact:
Mascot Books
560 Herndon Parkway #120
Herndon, VA 20170
info@mascotbooks.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016917107
CPSIA Code: PBANG0117A
ISBN-13: 978-1-68401-036-3
Printed in the United States
Contents
Part One: Living and Leaving a Religious Role 5
Part Two: Learning to Perform in a Secular Role 43
Part Three: Other Aspects of My Life 89
Part Four: What It’s All About, I ink 113
Appendix I. Poetic Commentary on Lived Experiences 117
Appendix II. Author’s Other Publications 149
Appendix III. Excerpts from Applications, Letters, and Reports 163
Appendix IV. Reviews of Author’s Other Books 168
1
Preface
H
ave I been living my own life? Or have I, like
Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilich, been just a functionary? is
is a serious question, for over the years I have been
involved with diverse communities, each of which has oered
me status if I played by its rules. Raised in a Catholic milieu, I
internalized the beliefs and mores of the Church, and its special
message to me to become a priest. A high performer in school,
I was labeled early on as a potential scholar, which I eventually
took to mean being a philosopher in academe. In this and other
milieus in which I participated, I was encouraged to write; but
I often ran into intra- and extra-societal assumptions regarding
what one should think and write about. ese assumptions dif-
fered from one community to another and sometimes within
one and the same community. As I struggled to accommodate
incompatible world views, I gradually found myself critically
assessing social expectations. As a result, whatever autonomy I
have achieved has arisen in reaction, if not resistance, to pow-
er relations in one or another community.
I say this in full awareness that scholars disagree about
the importance of community participation. Some extol tra-
ditional communities, especially those based on religious be-
liefs, as reliable bases for personal fulllment. But others warn
that a “constitutive” community unduly suppresses individu-
ality and autonomy; so they recommend participating only in
groups one freely chooses and can readily leave if found unsat-
isfactory (so-called collaborative communities or communities
32
University in Indianapolis, and briey at a SUNY college. I
also earned a law degree in Indiana, practiced for a while, and
taught labor studies and philanthropic studies courses.
Over these years I wrote many articles, contributions to
books, book reviews, and even some books of my own. Most
of these writings address a group-proposed theme, fall under
(applied) social or political philosophy, and address an eth-
ics-oriented issue regarding technology, work, business, or
war-related violence. A few of my earliest writings were hy-
per-Catholic; but I soon began to view religion more critical-
ly, both in practice and in my thinking. e former because
of life conicts; the latter because I studied biblical criticism
and Church history, taught philosophy of religion, and wrote
a thesis and a dissertation each of which indirectly undercuts
doctrinaire Catholicism.
is transformation was dialectically inevitable—not
because religion and reason are polar opposites, but because
of discrepancies between lifeworld challenges and others’ ex-
pectations on behalf of reason or religion. ese discrepan-
cies might tempt one to avoid having any strongly held con-
victions. I will address this issue directly near the end of this
book, but for now I merely acknowledge the sociological nd-
ing that rmly held convictions help satisfy the human need
for meaningful interaction and collaboration. Put succinctly,
for the individual a key function of religion, if not of other
groups as well, is social bonding.
Bonding is a mixed blessing; for its embrace, though
comforting, does circumscribe the choices one can make and
the goals one can pursue. By contrast, the process of “parting
company” engenders a social anonymity even as it facilitates
of choice). Others make an exception for families. Implicit in
this debate, then, is a presumed dichotomy that divides the
non-voluntary from the voluntary (say liberals) or the altru-
istic from the selsh (say communitarians).
I’ve experienced each type of community, but never in
the pure form called for by these analyses. Rather, each com-
munity to which I have belonged was a mixture of sustenance
and subordination, i.e., a corroboration of Michel Foucault’s
nding that power relations entail both determinism and vol-
untarism—what one commentator calls a paradox of agency.
How much autonomy one can muster in any particular com-
munity depends on complex and often subtle understandings
and interactions among its members—what some scholars
call relational autonomy. To concretize these generalizations,
I will tell about my professional religious activity, my intellec
-
tual pursuits, and various other aspects of my search for em-
bodied fulllment. But rst I will ground these in a skeletal
autobiography.
My religious roots are Roman Catholic, mostly those of
the US heartland. Born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1933, I
was educated in Catholic schools in Peoria, Illinois; majored
in philosophy at a Catholic college for men in Indiana, and
at a Catholic university in Chicago. I attended seminaries in
Missouri and in Washington, DC, and for a time was a par-
ish priest and part-time teacher in a Missouri Catholic high
school. I earned a doctorate in philosophy at a Catholic uni-
versity in Belgium and worked briey at the University of
Missouri Newman Center. en I left the priesthood and
the Catholic Church, taught philosophy for three years at
Michigan State University, for twenty-nine years at Indiana
54
Part One:
Living and Leaving a Religious Role
R
oman Catholicism has a Pope, and under him, bishops
who govern the Church. is hierarchy aside, how-
ever, the Church is viewed as a community consisting
of those who follow teachings attributed to Jesus; and each in-
dividual believer is encouraged to be both member and agent
of that community. is includes the laity, more so today than
in the past. But in my youth the hierarchically endorsed status
of the priest was a key component of the community that rst
gave me meaning and promised fulllment. In time, I came
to think otherwise; and what I did about it constitutes a case
study of the benets and costs of exercising personal autono-
my in and beyond a community. A knowledgeable historian,
however, would note that I might have prepared for making
life choices during a more auspicious time.
On March 4, 1933, FDR became US president. On
January 30 of the same year, Adolph Hitler had been named
Chancellor of a coalition government in Germany; and on
March 24, an Enabling Act gave him temporary plenary
powers that lasted four years. I was born on May 30, 1933.
Hindenburg died in August 1934 and Hitler became a dic-
tator. On November 24, 1934, my sister was born. To put it
mildly, we were born in interesting times, both abroad and at
home. In our own country, there was a depression going on,
and it was applicable to Catholics.
At birth I was a non-believer, but I quickly became a
making life decisions that are not based on disavowed collec-
tive inuences. In my case at least, having become rst a be-
lieving intellectual, then a questioning believer, I ceased be-
ing a dutiful subject to become successively a loyal reformist,
a disenchanted idealist, and nally a contentedly fallen-away
Catholic with no burning desire for alternative ecclesiastical
shelter. Complexity is added to this personal hegira by the fact
that my religious involvement included priestly ordination and
pastoral ministry, which, partly because linked with celibacy,
became incompatible with the multi-dimensional human be-
ing that I eventually needed to become.
76
by attending church every day. Unquestionably, he embodied
many subtle aspects of the Germanic culture he had brought
with him from the Volga region of Russia. In particular, he
and his wife spoke German uently. ey had done so open-
ly before WWI, but due to wartime pressures they now spoke
it only privately to one another.
My grandfather, without openly pressuring me, did hope
I would become a priest; and other community experts as-
sured me that I should. Parish priest-spotters assigned me a
vocation on the basis of my years of service as a dutiful aco-
lyte, and their assessment was bolstered by my many contacts
with ecclesiastical professionals. Two of my maternal great
aunts were members of the Order of Saint Francis, which
ran a number of hospitals east of the Mississippi. One lived
her vocation in a hospital laundry, and, in our pre-school
days, would give my sister and me rides in a laundry cart.
Another of Grandma’s sisters was managing director of var-
ious Franciscan hospitals. And in our extended family there
were other women who belonged to the same religious com-
munity, one of whom became Mother General of the Order.
Another relative managed a farm that produced everything
from pork to potatoes for a hospital kitchen. ese women
showed my sister and me dierent ways in which a Catholic
might live a life of spiritual maternity. More inuential on my
choice of a career, though, were the professional religious men
in my early life. ese included a related monastic brother,
who lived in Kansas, and many educator priests.
Except by virtue of my acolyte services, the parish priests
had little to do with my everyday life as I was growing up. A
virtue monger might have wished they had, for I sometimes
believer thanks to infant baptism, which Roman Catholics
practice without regard to developmental psychology. Had
my father survived, I would have grown up an Irish-American
Catholic among his Kansas City kin. But he died of pneumo-
nia in 1936 (penicillin had already been invented but it was
only made plentiful during WWII). My German-American
Catholic mother had grown up in central Kansas, where she
acquired gracious wifely skills via a music major at a Catholic
women’s college. Upon my father’s death she sought a teach-
ing position in the Kansas City area but was openly opposed
by the KKK. Her two sisters-in-law were single and without
resources. Her two brothers-in-law were sympathetic to her
needs, but each was strapped with a large family, so could
not realistically take us in. Reluctantly, therefore, she moved
with her two children to her German-American parents’
house in Peoria, Illinois.
ey had chosen Peoria because two of my grandmother’s
siblings and other relatives were working there as nuns in a
Catholic hospital. And their son and his family had also moved
to Peoria. ey would not have moved, though, had it not
been for the Depression.
ey had been successfully running a small general store
in Ellis, Kansas. en the Depression hit, and the local farm-
ers insisted on buying them out. ey thereupon thought of
themselves as retired, but when their daughter rejoined them
with two ospring to feed, Grandpa went to work for a local
Sears store, where for twenty years he prided himself on be-
ing the outstanding salesman of men’s clothing, because (he
said) he knew how to talk to farmers. He took good care of
his house and, in his role as substitute father, set an example
98
trucks had parked, he looked down to scrutinize his baseball
mitt ever so carefully. is ruse only aroused suspicion, and
when questioned, he ratted.
Still hiding back in the barn, I was soon confronted
by a great hulk of a man hovering over me, and trembled
to hear my future described as a dark, dank cell. But lucki-
ly I was given my freedom when a man also boarding at the
house assured law enforcement that such thoughtless crimi-
nality would not recur. He was only partly correct. For sev-
eral days I rethought my M.O., realized that indierence to
re trucks half a block away was the fatal aw, and with this
in mind I set o the alarm a second time. I then fetched my
mother from the boarding house and we stood hand in hand
in the small crowd that had gathered at the corner to stare at
the re trucks. I was the target of suspicious glances, but the
implausibility of my being a recidivist won the day. My sta-
tus among my hesitant hosts rose discernibly, as perhaps did
that of every Catholic Yankee who might since have visited
that bastion of Southern Protestants.
As I advanced in wisdom and age over my grade school
years, I manifested no obvious signs of having priestly traits—
especially when our elementary education was coming to an
end. With only weeks to go until graduation, at recess one day
I joined my classmates in sitting some slow-moving seventh
graders (boys only, be assured) in post-rain puddles on the
playground. As possible grounds for exoneration, this we did
in fulllment of the traditional pond-dunking ritual which we
had been prevented from carrying out at the park because the
school picnic had been cancelled due to rain. Not impressed
with our rationale, the pastor of the parish and headmaster of
set a bad example in the neighborhood; for example, when
I turned abandoned Christmas trees into a backyard fort, or
used the empty over-garage attic of a solitary spinster as a hide-
out. As such endeavors illustrate, I certainly could be morally
problematic at times. is was already apparent, in fact, when
as a six-year-old I showed some Protestant Southern boys that
Catholic Yankees are not to be tried with. I was in Rock Hill,
South Carolina for the summer while my mother took courses
toward her teaching certication. I managed to take it in stride
when I saw two black men (criminals, I was told) being dragged
in chains into the local hospital. But a group of boys who lived
in the neighborhood where we were staying was something else.
ey did truly fearless deeds, such as exploding blast-
ing caps by hurling them to the pavement, and goaded me
to surpass their heroics if I could. One day they dared me
to jump into a pond on the nearby Winthrop College cam-
pus, and I did; but the pond was deeper than it looked, and
I would have drowned had not a giant student come over to
pull me out. I hid my wet clothes from my mother and be-
gan seeking some way to revamp my water-soaked image. e
answer came to me as we were sitting on the steps of the local
Catholic church, where my Protestant foes had just peeked
through the front door in response to my challenge. Right
there on the corner stood a re alarm. I announced that I
would set it o, then squelched their disbelief by doing just
that. We ran to the middle of the block where my mother and
I were staying and hid in a barn behind the house. Too cu-
rious for our own good, we soon sent one of the boys to the
front of the house to “see what’s going on.” Seeing a police-
man coming in his direction from the corner where the re
1110
near church as I did, I also substituted for anyone scheduled
to serve who couldn’t come.
In other respects I was not aware of being in any way
special to priests I knew in grade school, even though they
checked our progress in catechism once a week and coached
our football and basketball teams. By contrast, one nun who
taught me in grade school advised me to become a mathema-
tician when I grew up, and another told me I was meant to
be an historian. is advice faded into obscurity when I was
in high school because there I began to be noticed rst by the
Benedictines who were in charge, then more so in my junior
and senior years by Viatorian priests who took their place.
As a high school freshman I wrote an essay on conser-
vation (about which I knew next to nothing) for which I was
named Conservation King of the Year and awarded a two-week
stay in a cabin up in Minnesota. Other arrangements (see be-
low) got in the way, but I expanded my range of experience
anyway. Following unwavering priestly advice, I completed
four years of Latin, which better prepared me for a 1950s-style
seminary curriculum. Also while in high school, I learned
and earned by being a movie theater usher (my rst job), a
gas pumper (before self-service), a hybrid seed corn detassler,
and, following graduation, a brewery employee (see below).
Far more important academically: I spent two summers
(pre-sophomore and pre-junior years) learning to be a farmer
under the auspices of Monsignor Wolf, a priest my mother knew
from her college days in Kansas. e rst summer was spent
with the Robbins family working their small farm: my main task
was to work for room and board shepherding and slaughtering
sheep, and milking cows manually. In my spare time, though, I
the school, Monsignor Sammon, expelled the few of us who
confessed our complicity; but he required us to come to school
anyway and sit in the hallway while our silent co-conspira-
tors continued to benet from their lessons. We were allowed
to graduate, luckily, and four years later this same monsignor
would award me a scholarship to help me with my pre-semi-
nary studies in a Catholic college one state away.
In support of Monsignor Sammon’s eventual support,
one might cite my manifest dislike for violence. For exam-
ple, not long after my Southern exposure, one of my mother’s
several unsuccessful suitors put boxing gloves on my hands,
then proceeded to bloody my nose. I never saw him again. A
few years later, I cried throughout a parish-sponsored boxing
match in which I overwhelmed a classmate of mine who sim-
ply disliked the whole process even more than I. I also cried
through several ad hoc st ghts I had to engage in, one ver-
sus an older boy who wouldn’t let me take my basketball and
go home. My lack of fervor for football (discussed further on)
may stem from the same inappropriate genetics. Less indic-
ative of my clerical suitability, I should acknowledge, is the
fact that around others my age, I often felt inferior and apol-
ogetic, because I had no father I could bring them home to
meet. I vaguely remember having played Uncle Sam in some
grammar school production (and I also had a lead role lat-
er in a seminary production). But I rst achieved a degree of
importance to someone other than a teacher, I think, when
while I was lighting altar candles, the burning wick fell o
and ignited my surplice. Acting no doubt as instructed, I
rolled down the altar steps, putting out the re; and from
then on I was known as the fast-thinking altar boy. Living
1312
I criticized the Nobel Committee for giving an award to an
atheist (Bertrand Russell); then in college I wrote a piece de-
fending the Church’s moral assessment of movies via its Legion
of Decency. As a collegian, however, I also wrote some com-
mendable (and prize-winning) ction; for example a piece
about teenage troubles and another that told what really hap-
pened to the Owl and the Pussy Cat in their pea-green boat.
en while studying for a Master’s degree, I addressed academ-
ic topics meaningfully in courses I took and in my thesis. But
when I was in the seminary I wrote lengthy “biographies” of
Edmund of Canterbury—the source of my rst name—and
Francis Xavier who, I decided, was the honoree of my middle
name. Enough, though, about things written. Back to what
became of the writer.
Once recognized as being a talented writer, I was excused
from attending any more English classes. Such favoritism, of
course, won me no friends among my less literate classmates,
especially a group of toughs who lived in the poorer neighbor-
hoods along the Illinois River (whereas I dwelled more nobly
on the East Blu). Included among their numbers were some
key football team players who often taunted me even to the
point of picking locker room ghts. Truth be told, so did the
coach, not physically but by benching me halfway through my
nal football season so younger players could be prepared for
future seasons. I took being benched as ample reason to con-
centrate on my editing responsibilities; so I quit the team even
though the coach said I should be a role model for the young-
er players. He did award me an athletic letter, but he gave it to
me privately rather than at the public ceremony.
As it turned out, receiving a letter, however important
learned about barn dances, diving from a rope, and circumvent-
ing the Kansas liquor ban via trips to Colorado for supplies.
1
e
second summer was spent with the Juenemann family working
a much larger farm, here earning room and board in exchange
for tending to every phase of raising alfalfa. is meant driv-
ing a tractor to one-way ground, to plant seed, and to mow the
crop, then working on the baling machine, as well as shoveling
milo at a storage silo (all while advised and at times assisted by
a neighbor). e broad scope of my responsibilities that sum-
mer was due largely to the fact that Mr. Juenemann had to take
his wife to Mayo Clinic for medical tests, leaving their children
with friends. At the same time I added three impressive inches
to my height, which improved my status among peers. My pièce
de résistance, though, was the true stories in my account obedi-
ently entitled “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” Submitted
to my junior-year English teacher, she deemed it very good writ-
ing and arranged for me to have my own column in the student
newspaper (written on behalf of a corner mailbox about people
waiting for a bus). en, in my senior year, I became newspa-
per editor and co-editor of the yearbook.
Before continuing about my writing, I should acknowl-
edge for the record that much of what I wrote during those
early years shows I lacked the experience needed to select
meaningful topics to write about. Sometimes the words I
put together showed the influence of 1950s and 1960s
Catholicism. For example, in a letter to the local newspaper
1 e process of buying liquor out-of-state was comparatively easy where I
was, in omas County, which is just one county removed from the Colorado
border. e driver returning with supplies, I was told, would routinely put them
where others stored a spare tire; but apparently few buyers were ever stopped for
having contraband.
1514
to visit her at her home. I did, and there she seriously dam-
aged my ego on the family tennis court, largely, I think, be-
cause I was focused not on the ball but on how much God dis-
approved of my being there. I would see her again when our
respective unisex colleges had mixers. But as our high school
days were ending, I decided with regret that, unlike my nor-
mal classmates, I, the 1951 senior class valedictorian, was bur-
dened with a vocation to the priesthood.
Attenuating this vocation idea, I thought maybe I should
rst help stem the tide of Communism in Korea; but my priest
teachers and counselors persuaded me that going on to col-
lege as a pre-seminary student would be more pleasing to God.
en, as if to turn direction into destiny, the academic dean
of Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, came to tell
our graduating class about his institution’s scholarship com-
petition. No one advised me to consider such possible alterna-
tives as Notre Dame University (much less a secular institution
such as Harvard or even the University of Illinois), so I took
their test and was awarded a tuition-covering scholarship that
was supplemented by a grant from the pastor of our parish.
At Saint Joseph’s College, as noted, I published essays
and stories in the student magazine and won several writing
awards. My career line, however, was elsewhere. On registra-
tion day I met Reverend Edward Maziarz (1915–1997) a sin-
ewy square-jawed man with an engaging manner and a spe-
cialization in philosophy of mathematics. I signed up for his
Introduction to Philosophy course, and he became not only
my mentor but my friend and counselor. He countered what
he deemed my sub-masculine softness by introducing me to
wrestling and running, and he showed by his stoic lifestyle
to me at the time, was far less exciting than my rst drive to
Chicago. With my mother’s permission, I chaueured sever-
al of my friends from Peoria to Comiskey Park. ere I tore
the seat of my pants climbing over a barbed-wire fence. But
once seated in the bleachers I had a clear view of Yankee Joe
DiMaggio homering against the home team White Sox. No
other sports moment, live or televised, would ever be more
dramatic.
at said, my real growth experiences, like those sum-
mers on the farm, came to me in ways other than sports. In
particular, during the summers before and after my senior year
in high school, I worked for the Peoria area’s Pabst Brewery as
an outside warehouseman. is involved, among other tasks,
re-casing empty bottles piled up during the war, unloading
newly introduced cans from railroad cars, and lunching at a
nearby abattoir while watching the slaughtering process. In
addition, as I listened to regular employees drinking free beer
from breakfast on and discussing their sexual adventures, I
naively concluded that unlike them, I would not give in to
such temptations.
2
Erroneous, yes, but only in the long term.
As co-editor of the yearbook I, of course, came into con-
tact with my co-editor: a high-class young woman studying at
the all-girls academy, a high school across the street from ours.
By then I had become enamored of several girls one after the
other, but none of them had the status of Delores Pster. Her
father Lester invented a variety of hybrid seed corn (which I
had learned to detassle), and this success enabled his family to
live well on their country estate. As the yearbook progressed
so did my attraction to Delores, and eventually she invited me
2 See poem “Postwar Progress,“ Appendix I-A.
1716
insisted that anything less than unqualied assent would be
a derogation of his rightful authority. I replied that my posi-
tion was derived from omas Aquinas’s Summa eologica,
which I had been reading in Latin.
He thereupon reported my stance to the Society’s
Provincial, and the Provincial told him to give me all the time I
needed to develop my qualied obedience thesis. So while oth-
ers went o to chores, I stayed at my desk and wrote about free-
dom of conscience, borrowing liberally from Aquinas and some
Fathers of the Church. In a week or so, I brought my brief to
the Novice Master and invited him to read it. Declining my
oer, he sealed it in an envelope and sent it to the Provincial.
Soon after, I was called away from a Halloween apple-bobbing
competition to another room. ere the Provincial thanked
me for making his decision so easy, told me I had no voca-
tion, and gave me twenty-four hours to get out and go home.
I declined his invitation to kiss his ring.
Maziarz, without hesitation or second thoughts, drove
over from Rensselaer the following day, which happened to be
All Saints Day, to retrieve me. en he arranged for me to reg-
ister late for classes at the college’s new extension in a building
donated by an oil company in Whiting, Indiana. I spent my
rst night in Whiting in the home of the Lazur family, whose
son had left the novitiate by choice a few weeks earlier. e
next morning, I walked out into the street where sunlight was
being almost mystically diused by leaves vigorously blowing
about. I was free at last, I thought to myself (before MLK!).
God was cancelling my vocation. But nothing at all like free-
dom would reach my in-basket anytime soon. What did were
some more college credits earned as I did the semester there. I
that celibacy is not only possible but preferable for an aca
-
demic. After my freshman year, I worked for him in his new
role as Dean of Summer Session. As a sophomore, I attended
classes with students planning to become priests in the soci-
ety that ran the college; and then I decided to join them at the
Society’s novitiate near Burkettsville, Ohio. And to prove my
commitment to the cloth, I donated my stamp collection to a
priest teacher at St. Joseph’s who I knew had one of his own.
We novices arrived early in the summer and instantly
became farm hands: stacking hay, digging up potatoes, and
tending to various animals. It was a birthing cow, in fact, that
occasioned the rst crisis in my sacerdotal quest. I watched
her deliver a calf with the help of humans who brought block
and tackle to the project; and my next letter home vividly
described what I had seen. e Novice Master, who perused
our mail for signs of spiritual aws, told me to exercise more
prudence in my letters. I said I would, not wanting to make
waves. I also gained spiritual points (or so at least I thought)
by regularly being the rst to leave the breakfast table, where
all sat in holy silence. But then in the fall, at a lecture by
a theologian sent from the Society’s major seminary near-
by, I raised my hand and questioned his assertion that only
Catholics could be saved. From then on, the Novice Master
watched me even more carefully, at least when not busy get-
ting his oce re-carpeted. And before long he noticed that I
was entering and leaving the chapel with hands at my sides
and not folded as proper spirituality dictated. He ordered
me to fold my hands while going to or from the chapel; and
I told him I would obey externally, but because I considered
my custom preferable, could not give internal consent. He
1918
decided to continue my philosophical studies. Declining a two-
year fellowship oered to me by St. Louis University, I under-
took a one-year assistantship at Loyola University of Chicago
to study for a Master’s Degree. With few, if any, social distrac-
tions I did doctoral research for a faculty member and for my-
self produced a robust Master’s thesis about omas Aquinas’s
theory of distinction. At year’s end I orally defended my mini-
tome before several faculty members, then left the room. Later,
my adviser Reverend Robert Mulligan, S.J. (later president of
Xavier University in Cincinnati) came out to tell me the pan-
el was granting me the degree (1956) but felt I had defended
my thesis too somberly so should learn to smile more.
Smiling, it seems, was not my forte just then. In the
course of the year gone by, Maziarz, in consort with some other
priests on the faculty at Saint Joseph’s College, had petitioned
their society to reinstate me for priesthood studies. But their
Council upheld the Provincial’s decision. us left to oun-
der, I taught two summer session philosophy courses to some
nuns and pondered what I should do next. en Maziarz told
me his one-time mentor had become bishop of a new diocese
headquartered in Jeerson City, Missouri. e man in ques-
tion, Joseph Marling (1904–1979), had been a professor at
e Catholic University of America (CUA), where he taught
philosophy of science to Maziarz. He had in fact been bishop
of the new diocese since its establishment in 1956. Borrowing
my mother’s car, I drove to Jeerson City and spoke with him
about becoming a priest in his diocese; and with one phone call
he arranged for me to attend the Benedictine-run Immaculate
Conception Seminary, located in Nodaway County, in the
northwest corner of Missouri.
was able to live nearby in the house of my grandfather’s broth-
er, who had left Kansas under mysterious circumstances hav-
ing to do with a failed eort at unionization. For a while, I
walked back from class in the company of a spirited young
woman named Kelly Wiszniewski, but the more I warmed to
her the more she found ways to avoid me.
I did succeed academically, though, then spent a lonely
semester at Marquette University in Milwaukee. ere I lived
in a room over the whirring noises of Ignaz Pinchar’s shoe re-
pair shop (long since demolished to make way for a divided
highway), wrote gloomy letters to my mother, and appreciated
a course on theodicy taught by the author of the text, Gerard
Smith, S.J. (1896–1975). Classes aside, though, I felt so so-
cially inadequate I never even visited Maziarz’s relatives (he
had been raised in Milwaukee) even though they had warm-
ly befriended me in previous years. It was clear, then, that
Milwaukee aorded me no escape from my spiritual failure; so
I accepted Maziarz’s invitation to complete my senior year at
Saint Joseph’s, where he had been named Dean of the College.
e summer was without incident as I assisted Maziarz
with his translation of F.J. onnard’s A Short History of
Philosophy.
3
But once the fall semester began, I became vividly
conscious of how ashamed I felt for having failed my vocation.
Anyone who had known me before my fall from grace now de-
spised me, I was sure, so I sought invisibility. When walking
about the campus, I avoided meeting people who had respect
-
ed me in the past but now surely not. ough under this psy-
chological cloud all year, I did well academically and graduated
(1955) summa cum laude. en, for lack of any better option, I
3 Paris and New York: Desclee Company, 1956.
2120
research informed me was a breeder of bishops. Having no as-
pirations in that direction, I asked to be sent instead to CUA
in Washington, D.C. He agreed, and soon after I was living
in our nation’s capital, at the residence for diocesan seminar-
ians known as eological College (TC).
Life at TC was headily upscale compared to Conception.
We had an abundance of high-quality food, prepared by usu-
ally invisible nuns, and had weekly access to “the district.”
Banquets were frequent and were de rigueur when TC enter-
tained the nation’s bishops during their annual conference at
CUA. Across the street from TC stood the newly opened but
still unnished Basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where we
seminarians were often called upon to help with special events.
On numerous weekends I would dine with the family of
a CIA executive who had studied under Maziarz. Monuments
and museums were also on my list, as were visits to Congress,
where on one occasion I sat in the Senate gallery and watched
presidential candidate John Fitzgerald Kennedy chatting with
a colleague. On Sunday mornings we went out on special mis-
sions, such as teaching catechism to poor black children in
Anacostia, or preaching a sermon in sign language to Catholic
students at Gallaudet College for the Deaf. My everyday ven-
ue, though, was CUA.
Established to set the standard for excellence in Catholic
higher education, this by then seventy-year-old institution
claimed among its faculty a number of people who were
recognized scholars in their eld. Some of these I came to
know, for example then cutting-edge moral theologians John
Ford and Francis McConnell, and the preeminent historian
of the American Catholic Church, John Tracy Ellis. But my
Deciding that my qualications in philosophy fullled
their requirements, the Conception administration placed me
in the theology division. I learned to chant the Divine Oce
(periodic community prayer) and became known as a good
public reader, which led to my becoming reader to lay retreat-
ants in my second year. My suitability for Holy Orders was,
however, twice called into question at Conception; but I now
understood better how the holy power game must be played.
e rst test came one day when the Spiritual Director (sic)
told me I was not bowing deeply enough during recitation
of psalms. I meekly asked how deep I should go, and he said
hands should touch knees. I thanked him and did it correct-
ly from that moment forth. By contrast, the candy store cri-
sis almost did me in. e so-called “candy store” was a room
where one could buy refreshments to supplement the plain fare
provided by the institution. A late-vocation former car dealer
proposed upgrading this bare and uninviting room with funds
the seminarians would canvas for during the Christmas break.
I and a few others, thinking this project would give people a
misleading impression of what we were about, proposed in-
stead that we devote ourselves to improving the quality of the
library. en one night the Abbot himself visited us during rec-
reation time to announce that the monks endorsed the candy
store project and would deal with library development them-
selves in due time. We dropped our proposal. I did not partici-
pate in the project, and no one faulted me for that. But for the
rest of the year I felt out of place, except at the retreat house.
Perhaps in self-defense, I asked the bishop to transfer me
to a dierent seminary for my nal two years of theology. He
suggested the Gregorianum in Rome, which some emergency
2322
Kansas City and my mother’s from many places, especially cen-
tral Kansas—for what was, for most of them, a once-in-a-life-
time event. Each side of the family had contributed women to
religious life, but neither had produced a priest. So God was
at last smiling on their lineages. ough quite uncomfortable
with all this, I performed as required, rst in Hannibal, then
as celebrant of a Solemn High Mass in Peoria.
My rst assignment began in the summer in Fulton,
Missouri, site of Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech. I arrived
at the rectory there in a new Oldsmobile (bought from deal-
er friend John Connors with money from my grandfather
who had died just a few months before), and became at once
the ex ocio expert on human aairs. First, I was summoned
to counsel a dying person who decided to live. Later, I led
an annulment petition for a woman whom the Church dealt
with so harshly she later committed suicide; and I suggested
to another woman (in the confessional) that perhaps her sex
life was boring because it was too routinized. e most signif-
icant event was when I persuaded a manic-depressive wom
-
an on leave from Fulton State Hospital to have herself recom-
mitted, and then visited her regularly “inside,” which I could
do because as hospital chaplain I had a complete set of keys.
I also attended sta diagnostic meetings and could be found
talking with mental patients almost any hour of the day or
night—that is, until regular sta members, who had domes-
tic responsibilities, demanded that I stop making their pro-
fessional service seem stingy by comparison.
At summer’s end, though expecting to be sent on for fur-
ther education, I was instead reassigned to Blessed Sacrament
Parish in Hannibal “to acquire additional pastoral experience”.
day-to-day learning centered around standard pre-Vatican
II seminary subjects: theology, sacred eloquence (preaching
skills), pastoral counseling, and canon law. On my own time, I
was allowed to study mathematics, regrettably. I took a Higher
Algebra course so abstract that I, unlike the math majors in
the course, didn’t know it was about plain old ordinary num-
bers, and for the only time in my educational career I got an
F. e following summer, memorably, I rented a little house
on an island in the Potomac River, and there I studied calcu-
lus on my own with Maziarz serving as my instructor of re-
cord and all-around companion. But as did my examiners at
Loyola, he told me I had become very reticent and imperson-
al. at aw notwithstanding, I was leader of my class during
our nal year. is honor befell me because Pat Canan, who
had originally been given the title for four years on the basis of
his alphabetical preeminence, had dropped out. His departure
saddened me somewhat, because he and I had just co-starred
in TC’s all-male version of “Solid Gold Cadillac.”
Aside from leadership responsibilities (speeches and
such), my nal year in the seminary was focused on my up-
coming ordination. Much of my spare time, I recall, was spent
designing a chalice and having it made by a highly recom-
mended craftsman (years later when I no longer needed it, I
gave it to Maziarz). In time, thanks especially to my mother,
all was arranged. Bishop Marling ordained me at his new mi-
nor seminary (for college-level students) in Hannibal, Missouri
(1960). Being the only ordinand, I was the center of atten-
tion for over a hundred people, most of whom I knew only as
names on the family tree. Some came from Peoria, but most
came from farther west—my deceased father’s relatives from
2524
women’s lives were not always as fullling as my childhood
perceptions had led me to believe. Some overly isolated teach-
ing nuns to whom I was assigned as confessor expressed con-
cerns about having homosexual inclinations. A rst-grade
teacher in Hannibal suered from edema but had to stand
most of the day until she became too disabled for the job. A
bright high school English teacher was happy while working
on her doctorate at Notre Dame University; but when subse-
quently assigned to teach at a Catholic girls’ college, her spirit
faded. Still mindful of these cases three years later while brief-
ly at the University of Missouri Newman Center, I would buy
secular clothes for two young nuns who asked me to help them
leave the convent.
I also knew priests in our rural diocese who found no
fulllment in their work but had no other option. I, though,
wanted to study for my doctorate, as I told the bishop after
completing two years of parish work. His response: poor di-
ocese, no funds. So I asked if he would release me if I could
obtain funding on my own, and he agreed. I applied for two
fellowships: a one-year Fulbright to study medieval philosophy
of science at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium;
and a three-year National Defense Education Act (NDEA)
grant to study modern and contemporary philosophy of sci-
ence at Indiana University.4 Early in 1963 I learned both ap-
plications were successful. I opted for one year in Belgium,
4 e NDEA had been passed a few years before to help overcome America’s
technical inferiority as revealed by the Russians’ successful launching of Sputnik.
e theoretical conundrum of my looking to such a highly political source
of funds as a way to bring my religious training to technical fulllment quite
escaped me at the time; but this may be excused by the fact that the revival of
social and political philosophy in our country was still a decade away.
Following my arrival, the new pastor, suave and sunbaked
Richard Kaiser, arrived in his Ford underbird, in which he
carried his much-played collection of Johnny Mathis records.
Proclaiming golf a very useful way to make pastoral contacts,
he devoted his rst few weeks in Hannibal to obtaining a coun-
try club membership. at accomplished, he then devoted ev-
ery spare moment for over a year to overseeing the building
of a new rectory, which came complete with a wing of oces,
in one of which he and I would count the collection after the
last Mass on Sunday. is done, I often joined a couple with
a motorboat for water-skiing on the Mississippi River (I usu-
ally did this well except once when I had to be rescued from
a menacing current).
Weekdays, of course, I tended to parish responsibilities. I
also taught at a high school (closed soon after) run by nuns who
were aliated with the other parish in town. ere, I too easily
persuaded the other priest teachers to participate with me in a
track system: they would teach a basic, catechism-style curric-
ulum and I, a program for the brighter students that included
the basics of ethics and logic. Fortunately, this hyper-academ-
ic component of my ministry was counterbalanced by worldly
wise lay people I came to know while in Hannibal, for example,
the cultivated widow of a middle-aged physician who married a
recently divorced attorney; a struggling father who dreamed of
starting a Mark Twain tour business; and a newly elected pros-
ecuting attorney who had worked his way through law school
in St. Louis (see below for follow-up). From these and other
parishioners I came to see aspects of reality dierent from those
in the world of my mother or my now-married sister.
During these years I also came to see that religious
2726
Arriving in Louvain two months before classes were to
begin, I rst went to the Collège Saint-Esprit, a residence for
secular (i.e., diocesan or non-monastic) priests, where I had
reserved lodging. When the great front door of this grim gray
building opened, though, I saw a long row of small side altars
where an assembly line of resident priests said their daily Mass.
I left without crossing the threshold and went on someone’s ad-
vice to the Maison Saint-Jean, where Monsieur and Madame
Morren provided a communitarian lifestyle for university stu-
dents from “third world” countries. Because it was summer,
they rented me a room while I looked for other accommoda-
tions. First, I stayed for a while with the family of a prominent
wine merchant, Michel Boon, who took very kindly to me be-
cause I introduced his son to tennis and was with his mother
when she died. In spite of this rapport, however, I once oend-
ed his wife because when a friend of hers came visiting a second
time in the same day, I greeted her friend by saying “Bon jour
encore,” by which Madame took me to mean “Not you again.”
Once involved in my studies, I saw them no more—until one
day I passed a re raging in a house owned, I would learn, by
Monsieur Boon but rented to one of his workers. Talking to
him outside the burning house, I learned he intended to pro-
vide the occupants living arrangements elsewhere. Whether
his family business has continued to this day I do not know.
With free time prior to the beginning of classes, I set out
to see Belgium in a car I had bought at the American Embassy,
sometimes accompanied by Swiss philosophy student Iso Kern
(who has since become a world-renowned Husserl scholar).
Each trip included a stop in some small town, including one
where we saw the local band emerge from shops at closing
where I had never been, and hoped (in vain) that I could
postpone the NDEA fellowship for a year. In preparation for
my foreign adventure, for three months I drove several days a
week up the river to Quincy, Illinois, where a French instruc-
tor at the local college did her best to improve my oral use of
the language. I found her instruction to be somewhat help-
ful, but only after two years immersed among native speakers
would I achieve her objective.
I had no way of knowing at the time that I would lat-
er spend the bulk of my academic career in Indiana, or that
my going to Belgium would have life-altering consequences.
But by doing so I was transplanting myself from the circum-
scribed milieu of unreective Middle American Catholicism
into a world in which both Catholics and society at large were
seeking to deal creatively with the profound disillusionment
and societal secularization engendered in large part by devas-
tating and demoralizing wars.
My rst hint that such a transforming experience lay ahead
came to me by chance when I went to Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
Minnesota, for a checkup after visiting family in St. Paul. Staying
as one does in St. Mary’s Hospital, I heard about and attended
a lecture there about rejuvenating the Catholic liturgy. e lec-
turer, Sandy Taylor, had studied at Lumen Vitae, a catechetical
institute in Belgium, and exuded a spirit of commitment and
engagement that I had not found in the American church. I in-
vited her to come speak at our parish in Hannibal. e parishio-
ners received her politely but with suspicion. I, however, heard
in her words a promise of meaningful change ahead, for me and
for the Church; and so it came to be, as I abandoned layer after
layer of unquestioning conformity during my sojourn in Europe.
2928
how quickly, one estimated the time of one’s own enrollment
and headed o to a pub to wait in comfort. And speaking of
comfort, I had gone to the university oce that approved and
distributed rental properties, and using its list I found a room
in Madame Huysmans’s boarding house. It was adequate, I
dare say, especially breakfast; but after a few months a female
friend began visiting my room, and my welcome was rescind-
ed. anks to the favorable rate of exchange I then rented a
brand new apartment on the edge of town, where my mother
joined me for six months, made friends locally, and went on
tours to experience her roots in Germany and Ireland.
I also learned that class attendance was not really neces-
sary. I myself did attend classes; but some students did not,
and some of these non-attenders were “working” for degrees at
more than one university. e open secret was this: there were
Belgian note-takers: students, I was told—and their equivalents
elsewhere—who at the end of the term would produce mimeo
-
graphed copies of the lecture notes as reviewed and approved
by the lecturer. One purchased a copy of each needed set of
notes, studied (even memorized) these, and in that way pre-
pared to take whatever oral exam was required. I also learned,
secondly, to take my exams in French. I took my rst exam in
English (approved for use along with German and Spanish)
and did pass it; but because it was in English, if I hesitated
in answering that was attributed to a lack of knowledge, giv-
en that English was my native tongue, whereas in fact I had
to formulate an English answer in my head from memorized
French-written notes. By contrast, if I hesitated while taking
an exam in French the examiner would assume I was searching
for words in that language to express what I knew in English.
time, instruments in hand, and assemble on the gazebo in the
town square. My interest in tourism was compromised, how-
ever, when one day a motorcyclist rammed me from the rear.
He seemed unhurt until he realized I was an American and
suddenly began to experience severe pain. is case was easi-
ly settled; but another proved more problematic. One night a
biker decided to cross a road from my right to enter a pub on
my left, and in doing so got bumped by my car as I proceeded
down the road. He wound up in the hospital, where I visited
him to wish him well and oer him a nice bottle of wine. I was
soon told this was a mistake, because in Belgium such friend-
ly gestures are taken as indications of guilt. Properly tutored, I
thereafter avoided upsetting law enforcement—that is, until I
received an ocial notice that I faced serious penalties if I did
not appear before a certain ocial within so many days. I did
appear, promptly, and a man behind a grilled window hand-
ed me a case-closing document to sign, which I did. en he
walked over to a le drawer where he deposited it (end of story).
By then the school year had gotten underway, and I
had learned that I could earn a doctorate in two years. So I
enrolled not as a free student but as a candidate for the rst
license. As eventually decided by the Academic Council, I
would need to take seven courses during my rst year toward
the license (a teaching degree) and six more would be counted
toward the doctorate; then in my second year I would need
to take ve more courses to reach the total of eleven required
for the doctorate.
e registration process itself was antiquated but interest-
ing. Each student was assigned a number when he or she ar-
rived; then on the basis of numbers currently being served and
3130
from communitarian practices by then widespread in European
Catholic liturgy, especially in Belgium under its Cardinal
Archbishop, Joseph Suenens, who was a leading light at the
Second Vatican Council just getting underway. ese chang-
es within Catholicism were historically signicant but turned
out to be of little importance to me personally. For, at just that
time my life took a turn that would lay bare to me the inhu-
mane inuence of the Church and give me reason to leave it.
And in the process it taught me how painful inexible pow-
er over people can be. is unsought learning experience was
set in motion simply enough. I had fallen in love with Claire.
Multi-lingual daughter of Flemish parents who ran a
small appliance shop, Claire was a student in the French sec-
tion at the Higher Institute of Philosophy specializing in log-
ic, the chair of which she would one day occupy in place of
her mentor. I had met her at her parents’ shop shortly after
my arrival in Louvain. For a time, we mostly went our sep-
arate ways with occasional words after a class. Eventually we
became friends; and we remained so even while each was in-
volved in a relationship. In time, each of these relationships
fell apart and she and I became lovers who felt meant for
each other. Romance, however, would eventually succumb
to reality. Her family was Catholic in a town dominated by a
Catholic University; so, though not particularly religious her-
self, she took it for granted that for the sake of social accept-
ability I would have to be properly laicized. Toward this end,
just as the Vatican II Council was beginning, she and I end-
ed an eventful car trip through Greece and Italy with a visit
to canon lawyer Renato Ottaviani, a nephew of the Vatican’s
arch-conservative head of the Holy Oce. He advised me to
Over time, I had other enlightening experiences away
from my classes that were due in diverse ways to my associa-
tion with whatever Christianity meant then and there. Mostly
through contacts made at the Maison Saint-Jean, I learned
about the complexity of ecumenism in Europe, e.g., Protestant
monks at Taize in eastern France, worker priests in Paris, atheist
architect Le Corbusier’s horizontal church at Ronchamps, and
an in-house performance by a wonderful retired cellist who
was a Communist. Lay participation in Catholic religious ser-
vices was new to me then, yet I instinctively preferred it to the
Latin monarchism prevalent in the United States. Moreover,
this emerging outlook made me welcome among the American
Catholic community in Brussels, for whom I would say Mass
on Sundays and then dine with the family of a parish leader
who happened to be a CIA agent.
I also learned things just by virtue of my being a Fulbright
scholar. In particular, we Fulbright scholars were treated to a
free stay in West Berlin for a conference held for all awardees
in Europe. And, somewhat less dramatically, we got invited
to various banquets where Belgians of high social status were
in attendance. Take, for example, the welcoming banquet in
1963, at which the rst course was an elegant soup served in
an elegant tureen. I felt quite prepared for this challenge be-
cause I had learned from a manners instructor to spoon away
from myself and not toward myself as my kinfolk did at home.
Proceeding thus, I soon had a dignied lady leaning over my
shoulder to whisper in my ear that politesse required spoon-
ing toward oneself lest an innocent person across the table be
dampened by a low-ying spoonful.
Another dimension of my extra-curricular learning derived
3332
motor wheezed. It coughed and crawled through France, but
reached its Belgian home. ere the mechanic said it was dead.
But Claire had found new life. With me to help, she’d learn
to drive! She waved to me one day from her red convertible.
It struck me as I walked away: had she taken me for a ride?)
Even more important than the laicization aspect of that
trip, I had informed the Fulbright authorities in Brussels that
if they funded me for a second year I could complete work
for a doctorate. To my surprise, they granted my request, and
my bishop approved. As predicted, I did complete all remain-
ing course requirements. In addition, by living frugally in a
favorable exchange rate economy, not residing in Louvain/
Leuven but away from distractions in Brussels, I managed
to save enough to fund a fth semester. us situated, I did
complete my doctoral dissertation barely before my mon-
ey ran out. e rest is history, as they say, and for the sake of
that history let me here insert some details about the techni-
cal tricks this writer used.
As noted above, I was deemed a good writer when I was
a junior in high school. I retained this label from then on,
through high school and college, while creating my Master’s
thesis, of course, and in parish work. And I certainly did so
through my doctoral studies and thereafter as a tenure-track
academic, as a law student and analyzer of legal controver-
sies, and as a volunteer attorney. I continue writing articles
and other pieces to this day. e objectives, content, and style
of my writing have changed considerably over the years. But
what has changed no less, undoubtedly, are the tools I rely
on to facilitate my writing, i.e., its technical infrastructure.
And to illustrate this change I will now describe in detail the
write him a letter indicating my reasons for wanting to be la-
icized. is I did after our return to Belgium, but I would hear
nothing back until after my return to the States.
(Having now heard the purpose-related aspects of that
trip, you might possibly nd somewhat interesting the reality
aspects thereof that I immortalized in a poem:
In my car June ’65 we left for Greece and Italy. rough
France it ran all right, but coughed on Yugoslav roads. A clock
at earthquake time kept watch above the town as the car came
groaning to a nal stop in front of a mechanic’s shop. Auf
Deutsche the Skopje man said sleep, he’d have it xed by dawn.
Relieved, we shed the strain of riding mountain roads in a fail-
ing car. But at dawn the car’s insides lay strewn all over the
greasy oor. “You need new parts, and we have none; in Greece
they do.” All day by train, then a cab to Simca Salonica.
“We Greeks, we x your car. My friend the Colonel bring
it here.” He drove, with Claire in front, and me in back. “Put
the parts in my car,” he decreed. e Macedonians complied,
then hitched the car to be towed. I paid their paltry bill. “I
tow, you steer; she ride with me.” My turn to comply. She
liked the ride, I not; but I paid the Colonel well. “Your en-
gine we rebuild. A week. Eight hundred bucks.” Claire left to
meet “some guy” for a tour of southern Greece. On ouzo and
retsina, I took in the local sights: a church, another church,
and then a famous ancient church. [I also got permits to see
monks in their mountain abodes. Too late, alas; I had to go.]
e car restored to life, I drove to Athens where, with
Claire rejoined, I dined and toured the Acropolis. To Corfu
then by car. By boat to Rimini, by car to Rome—for shots of
Claire at monuments. en farther north around Milan the
3534
is submission, once defended (and at least partially
published), won me a doctorate. I returned to the US; and lat-
er when my things arrived, I found that my Royal typewriter
had been damaged. So I replaced it with the latest wonder of
the writer’s world, an IBM Selectric, which had been intro-
duced in 1961. is marvelous instrument, with its famous
font balls, served me well until I entered the emerging world
of the computer. So too have the many improvements in doc-
ument distribution. First as to in-house needs: early in my col
-
lege teaching career, I produced class notes for students on a
ditto machine, then by making stencils, then mimeographs,
then copier machines, which keep improving and are now laser
driven. Remote distribution has been transformed even more
incredibly. E-mail has obviously transformed letter writing, and
so too has the electronic art of scanning, whereby a document
of any length can be sent as an email attachment to anyone
just about anywhere. Not that every document sent forth is
happily received. But that said, the technical capability as such
enables a writer to share his or her written word as if by mag-
ic; and it wasn’t always so. Now, back to the historical record.
In January 1966, I defended my dissertation with “la plus
grande distinction,” reading a written summary and responding
ad hoc to questions, all in French. I then returned to the US
and took up residence at the Newman Center of the University
of Missouri in Columbia. I at once began teaching two philos-
ophy courses and counseling Catholic students; and, because
I had been in Europe, I was expected to introduce the new
Vatican II vernacular liturgy, even though I myself had never
said Mass in any language but Latin. No matter. In February
I told the bishop that I was resigning from the priesthood
pre-computer age process whereby I produced my doctoral
dissertation in 1964–1966.
Ironic as it may have been, my methodology was a literal
version of cut and paste, which has survived that archaic era as
a computer word-processing maneuver that I regularly use. As
for old style eorts, when I went from New York to Belgium
on the Queen Mary (July 1963) the most important item in
my baggage was my Royal typewriter. At the start of the 1965–
1966 school year, having completed all course work, I moved
into a tiny apartment in Brussels and began scouring the pages
of Aquinas’ works for quotations I wanted to insert in my man-
uscript. I typed out each quotation in its entirety. When I had
nished this task of copying out quotations, I marked in the
margin in what chapter each quotation would be used and/or
cited. en, with scissors in hand, I cut each quotation from its
unsorted page and placed it on the living room rug with other
quotations assigned to the same chapter. en I glued each quo-
tation onto a blank page precisely where it would be dealt with
in the sequence to which it had been assigned. Proceeding thus,
I lled up a binder of quotations for each chapter and placed
all the binders on a bookcase shelf to be retrieved in an order-
ly manner. at task completed, I sat down at my typewriter
and began writing my dissertation, referring to and/or copying
quotations as I saw t from beginning to end. I did this for each
chapter; and as I nished the rst draft of a chapter I would
hand it over to my dissertation advisor for his thoughts about
revisions. Once I had completed this process (late in 1965) I
handed the entire manuscript, with all its hand-entered revisions,
over to a professional typist, who produced an amazingly fault-
free manuscript that I submitted to my doctoral committee.
3736
found anywhere in my academic record).
Upon my return to Columbia I learned two things rele-
vant to my laicization. First, the Holy Oce had sent Bishop
Marling a form letter, in Latin, advising him that I was expe-
riencing an emotional turbulence common to men my age (I
was thirty-two at the time) and should spend some quiet time
in a monastery. Second, as if to remedy that nonresponsive
response, I learned that the world-renowned German moral
theologian Bernard Haring was giving lectures at Conception
Seminary. So I drove there and met with him and the resident
moral theologian Father James. Both agreed that the Church
should let me do with my life what I wanted, and Haring
agreed to write to the Vatican on my behalf.
A year would go by before anything new occurred re-
garding my laicization. In the meantime, I had begun teach-
ing in East Lansing. Claire visited me the rst Christmas and
throughout that year we wrote to one another almost daily. I
tried to nd a position in Europe for the following year, but
could not; and in the meantime, faculty in Louvain were im-
pressing on Claire how much brighter her future would be if
she stayed there. Eventually we both recognized that the ocean
dividing us was more than just water. I grieved for some time,
then awkwardly “played the eld,” then met, courted, and in
December 1968 married Peg, a former Maryknoll nun who
was studying for a social work degree at MSU. A few weeks
later our phone rang and a man asked in a barely discernible
whisper, “Is this Edmund Byrne?”
“Yes,” I admitted, then learned that the whisperer was a
local priest to whom my case had been assigned. I went to his
rectory in Lansing, where we talked on the front porch lest the
eective the end of the semester. By then I was already seek-
ing mainstream employment in academe.
Acting on Maziarz’s advice, I rst contacted Catholic uni-
versities where my peculiar prociencies might be appreciat-
ed. My rst try was Duquesne University, where continental
philosophy was emphasized. I went there for an interview, was
well received, especially by John Paulsen, layman and chair of
the department. ey recommended me for an appointment
and, I was told, the university administration agreed. But the
Cardinal Archbishop of Pittsburgh, John Wright, was the nal
arbiter and he wanted no ex-priest tainting his university. My
next try was Loyola University of Chicago, which was adver-
tising an opening in philosophy. I contacted Robert Mulligan,
my former adviser, and he advanced my application. Yet again,
my ex-priest status disqualied me for a position in an insti-
tution catering mainly to a Catholic constituency. So I de-
spaired of ever obtaining a position in a Catholic institution.
Turning to Plan B, though, I initiated a process that brought
my friend Maziarz to Loyola, where he thrived. As for me, if
I was going to nd a place in US higher education, it would
have to be at a secular university.
Donning secular garb I had purchased and stored with
friends, I ew to an American Philosophical Association meet
-
ing in Minneapolis. ere I was interviewed for and oered
several positions. First, by Kent State University; then, af-
ter meticulous interviews with half a dozen philosophers, by
Michigan State University (MSU). Completely indierent to
my interest in philosophy of science, they decided that my
Catholic/European credentials qualied me to teach existen-
tialism and philosophy of religion (neither of which could be
3938
service (with now-diminished hearing) I reect not so much
on the intended message of the words themselves as on the
listening congregation. For what I wonder is whether they are
somehow really inspired by these words to live more humane-
ly than they would without the benet of hearing them. I cer-
tainly hope they are. But except at times when religion-ori-
ented words are sung by a choir, they rarely bring me closer
to the religious superstructure with which they are associat-
ed. What’s more important, though, is a new friend’s inspir-
ing religious example, thanks to which I’ll cope better with
the challenges that arise in my life.
is completes my account of how I ceased to be a prac-
ticing Catholic. Now on to how I moved beyond Catholic ways
of thinking and being to become a secular academic. But lest
the reader draw too stark a distinction between religious and
secular institutions, I need to point out before moving from
one realm to the other that each exists on planet Earth, and
like everything made by humans that stands thereupon it’s
subject to change and even disappearance, regardless of the
aegis under which it came to be. at said, most people think
it is better to be educated than not; and one’s status is heavily
dependent on the quality of the institutions that participated
in one’s education. In the UK, for example, it has for centu-
ries been the case that one’s status is assured for life if one has
been educated at Eton College, a secondary school founded
in 1440. By comparison, most of the schools I experienced
have undergone major changes over the years.
My earliest years as a student were spent one long block
away from home at St. Bernard’s School (1938–1947). After
a hundred years of teaching all who came, this institution
housekeeper overhear any of this unsavory matter. He would
need to prepare a document, he told me, proving in meticu-
lous detail that I could not remain celibate. When I told Peg
this, she said, half seriously, that she’d never speak to me again
if I went along with their debasing demands. I thought about
it for a day or two, especially as to how my not being ocial-
ly laicized would aect my mother and other family members.
en I phoned the whisperer to say, in full voice, that I had
no more time to devote to the project. When I hung up, my
wife smiled, and we went on with our lives.
After that, on perhaps a dozen occasions, I attended Mass
in a Catholic church, usually with one or more of my still-de-
vout relatives, and by so doing did come to experience a Catholic
Mass in English. Since then, living as I did with a woman whose
religious leanings were Episcopalian, I found no good reason not
to follow her inclinations. So she easily persuaded me to accom-
pany her to services, most memorably in UK Anglican cathe-
drals at Christmastime and most often in a small Episcopalian
parish near our residence outside of New York City. Having now
left that area, my church-going has remained Episcopalian but
without the regularity of the deeply committed.
According to Catholic ocialdom, then, I have never
ceased being a priest, or in other words, I’ve never been of-
cially laicized. But in other ways that aect my very being,
the world at large and my experiences in it have laicized me
far more profoundly. Without consciously reecting on the
beliefs I supposedly held just by being a Catholic, I now nd
that they have little bearing on my daily life. As before, though,
they underlie the words I recite, with respect, when attending
a Mass. But when I listen to a sermon during an Episcopalian
4140
name: the Robert H. McKinney School of Law.
e institution at which I studied in Belgium has under-
gone tremendous changes both before and after my time there
(1963–1966). To understand these changes one needs to rec-
ognize that the political structure of Belgium over many cen-
turies had more to do with war-prone nations using the area
called Belgium as a (minimally eective) buer against inva-
sion. In this vein, the victors over Napoleonic France in 1815
lumped Belgium into an unviable entity called the United
Kingdom of the Netherlands, against which the inhabitants of
Belgium rebelled in 1830 and continued to oppose until vic-
torious in 1839. It has remained autonomous ever since, but
not without almost constant turmoil due largely to incompat-
ible language groups who face disparate economic conditions.
ese groups are now politically divided into Dutch and/or
Flemish speakers in the northern area called Flanders, French-
speaking people in Wallony in the south, a bi-lingual haven
in and around Brussels, and German speakers in a small east-
ern area of Wallony. From its earliest origins, higher education
in the region called Belgium has had to accommodate these
seemingly insurmountable dierences.
An academic institution called the University of Leuven
was founded in 1425, before Eton. e French closed it in
1787. en, after much political turbulence mostly as to e
Netherlands (especially from 1815 to 1839), it was re-found-
ed in 1834 as e Catholic University of Leuven, and in the
same year a secular university called the Free University of
Brussels was founded. Each institution taught courses only in
French. en in 1930, the government ordered the Catholic
University to add Flemish lectures. In 1962, each of its two
closed in 2004 and soon after was converted into the East Blu
Community Center. I got my high school education (1947–
1951) at Spalding Institute, a Catholic boys-only school which
had been founded in 1899. When I arrived, Benedictines
were in charge, then Viatorians took over. Across the street
was the Academy of Our Lady for girls, with which the boys’
school merged in 1973. en the combined school merged
with Peoria Bergan in 1988; and this institution is now called
Peoria Notre Dame High School.
My undergraduate college days (1951–1955) were spent
at St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, except for my ju-
nior year at its Calumet Center in Whiting, Indiana, and then
at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In my day,
only males could matriculate at St. Joseph’s; but it has long since
become co-ed, added buildings, and lost its original adminis-
tration building to a re. Meanwhile, the Calumet Campus be-
came a four-year college in 1960, took over numerous vacated
buildings in town, and in 1971 it became St. Joseph Calumet
College. In 1973 it separated from St. Joseph’s College and ac-
quired 256 acres with twenty-three buildings from the American
Oil Company. In 1976 it moved into its new facilities.
Institutions where I did post-baccalaureate, non-Ph.D.
studies have continued intact but not without change. e
Philosophy Department of Loyola University of Chicago
(1955–1956), downtown when I was there, is now in the
Crowne Center on the North Shore campus. Immaculate
Conception Seminary (1956–1958) and the eological
College of Catholic University (1958–1960) are still in situ.
e Law School of Indiana University-Indianapolis (1973–
1978) moved into a grand new facility in 2001 under a new
4342
Part Two:
Learning to Perform in a Secular Role
I
nitially, higher education arose in the West under religious
auspices, but its governance infrastructure was eventually
secularized to meet the emerging needs of science and in-
dustry. And these latter have over time restructured advanced
learning in accordance with corporate priorities. is corpora-
tization is especially apparent in public institutions but is cer
-
tainly a factor in private institutions as well—less so, however,
in Catholic colleges and universities, where ecclesiastical inu-
ence has persisted. How I related to these later in my life is al-
ready on the record. Now I will discuss how I performed as a
secular academic: not achieving perfect neutrality but combin-
ing scholarship with political activism that aected my profes-
sorial neutrality and became increasingly a factor in my writing.
I’ve already described how ecclesiastical institutions and
their on-site representatives exercised their power over me and
blocked my aspirations when I failed to comply. At the out-
set, I tended to blame ocial bullies individually rather than
the system they represented. en in time I came to recognize
how deeply power relations were embedded in the Church and
that perhaps this was also the case in other communities, in-
cluding academe. Quite early in my career as a philosopher,
though, I became aware of the political aspects of commu-
nities. Eventually, I would examine this reectively. But be-
fore that I did so pragmatically to obtain a Fulbright-Hayes
grant—on my second try.
sections was made autonomous; then eorts to combine both
sections in Brussels were met with student demonstrations,
which brought down the Belgian government in February
1968. In June 1968 the two sections were physically divided,
with the Katholeike Universiteit Leuven staying in Leuven and
the Université Catholique de Louvain moving to a site fteen
miles to the south called Louvain-le-Neuve. (A similar divi-
sion into French and Flemish sections was eected by the Free
University a year later.) e subsequent process of dividing
property between the two was excruciating; for example, each
book in the library was assigned to one or the other on the basis
of its having an even or an odd call number. e locus of my
studies was the Institut Superieur de Philosophie, which in my
day was in Louvain/Leuven; but it’s now in Louvain-le-Neuve.
4544
by contrast, certainly dealt with medieval thinking but not
incontrovertibly with philosophy of science (reviewers of the
published version disagreed about this). Its specic content
grew out of various inuences, including Church-encouraged
attention to omism.
Not being interested in how my topic relates to Aquinas’s
role as a defender of the faith, I did not even include his name
in the title of my work. But drawing on my ecclesiastically en-
couraged familiarity with his writings, I was convinced that
they could be studied to illustrate medieval thinking about
probability and opinion (called doxa in Greek) as a precursor
of the modern theory of probability. In so doing, I would be
advancing Ed Maziarz’s attention to what he called “ordinary
knowledge.” My overall objective was to organize and articu-
late Aquinas’s views about opinion and probability and discuss
how they compare to those of the ancient Greeks and those
of modern theorists. Finally, in order to associate this study
with philosophy of science I chose as my advisor (ultimately
renowned) Professor Jean Ladrière (1921–2007).
Actually, he had graciously agreed to read and comment
on three chapters of my dissertation before he realized that I
wanted him to be my advisor ocially. He took my work to be
unqualiedly medieval philosophy, which was someone else’s
area of expertise. He, an ascetic layman, taught mathematics
and philosophy of science and focused his writings on critical
science, by which he meant knowledge that is attentive to the
limits of its formulations. Once having taken me on, he helped
me very much with the remaining chapters. en he wrote a
brilliant preface for my study’s published version in which he
compared the epistemological issues facing modern probability
I rst applied while still at CUA to study philosophy of
science under Karl Popper at the London School of Economics.
at proposal was not successful, though, not because super-
star Popper was an inappropriate mentor (though in retrospect
he was) but because he had no reason to concern himself with
me, and my application did nothing to overcome this lacu-
na. Reecting on this failure, I realized that I had selected as
references people who knew me best rather than the most fa-
mous people I knew. So when I applied again, from Hannibal,
I changed my strategy. First, I wrote o all English-speaking
countries. Opting instead for French, I then wrote o France,
it being the preferred destination of American Francophones,
and chose French-speaking Belgium. Next, I crossed o the
secular Free University of Brussels in favor of a Catholic insti
-
tution where my clerical status might stand me in good stead.
Finally, I sought letters of recommendation from the most re-
nowned professors I had studied under. And on the basis of this
revised formula I was handsomely funded to study “Medieval
Philosophy of Science” in French at l’Institut Superieur de
Philosophie, l’Université Catholique de Louvain.
What I actually studied went well beyond that title. e
courses I took were wide-ranging, informative, and often stim-
ulating, but quite dierent from what one would have stud-
ied at an Anglo-American university at that time. e Belgian
government specied the titles of the courses (e.g., logic, epis-
temology, metaphysics); but the professors determined their
contents. During my matriculation, this typically involved
the work of phenomenologists then under discussion on the
continent, for example Hegel, Husserl (whose archives were at
Louvain), Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Levinas. My dissertation,
4746
part because I had almost taken a job there. While at Michigan
State University, though, I learned about that institution’s role
in training military police for South Vietnam. Shortly before
my departure, its longtime president John Hannah was re-
warded for hosting that program by being named Director of
the U.S. Agency for International Development. is political
ambiance would have a decided eect on my status at MSU,
but only in conjunction with my status as (what Richard Rorty
called) an “edifying” philosopher in a department devoted to
systematic philosophy.5
My assignment at MSU was to introduce students to ex-
istentialism and the philosophy of religion, each a eld I had
studied in Louvain, but only in pubs. For the religion course,
I assigned such works as Nikos Kazantzakis’ Saviors of God and
André Schwarz-Bart’s e Last of the Just. My existentialism
oerings I spread over three terms, to deal respectively with
Christian, non-Christian, and non-religious existentialists. I
favored some more than others (e.g., Jaspers and Buber more
than Marcel or Sartre), but was open to including other con-
temporary continental philosophers in my repertoire. us
my delight at being involved in Loyola University’s centena-
ry celebration in 1970.
For that occasion, Maziarz had funds to bring in a dozen
or so of the world’s nest philosophers. He asked me to select
francophone philosophers and then serve as their interpret-
er and guide, as needed, which I did for Emmanuel Levinas
(1906–1995) and Roger Garaudy (1913–2012). I had studied
Levinas’s Totalité et Inni at Louvain and had even oered to
5 See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1979, pp. 365-372.
theory to those embedded in Aquinas’s work and elucidated
by me. I was honored beyond words, especially in view of how
I had made the acquaintance of this genius in the rst place.
Alone among his colleagues at that time, Ladrière had
participated in seminars at an American university and de-
cided to utilize this teaching method himself. So shortly after
my arrival in Louvain he announced he would be holding an
informal English-language seminar on philosophy of science.
Deemed suitably qualied, I joined the group and participated
for two years together with other Anglophone scholars, most
of whom were philosophers. Participant Leonard Saremsky,
though, was a mathematician from Brooklyn College who was
studying for his doctorate at the Free University in Brussels. He
stands out in my memory for having observed before anyone
else that I was a political animal myself. is revelation came
about at the end of an all-night discussion we had about what
it means to be a saint, when he declared: “Ed, you’re just using
the Church; when it’s no longer useful to you, you will walk
away from it.” So I did, but what I walked into was a larger
world of political complexity which preoccupies me to this day.
When I returned to the United States in late January,
1966, it seemed far more oppressive than it had been when I
left several years earlier. While abroad I had learned, of course,
about President Kennedy’s assassination, the escalation of the
War in Vietnam, the civil rights marches and the federal stat-
utes aimed at protecting voting rights and equal opportunity
in employment. But now I was suddenly immersed in what
appeared to be a formidable eort on my country’s part to be
-
come a police state. I was stunned when the Ohio National
Guard killed unarmed students at Kent State University, in
4948
the instructor assigning it, so I had to sell our book to my
students (at co-author’s cost) out of the trunk of my car in a
parking lot near the philosophy department oces. My col-
leagues deemed such behavior unprofessional. ey had de-
cided long before, however, probably before I ever set foot on
the campus, not to rehire me after my initial three-year term.
So they were more on the lookout than they might otherwise
have been for signs of my unsuitability.
Having become author of one book and co-author
of another, I thereby added a complicating factor to their
non-renewal plan, but they dealt with this quite expeditious-
ly. e Dutch company Martinus Nijho had published my
Probability and Opinion in 1968 with Ladrière’s preface; but
this, as one senior member of the department said, was “just
a dissertation.” And as for Human Being and Being Human,
out ocially in 1969, another senior philosopher put it in its
place for having “exactly twelve chapters divided into three
parts of four each.” He was right, as it happens, but I nev-
er learned just what inappropriate signicance he saw in this
(one for each month, or perhaps for each Apostle?). It hardly
mattered, though, because those prepared to vote against my
renewal were already in the majority. What stood in their way
was not my publications, which were admittedly somewhat o-
beat from their perspective, but my standing among students.
No doubt a sign of the troubled times, so many students
were taking my existentialism courses that they eventually had
to be scheduled in classrooms with several hundred seats. What
they sought from these optional courses was relevance. At the
time, however, few Anglo-American philosophers deemed this
a professional objective worth pursuing. e philosophers at
translate it for Duquesne University Press. (ey simply used
my interest to goad Alfonso Lingis, who was under contract to
them, to nish his translation after having missed a deadline.)
Philosopher of art Garaudy was a Marxist but had openly op-
posed the Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. It
so happened, as a result, that while at Loyola he needed my
help phoning home to keep track of a motion to expel him
from the French Communist Party. at motion was passed
during his stay in Chicago, after which he converted to Islam
in 1982. Also on this occasion, I had the chance to exchange
words briey with Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) as I escorted
her to the podium where she was about to speak. I told her I
saw much similarity between her work and that of Karl Jaspers
(not knowing at the time just how close the two of them were)
and wondered how, if at all, she and he diered in matters phil-
osophical. Bearing herself with the grandeur and dignity for
which she was so well known, she smiled and said with only
a touch of an accent: “Karl still believes in essences; I do not.”
Prior to this centennial celebration, Maziarz and I had
begun co-authoring a textbook intended for a course taught in
Catholic but not in secular philosophy programs. In particular,
it was to be used as the text for Maziarz’s Philosophy of Man
(sic) course at Loyola. I became involved on the basis of what
I had learned at Louvain, and we each wrote preferred chap-
ters and critiqued the other’s work. When Appleton-Century-
Crofts brought it out for use in Catholic higher education as
Human Being and Being Human, I imprudently decided to
test this niche stereotype by selecting it as a text for my ex-
istentialism course at MSU. is decision caused problems.
e university bookstore would not stock a text authored by
5150
the Chair of the Department, whispered in my ear, “ere’s
no way I can save you now.”
What I understood him to mean was that my real-world
question openly disregarded a distinction, honored especial-
ly by analytic philosophers, between legitimately philosoph-
ical and merely personal political views. As debated at APA
meetings, especially on the east and west coasts, this distinc-
tion was taken most seriously by those in the profession who
characterized philosophy as an abstract discipline that ought
not be associated with political stances that could jeopardize
its nancial support. At issue, then, were not one’s views about
ephemera such as a war but broadcasting those views.
6
As I lat-
er learned, there was no more skillful practitioner of this in-
tellectual compartmentalization than Max Black, who was in
the forefront of antiwar demonstrations at Cornell University.
Most MSU philosophers felt, however, that disciplinary neu-
trality was compromised even by a teach-in.
A teach-in, as understood at the time, involved professors
on a given campus discussing the war from the perspective of
their particular discipline in a regularly scheduled class open
to any student who wished to attend. At MSU, this took the
form of Academic Days of Conscience, which occurred over
two days in April, 1967. I, along with three other philosophers,
was on the list, which was distributed as a “Michigan State
University Publication.” My announced topic: “e Paradox
of Violence,” which drew on the work of Emmanuel Levinas.7
6 For a recent call for quiet, see Neven Sesardić, When Reason Goes on Holiday:
Philosophers in Politics (2016), New York: Encounter Books.
7 For published version, see “e Depersonalization of Violence: Reections
on the Future of Personal Responsibility,“ Journal of Value Inquiry 7 (Fall 1973)
161-172.
Michigan State in particular emphasized logic and philosophy
of science. To this end, they oered an extensive formal logic
curriculum and published the prestigious journal Philosophy
of Science, both of which were under the direction of Gerald
Massey, who had himself been a Fulbright scholar at Louvain
and the year after my departure from MSU would move to
the University of Pittsburgh and there have a distinguished
career. And then there was the lecture series.
Drawing on the bequest of a deceased colleague, the de-
partment each year sponsored a series of Isenberg Memorial
Lectures. Unknown to me, the department had already decid-
ed to combine the lecture fund income with my salary to bring
super-star Stephen Toulmin to campus one term per year. For
1968–1969, though, lectures were scheduled as in the past.
One invited speaker that year was Max Black. After his lecture
and before a question-and-answer period, some students com-
plained to me that this noted philosopher’s talk seemed irrel-
evant to their lives. I told them I would ask a question to sug-
gest otherwise, and when duly recognized I asked Black why
he was unwilling to grant signicance to nonverbal commu-
nication. To illustrate my point I cited two examples: (1) at a
recent conference on campus, a black man had told a group
of police ocers: “e problem’s not that there’s no commu-
nication between police and community; the problem’s that
the communication is all negative”; (2) as is very well known,
on a very hot day in Chicago the previous summer the city
opened a re hydrant in a white neighborhood but did not
open one in a nearby black neighborhood, and this set o a
riot. Black treated my question as being sub-philosophical; and
later at a departmental reception for him, William Callaghan,
5352
published a letter about the need for time and distance to ac-
curately assess the quality of a professor’s teaching. Still un-
der some pressure, though, the department did reconsider my
case only to reiterate its negative decision. I thereupon urged
my student supporters to stop objecting lest I be given no let-
ter of recommendation. In any event, few openings were be-
ing advertised that late in the academic year. Michael Carella,
whom I had known in Louvain, brought me in for an inter-
view at California State University in San Diego; and thereaf-
ter designated me “a serious contender.” But time passed and
no funding appeared for the position. en I read about a
new opening for an assistant professor at the downtown cam-
pus of Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis
(IUPUI). I applied, and was invited to interview for that job.
is opening was the result of a just legislated merg-
er of Indiana University and Purdue University programs in
Indianapolis. Structurally, each institution would retain sepa-
rate control of its Indianapolis faculty and programs but these
would be housed in a common, “non-medical” budget admin-
istered by Indiana University. With multi-source funding, this
complex coordination would expand in many directions over
the next several decades, but already at the outset the legisla-
ture’s action gave people reason to believe that the need for
public higher education would now be met in the state’s long
neglected principal city.
I was warmly received in Indianapolis—a welcome relief
from what had befallen me at MSU. Upon my arrival I was
shown the site of the new campus, which then consisted of a
well-established medical center, a law school building under
construction, the excavation for a building that would house
Subsequently, the department—not for the purest of motives—
invited me to present this talk at a departmental colloquium.
I did so the following January, and was ever so professionally
barraged with fairly technical questions, including in particu-
lar whether my claim that killing for the sake of a future good
constituted a paradox. I then wrote and distributed a detailed
response to questions put to me during the colloquium. In do-
ing so, however, I was out of my element as I tried to support
hermeneutic observations with analytic techniques for which I
had little training. No matter, on balance, because the depart-
ment’s appreciation of me was already in steep decline even as
that of the students grew.
So appreciated was I by students as to be linked with
two other faculty members—Indian philosopher Dhirendra
Sharma and psychologist Bertram Garskof—as the three most
articulate opponents of the war. A dubious distinction, since
not one of us would still be there the following year (although
the third philosopher participant, Al Cafagna, was renewed).
Sharma, in particular, became a target of public diatribe in
the East Lansing newspaper because his antiwar views were
deemed incompatible with his being the recipient of US gov-
ernment grants (I was undiscovered in this regard). Shortly
before I left East Lansing, I wrote a long letter to the editor in
his defense; and the paper published it. None of this, though,
had a bearing on whether I was or was not to be reappointed.
Other developments did.
Upon learning that I had not been reappointed, some of
my former students wrote letters supporting me and even or-
ganized some small-scale demonstrations. In response, Craig
Staudenbauer, who would later become department chair,
5554
contrast, the IU–Bloomington philosophy department chair,
George Nakhnikian, needed to give the open slot to the spouse
of a person he wanted to hire for his department. So, after hav-
ing made us wait until he nished his squash game, he engaged
me in a pseudo-epistemological language game in which I was
asked to articulate all possible interpretations of the arma-
tion “is is a telephone on my desk.” I cited supportive as
well as contrary considerations as to the truth of the posited
assertion. But I never learned how well I had performed for
him, because a few days later, ocialdom announced that he
was no longer in charge of philosophy in Indianapolis, and
my tenure-track appointment was approved.
Next I need to discuss how well I succeeded at again es-
tablishing for myself a secular modus vivendi in academe. But
having just given an account of my involvement in a compe-
tition of sorts, I might as well rst summarize my overall per-
formance over the decades in the uniquely secular realm of
(pre-electronic) games.
To begin with, I lacked either desire or opportunity to
succeed at any mainstream US team sport. To break into the
elite of baseball, my next-door neighbor and I paid to partici-
pate in Mr. Robertson’s Summer Baseball Camp, at which we
were allowed to retrieve balls gone astray for the real athletes
who already had positions on an organized team. No matter.
Peoria schools weren’t big on baseball anyway. As for football,
I was a good leather-helmeted junior varsity lineman (guard),
though only of average size. But when elevated to varsity I had
some traumas, most notably a concussion and short-term coma
when hit wearing a new plastic helmet too large for my head.
en, as noted above, other high school commitments won out
social work and the humanities, and another lot where space
would be provided for programs in science and technology.
Meanwhile, they were operating out of rented facilities down-
town. e philosophers in particular had been assigned a large
subdivided oce and a seminar room, each nished and fur-
nished in dark mahogany, as ordered by the original occupant:
the president of a carpenters’ union.
e position for which I was applying was a consolida-
tion of three Purdue University philosophy positions that their
occupants had abandoned for openings elsewhere. ere re-
mained three philosophers aliated with IU’s Indianapolis
program, two of whom held doctorates and the third had ob-
tained a Master’s degree from IU–Bloomington after escaping
from Russian-invaded Latvia (and was the rst non-identical
twin ever to receive a kidney transplant successfully from his
twin brother). Each of them was staying put; none had pub-
lished a book, however, so they were impressed with my pro-
ductivity. ey also found me reasonably congenial; so, in
short, they agreed among themselves that I should be hired.
e next question was how to proceed. eir humanities
administrators assumed my appointment had to be approved
by authorities on the main campus in Bloomington; so the
next day the associate dean drove me there to be scrutinized.
e one-hour trip was understood to involve going from an
outpost to central headquarters, because to most people our
destination was the real Indiana University, regarded then and
somewhat still today as incomparably more prestigious than
the Indianapolis or the regional campuses. But when we met
with the administrator who oversaw regional campuses, he said
he no longer had jurisdiction over Indianapolis programs. By
5756
decline, and winters we looked for ice. With her help I learned
to ice dance and even make a credible gure eight. en one
cold January day we went skating on a pond lightly covered
with snow. Going backwards, I caught my blade in a crack, and
landed hard on my back. e next day I shoveled snow, and
the day after that I could hardly get out of bed. Orthopedists
being out of town at a conference, I went in desperation to a
chiropractor who, to my amazement, restored my mobility.
More misery would ensue soon after, though, when my moth-
er came to visit, insisted on skating with us, and fell and broke
her ankle. It eventually healed, but in the meantime I decided
I would not master this sport.
For many years after college, though, I included run
-
ning in my routine and was for most of my career the Lone
Runner. While studying in Louvain I was often the only per-
son using a wonderful clay track outside town in Terveuren.
And once settled in Indianapolis in the 1970s I was usual-
ly the only runner out and about while people stared at me
from their windows. I continued even after damaging my
knee, but would usually wear one or even two knee braces.
In time, my unreliable knees made me give it up, right about
the time that it began to be called jogging and became a quite
popular form of exercise.
In retrospect, I guess my most successful athletic sto-
ry involves swimming. As a kid, I was sent to the YMCA to
learn from a teacher who had his pupils tossed into the deep
end of the pool so, according to his theory, they would acti-
vate their innate abilities. For years thereafter I remained at
best a 100-yard splasher, but then after I joined the faculty
in Indianapolis I taught myself to swim better. is did not
over football. After that, however, I did achieve a higher level
of mediocrity in basketball. Indeed, this had religious implica-
tions one Good Friday: back from college for Easter vacation,
I played ball with my old friends, knowing all the while that
I should have been attending “Tre Ore” services. Years later,
as a youngish secular academic, I dribbled and got rebounds
well enough to be included in pickup games.
I did better at individual sports, but not if competition
was a factor. As a child I was quite good at ring toss, and as a
teen learned to ride horseback in Kansas. Growing up I played
neighborhood stickball with some aplomb; and in various lo-
cales I became fairly adept at handball. But other eorts on
my part to hit a ball properly were unimpressive. My tennis
limitations have already been reported; and comparable tales
could be told with regard to golf, croquet, bocce balls, bil-
liards, even marbles. As already reported, I did become fair-
ly skilled in jogging and waterskiing, and while at Louvain I
spent a holiday with Iso Kern that included serious snow ski-
ing in the Samnaun Valley of eastern Switzerland. My wres-
tling skills were proven inadequate while I was studying for
my Master’s degree at Loyola of Chicago. One day at the near-
by Lawson YMCA a wrestler asked and I agreed to take him
on. He used me for a yo-yo and afterwards told me he had
once been a Marine Corps hand-to-hand combat instructor.
So forget wrestling! I felt likewise about skating, but regard-
ing this, there’s a story.
My wife had been a roller skating champion as a teenag-
er in New York State, and after completing her MSW degree
she returned to this sport and brought me into it as well. We
frequented roller rinks with others in denial about the sport’s
5958
or surmised that I, along with several others on our faculty,
had been a priest.8 I even argued at one point that our secular
institution shouldn’t establish the Religious Studies program
that the religion-friendly Eli Lilly Foundation was oering
to fund. Few of my colleagues were as secularist as I on this
subject, so my minority view did not keep us from gaining
some of our nest faculty members. Before that issue arose,
though, my energies were focused on institution building.
First, I took the lead in having our department establish a
(later to be modied) cross-disciplinary philosophy major—the
rst degree approved in the humanities at IUPUI. Many of the
courses I taught I developed from scratch. Inversely, because at
rst there weren’t that many courses that a student could take,
I attracted some of the better students. Among these was the
son of John Buhner (1920-2017), Vice Chancellor and Dean
of Faculties at the time. e young man liked me, and his atti-
tude rubbed o on his father. Perhaps because of that connec-
tion, I wound up devoting many hours—on which my young
family had a claim—to an ad hoc committee appointed by
the Dean to recommend an organizational structure for our
newly merged system. When it became obvious that Indiana
University and Purdue University faculty understood such
8 e import of this reversal of attitude from that of my priestly persona
was made apparent by what happened to a friendship I had formed while in
Hannibal with a lawyer active in law enforcement. Once settled in Indianapolis,
I resumed visiting him and his wife. By then, however, he had achieved political
status in his trade. When I lived there as a cleric he was a defense attorney for
troubled working people. Later, having become a juvenile judge, he took pride
in showing me the detention center he had had constructed in which holding
rooms were arranged in a circle so one person can watch six prisoners at once.
As county prosecutor, however, he became so arch-conservative he could no
longer abide me as a visitor because my university aliation branded me in no
uncertain terms as an unredeemable liberal.
happen instantaneously, however. At year’s end 1970, three
months before our son was born, Peg and I took a cruise ship
to the Bahamas, stopping rst at Nassau. ere I swam in the
shallow, clear blue water using a snorkel for the rst time in
my life; and then I decided I would climb down a shallow
rocky area to explore. A helicopter landed behind me (this
is non-ction, remember), and the pilot yelled out through
his open door that I shouldn’t do that because those rocks are
home to dangerous creatures. I obeyed. en, after a quick stop
on Grand Bahama Island we headed back as winter weather
moved in and I came down with sea sickness. I recovered, and
thereafter, with access to increasingly high quality (eventual-
ly Olympic) pools at my disposal, I learned to breathe prop-
erly rst by using a snorkel and then without it, and for years
thereafter did laps with some nesse. (After moving to New
York I continued this activity at a nearby club, but to contin-
ue swimming after my second knee had been replaced, I had
to wear an inated belt.)
So much, then, for living a secular life via athletics,
where religion plays a supercial role at best (e.g., when an
athlete makes the sign of the cross before undertaking a de-
manding task during a game). For me at least, the principal
realm where I had to fulll myself as a secular being was in
academe. Moreover, I resumed this challenge with genuine
enthusiasm as I joined the faculty at IUPUI. Beginning with
my image, I omitted the word “Catholic” from any document
that required the details of my background, including the full
name of the university from which I had earned my doctor-
ate. A fortiori, I never included seminary training or pasto-
ral experience in my history, although some colleagues knew
6160
that the Indiana General Assembly passed but the court reject-
ed because it (intentionally?) lacked a severability clause. I also
drafted a constitution for all Indiana University higher educa-
tion locals; and I helped aggrieved faculty present their cases to
appeal boards. e latter role in time found me representing a
faculty member against the campus Vice-Chancellor and Dean
of Faculties, who happened to be a specialist in American prag-
matism tenured in our department and responsible for bring-
ing the prestigious Charles Sanders Peirce Project to campus.
e complainant was John Liell, a sociology professor
who had presented data in class showing that the local chari-
ty hospital, which was administered by university personnel,
engaged in discriminatory hiring. To help students keep up
with the course material, he placed audiotapes of every lecture
at an audiovisual center. e Vice-Chancellor, upon learning
of Liell’s critical remarks, expropriated the tape of that lecture;
and in response to pleas for academic freedom, he announced
that students could listen to the tape in his oce. Professor
Liell led a complaint and was granted a hearing, where I and
another faculty member represented him. Also present besides
the Vice-Chancellor were the university counsel, a panel of fac-
ulty members, and a reporter from the student newspaper. e
panel listened to the arguments on both sides, then chose not
to recommend any particular disciplinary action. Eventually
the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the sociol-
ogist’s criticism of the charity hospital’s hiring record. But our
administration never again dealt with a faculty grievance at an
open meeting. Moreover, though often chosen by faculty to
important positions in faculty governance, I was never again
appointed to an administrative committee.
basic terms as “school” and “program” dierently, I bought
some tinker toys with variously colored joints and built a
structural model which became the centerpiece for discussions
within and beyond the committee. In retrospect, those tinker
toys belong in the university archives, but once their illustra-
tive function was over I gave them to my preschool-age chil-
dren as something of a consolation prize. Shortly after that
project ended, I suggested to our Associate Dean that IUPUI
should oer credit courses at shopping centers; and over the
next several decades he turned that idea into a thriving pro-
gram known as Weekend College.
Such in-depth faculty participation in institutional plan-
ning diminished over time as the ever expanding administra-
tion proceeded to dominate decision making on our campus.
In this “corporatization” context, the humanities seemed out
of favor, and I began to worry that my atypical resume might
one day compromise my ability to hold a job in academe. So
in 1973 I undertook law studies on a part-time basis and re-
ceived the J.D. degree ve years later. Meanwhile, I was pro-
moted and awarded tenure in 1976.
at same year a number of tenure-track faculty members
in the School of Liberal Arts, as our unit came to be called,
were denied reappointment. is led to our forming a facul-
ty union, and my work for the union had the eect of expe-
diting my transformation into a political animal, for it inten-
sied the dichotomy in faculty/administration relations, and
in so doing reopened in me an old conict as to my priorities.
Without stinting on my professorial duties, I spent many hours
applying my emerging legal skills to union needs: I worked as
a lobbyist on a collective bargaining bill for university faculty
6362
and values. And for over a decade thereafter (1978 –1991) most
of the articles I published, as well as a book I co-edited, grew out
of my involvement in what became the Society for Philosophy
of Technology (SPT).
9
I attended biennial SPT conferences in
West Germany (twice), Puerto Rico, e Netherlands, Spain,
France, and the US (twice). I also organized some American
Philosophical Association group programs, worked on papers
presented at SPT conferences in the US, served as SPT’s trea-
surer and newsletter editor for about a decade, drafted its by-
laws, and arranged for its nonprot status.
Active though I was in SPT, I was always more interest-
ed in the politics of technology than are most of its members.
is eventually led to my joining and participating rst in a
group that focuses on social and political theory (the North
American Society for Social Philosophy) and in later years
one more focused on activist strategy (the Radical Philosophy
Association). But throughout the 1980s my intellectual focus
was on producing a book about work.
is book, called Work, Inc.10 to emphasize work’s institu-
tional setting, caught the attention of two business school pro-
fessors, whose reviews were not merely critical but belittling.
A third reviewer deemed it a welcome relief from the man-
agement-oriented books that prevail in business ethics. And
European-trained philosopher Albert Borgmann recognized it
as a study in social philosophy, though on his view I was too
pessimistic about the power of globalizing corporations. He
also faulted me for deviating from John Rawls’ contract theory
9 is organization continues to maintain an online journal: Techné: Research in
Philosophy and Technology.
10 Work, Inc.: A Philosophical Inquiry, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press. 1990, pbk. 1992.
My pro-union credentials were by then transparent be-
cause I was not only a lobbyist for collective bargaining leg-
islation but also editor of the union newsletter. Indeed, I was
eventually writing almost all the copy for this newsletter and
so was indistinguishable from the union, at least to admin-
istrators. Upon realizing this, I stopped doing the newsletter
(which thereupon ceased to exist) and eventually dropped out
of the union entirely. In 1979, I became chair of our depart-
ment and so remained until 1987, when I stepped down be-
cause others increasingly took umbrage at my making salary
recommendations for the department member who was my
life partner. Why so? In large part because during those years
salary increments were meager, and in addition because the
administration determined that each program on our campus
had to earn its own keep without subsidies from the gener-
al budget (what they called “responsibility centered budget-
ing”). For the humanities, which at the time received few out-
side grants, this required prioritizing student credit hours over
program quality. Corporatization of our programs was now
a fait accompli and erosion of tenure was on the agenda. By
this time, though, I had become known as a serious thinker.
Some articles I published during the 1970s came about as
a result of o-campus speaking engagements (e.g., one about
aging), others via my involvement with groups interested in
values and legal studies. e latter, in particular my MSU-
disapproved “Depersonalization of Violence” (published in
1973), led Paul Durbin, a philosopher at the University of
Delaware, to invite me to a special conference in July 1975 at
which attendees founded a multi-disciplinary organization that
would study the nature of technology and its impact on society
6564
buy shoes for their children so they could go to school, she was
to visit their house to determine if they were poor enough to
qualify. Becoming despondent in that job, she is said to have
approved some applications without investigation. Meanwhile,
she became ever more involved in ballroom dancing; and in
pursuit of this sideline she joined other dancers traveling to dis-
tant dance competitions. In time, she had a health crisis which
led me to have her hospitalized. Diagnosed with a hypothyroid
condition, she was put on medication and sent home.
e following summer I was named the director of
the six-week Indiana University summer program in Dijon,
France, and Peg accompanied me. Our quarters were sparse,
but she was rarely there, choosing instead to venture forth with
her Eurail Pass to see the sights. I stretched my contract to its
limits by accompanying her on several trips, on one of which
she told me she had decided to share the rest of her life with
a man who danced with much more nesse than I did. After
giving each underserved student an oral and a written exam in
French, I returned to Indianapolis and became a single parent
as my wife took up residence temporarily in a nearby apart-
ment. We divorced and parted amicably—arguably all for the
best, given that unlike me, her new husband was younger than
she, and he didn’t have white hair (which I did and she had at
one time tried dyeing to restore my youth). She agreed, how-
ever, that I was then better equipped for parenting.
Because my rst career choice precluded marriage, I came
later than the average man to parenting (and so also to grand-
parenting). Even after becoming a parent by virtue of father-
hood, I still lived by the traditional role designations of yes-
teryear. at is, I assumed that my wife, as mother, was to be
in my proposal to link a workers’ representative to stakehold-
ers via a contract between workers and their community. How
I came to such an atypical position and dared call it a philo-
sophical inquiry (the subtitle) is a story that adds another lay-
er to my eorts to become a secular academic.
In law school, labor law interested me more than any
other part of the curriculum except constitutional law, and I
managed to take several labor law courses. Because I had de-
veloped a course on environmental ethics I also wanted to take
a course on environmental law. But because Indiana made so
many law courses mandatory I had to concentrate on the re-
quired courses—on property, contracts, criminal law, torts,
procedure—and so never got to take environmental law. I
completed the degree requirements, passed the bar, and then
for a while practiced law as a sideline (mostly bankruptcy cas-
es). But all of a sudden professional liability insurance became
very expensive, and the introduction of mandatory in-service
courses used up hours I could not spare, partly because by
then I had also become the single parent of two small children.
is domestic situation arose out of a series of overly chal-
lenging events, of which I’ll here oer just a brief account. After
we moved to Indianapolis, Peg completed her second year of
social work on our new campus. Less than a year later we had a
baby boy, and before long we gave him a sister. en Peg went
to work at the Indiana School for the Blind. She really liked
her job there, but then her mother moved to town, got her-
self a social work degree and joined her daughter at the School
for the Blind. e ensuing inter-generational competition was
debilitating, so Peg quit and took a job with the Indianapolis
Public Schools. Her task: when a family applied for money to
6766
to guide my daughter through pubescence and beyond, so
I persuaded my ex-wife, by then recovered and running her
own social work business, to assume that responsibility. My
son remained a member of my household because he liked
the schools I could send him to, including Brebeuf Jesuit
Preparatory School. After his senior year he and his sister vis-
ited us in Paris before the end of our stay there. en he spent
four years in a faculty ospring’s tuition-free baccalaureate pro-
gram at IU Bloomington. While there he met and, after their
graduation, married a young woman who shared his interest
in writing. Meanwhile, his sister had begun working for law
enforcement, eventually married, and had a daughter who has
now started high school with skills in mathematics and soccer.
Her mother has long been divorced from her husband, and,
after completing her bachelor’s degree, landed a good job at a
state university. Around that time my son also divorced, now
raises two sons jointly with his ex-wife, and has remarried.
During the years when I was sole parent on duty, Peg’s
lawyer brother (he too had moved from New York to attend
law school in Indianapolis) provided me with some bank-
ruptcy work that brought in some extra income. I also wrote
some law-related articles at this time. However, I saw no ob-
vious way to make signicant income-producing use of my le-
gal training. e faculty union, the SPT, and even my own di-
vorce oered opportunities to hone legal skills. But I thought
of myself as a legal researcher. In fact, I and Gloria Samuels,
another law graduate, even formed a legal research organiza-
tion; but it was still-born as she followed her academic hus-
band to his new position in Tennessee. How, then, was I to
justify the many hours I had spent becoming a lawyer? After
the primary caregiver. She shared that conviction, but only in
part, for she had every intention of working full time as was
her right; and to make this possible she assumed and accord-
ingly insisted that I make whatever arrangements might be nec-
essary so she could work full time. is involved our moving
three times in seven years after arriving in Indianapolis: rst,
to a house large enough to accommodate not one but two
children; second, to a house close to the Jewish Community
Center, where after-school child care was available; third, to a
house back in the neighborhood where our kids had friends
and more user-friendly schooling. Subsequently, after I had
taken up with Anne, I went along with yet another move to a
house we shared rst with, then without my kids being pres-
ent. Prior to that move, however, I actually learned a thing or
two about being a parent all day every day.
After my wife left me, remarried, and moved away, I be-
came the legally designated sole custodian of middle-school
kids. In this role I learned to prepare various home-cooked
meals, the most famous of which was a spinach-laden dish
called green rice. at, some would argue, was the pinna-
cle of my parenting skills.
11
In any event, I was ill-prepared
11 In that regard, according to available evidence from Canada, they would be
mistaken. My wife and I spent the month of June 1974, with our two pre-school
kids, in Nova Scotia, where she had once worked as a nun and I would be giving
lectures. As we learned, June is a rainy month up there, so we all spent many days
indoors, except for one excursion into a Cape Breton coal mine and another to
an ER to get stitches for a child who ran around too much indoors. Toward the
end of our stay the sun came out, and we went to watch the lobstermen bring in
their catch. Chatting with them as they worked, I learned they’d rather sell cheap
at the dock than ship to US buyers for even less. us favored, I bought a dozen,
all at least two-pounders, lled an old pot I found on the beach with salt water,
made a re with otsam, and catered a world-class lobster fest.
6968
Some argue that technology is not just a set of tools but a di-
mension of our lives and as such should be regulated. Others
examine the role of government, law, or public policy as a reg-
ulator; and the most controversial of my writings address im-
mense issues like preventing nuclear holocaust, just war assess-
ments, corporate social responsibility, workers’ rights, and the
credibility of political rhetoric. Similarly, I at rst tended to
review books having to do generically with engineering and
technology; but over time I turned more and more to others
concerned with containing violence and establishing condi-
tions necessary to peace.
Finally, like any author who is neither a genius nor a ce-
lebrity, I have learned over the years that the publishing in-
dustry is not a reliable source of immortality. Yes, I did nd
an outlet for many of my writings, thanks very often to my
contacts with supportive groups. But a number of my writings
have also succumbed to the complex decision making of pub-
lishers who are ever sensitive to economic and at times even
political considerations. e rst of these was Probability and
Opinion, which the Dutch publisher abandoned as soon as li-
brary purchases fell o. en Human Being and Being Human
was axed by Prentice-Hall, purchaser of Appleton-Century-
Crofts, because it was aimed at Catholic and not secular class-
rooms, which were their bailiwick. ese editorial decisions I
could understand, if not appreciate—unlike those regarding
my later work in the area of political philosophy.
After publishing several articles about privacy and private
property, I decided to write a book that would address the dif-
ferent meanings and uses of “privacy” and “privacy rights.” I
was in Europe on sabbatical leave (1989–1990) and had just
retirement I would do lawyerly volunteer work for a Senior
Law Project in Indianapolis. But while still employed in ac-
ademe my answer was a course I called Philosophy of Work.
Philosophy of Work was a profound learning experience
for me over the 1980s. Up to half of a typical class of some
twenty to thirty students would be enrolled under the auspic
-
es of the Division of Labor Studies, which depended heavily
on labor union support for its survival. My Labor Studies stu-
dents tended to be more experienced than the other students,
many of them being employees in government, education, and
industry. rough open discussion and occasionally confron-
tation they all learned from each other, and I from them, es-
pecially when each student presented a report on the philos-
ophy of a workplace, usually his or her own. Early on, I put
together a set of readings to serve as a text; then I wrote a set
of chapters to be used by distance learners, which went on to
win a national award. I served as their instructor as well, and
in reading the papers they submitted from all over the coun-
try I learned about being an airline attendant, a steel mill op-
erative, a member of a band, and countless other occupations
with their opportunities and disappointments (the makings of
a book that regrettably never happened). en I moved beyond
the textbook toward a thorough study of many other aspects
of work, including its history and various transformations.
In this particular book, as noted above, I considered work
as part of a complex social contract that is no longer being
honored. us, it has a political dimension. So also do most of
my other writings. Each of the articles I wrote about technol-
ogy over a ten-year period (1978–1988) places technology in
the context of human communities, values, and controversies.
7170
and thereafter unemployed) put me in touch with Jennifer
Ruark, acquisitions editor for philosophy books with Rowman
& Littleeld. She and I agreed I would send her my manu-
script before the end of spring semester 1996, and I did so.
She sent it out to a reviewer (someone, she said, from a list I
had provided) who recommended publication but posed a set
of questions. I answered the questions; then soon after I in-
formed her I now had a fairly nal version, which she asked
me for and then sent out to new reviewers. e latter recom-
mended against publication even though they obviously had
not read my work carefully. Why this rejection? Well, actual-
ly this is a question to which I can give a good, albeit partly
speculative, answer. If interested, just read on; otherwise skip
down to London town.
Upon receipt of Ms. Ruark’s rejection letter, in which she
also announced that she was leaving the publishing industry
to work for a weekly newspaper that reported on higher ed-
ucation, I wrote to the senior editor, requesting return of my
manuscript and adding some thoughts of my own. Neither of
the recent reviewers understood what they were reading, I said,
and one seemed to have read no more than two of the nine
chapters. at suced, though, to do a hatchet job based on
introductory material that merely summarized what was dis-
cussed at length in subsequent chapters. e publisher guard-
ed the reviewers’ anonymity, but gave them the author’s name
so they could identify my institution and assess the book’s im-
portance on the basis of my institutional aliation.
Ms. Ruark remained neutral to the end, and claimed that
distance kept her from talking personally “about all of this,”
and asserted a disclaimer of responsibility as follows: “As you
corrected proofs of my book on work. us freed for the task,
I then spent hours in libraries rst in London and then in Paris
researching privacy. Once back at IUPUI, however, I got dis-
tracted by a digression into a labyrinth called Philanthropic
Studies. At a faculty party I met the head secretary of the newly
established Center for the Study of Philanthropy. I said some-
thing to her about studying the public/private distinction and
she urged me not to neglect the “third sector” in which are to
be found nonprot organizations. I then became involved in
Philanthropic Studies by being named an adjunct professor,
teaching several courses, and as a member of the campus ten-
ure committee successfully advancing Center director Robert
Payton’s application. In return, I suppose, I received a grant to
help me add the third sector to my emerging book on privacy.
I was then incentivized along these lines by an agreement
between the Center and the Indiana University Press to pub-
lish a series of monographs. Co-editor Payton invited me to
submit my manuscript, and eventually I did. Reviewers were
favorable towards my work but deemed it too complex. A
co-editor told me nonetheless that they would be “sending a
contract soon,” but none appeared. Instead I got a letter from
the editor of the Press telling me my manuscript was too long
and no longer interested them. So I then pulled all the third
sector material out and into a manuscript I titled e Public
Good. Payton said he would review it, but somehow just nev-
er got around to it.
Meanwhile, the privacy part of my once complex man-
uscript went down a seemingly more promising but ulti-
mately disappointing path. Jane Cullen, through whom I
had Work, Inc. published by Temple University Press (by then
7372
also take an author’s ideological leanings into consideration.
Anyway, the story of my public/private book isn’t yet concluded.
With the fate of my troubled manuscript tilting to the
negative, as was my knee (see below) I went to London with
Anne to begin a semester as a Research Fellow at the Centre
for the Study of Democracy (CSD) of Westminster University
(to be followed by a semester in Paris). CSD is an outgrowth
of the London Polytechnic Institute. When I was there it
housed some twenty-four graduate students from all over the
world and some highly productive political theorists, includ-
ing Australian political scientist John Keane. Keane (who has
since returned to his native Australia) wrote voluminously
about civil society, peace, and democracy; and yet he served
as Director of CSD. Upon my arrival in London, he and I
met and he told me about Cambridge University Press’s new
“trans-disciplinary” series of publications on topical questions.
He was on the editorial board for this series, he said, believed
my book would t right in, and asked if I might provide him
with a copy at once. I did, and as noted above, so informed
Rowman & Littleeld, should they wish to compete. Keane’s
support came to naught, however, when a super-scholar at
Cambridge University submitted a book manuscript on a top-
ic that competed with mine. I continued researching anyway,
but no publisher’s contract appeared.
Following my return to IUPUI a year later, the next pub-
lisher I contacted decided my manuscript was too long; and
then two other publishers decided that the manuscript with-
out the additions was not as marketable as they would like. So
I self-published that manuscript online as Public Power, Private
Interests and Where Do We Fit In? (1998).
know, manuscript evaluations are not a science, and review-
ers may be disinclined to endorse manuscripts for a variety
of idiosyncratic reasons. We always try our best to nd re-
viewers that are sympathetic to the author’s approach and to
weed out those who may be prejudiced against it. In spite of
this, the process is far from perfect; unfortunately, publish-
ers must rely on it, and we can send manuscripts out to only
a limited number of readers.”
What Ruark’s letter did not address, I thought, was the
fact that a broad-scope book is not easily evaluated fairly by a
narrow-scope defender of an academic discipline’s rigidities.
As the representatives of a discipline hole up in familiar nich-
es beyond which they seldom roam, they are likely to view
with suspicion any invitation to explore beyond the connes
of their discipline. And if they have to t each work into one
and only one niche, they will determine its value by the ex-
tent to which it adheres to approved methodology and top-
ic selection, and preferably comes to one or another of the
niche’s approved conclusions. e second set of reviewers of
my manuscript—writing, I believed, from within two dier-
ent disciplines—knew in advance what positions were accept-
able in their discipline and found mine not to be any of those.
Upon hearing this rationale of mine, a friend who had
worked in the publishing business advised me that I might be
looking only at the veneer of things and that the real story in-
volved a nancially over-extended publisher whose corrective
strategy required avoiding all but “sure-thing” contracts. Such
glimpses into the inuence of the marketplace are useful for
any idealist, especially one in academe. But I suspected that
decisions to publish or not, while surely market driven, might
7574
speculative level I have learned lessons from Frankfurt School
philosophers and from the scholastic methodology of omas
Aquinas. But I doubt if any theoretical model would have set
me on a critical path in the absence of my personal encounters
with power-oriented agents of the communities I have known
and left. Whether I reect on hierarchical encounters expe-
rienced in seminaries or those experienced in academe, I am
thereby led to ponder much more fundamental concerns about
the validity of any community and of the individuals who have
linked their lives and fortunes to it. When did I become a crit-
ical thinker? I can’t say precisely, but something was already at
work when as a freshman in college I wrote a critical review of
my speech teacher’s performance as Othello in a school play
(to his credit, he gave me a passing grade). And on a person-
al level I still have not fully mastered the humane art of tact-
ful communication. But at least I have moved suciently be-
yond my own ego to recognize how dependent I am on others.
e traits in question here can be expressed more theo-
retically in reference to what some philosophers call relation-
al autonomy. In briefest terms, this situates the individual
and his or her autonomy in an interactive context of mutu-
al dependencies. ese dependencies, in turn, may vary from
one context to another and from one time to another. I owe
much to my family, including my mother and grandparents,
to teachers and colleagues, especially philosophers who are
specialists in other elds.
Among these, I must include with superlatives Anne, the
feminist philosopher who for thirty-four years was my col-
league and my signicant other. From her, I learned in ever
so many ways that the male of our troubled species may not
A year later, at age sixty-ve, I retired from salaried pro-
fessorial duties in order to take advantage of a “free money”
retirement plan that Indiana University had set up precise-
ly to lure older faculty into retirement in order to create slots
for younger, less expensive scholars in search of employment.
With no academic duties to perform, I now ll my hours
much more randomly. I still edit manuscripts that address eth-
ical issues in the workplace for e Journal of Business Ethics,
and continue to publish articles on topics of concern to me.
In particular, I have become especially critical of justications
for a minimally monitored arms industry. is issue had, in
fact, stirred in my consciousness back in the early ‘90s when
the industry fought calls for a “peace dividend” without ben-
et of either the defunct Cold War rationales or the yet-to-
be touted “global war on terrorism.” Anyway, I have recently
published critical examinations of our government’s count-
er-terrorism rhetoric and am now redirecting this critique to
the arms industry itself. For example, I have been critical of
the killer drone industry that is now prospering under exist-
ing US foreign policy. In addressing these topics, I am com-
pletely in sync with what is known as the critical movement in
the eld of foreign relations. Interestingly, most contributors
to this movement are based in Europe. eir eorts to aban-
don Hobbes in favor of a post-Westphalian world order have
barely made a dent in the thinking of “realist” and “neo-re-
alist” Americans who seem content with centuries-old plati-
tudes about the inevitability of war and hence the need to be
better armed than one’s enemies.
I may lack the necessary objectivity to provide a gene-
alogy of this critical turn in my thinking and writing. On a
7776
part-time teaching jobs in a number of dierent institutions.
At her lowest point, in fact, she had to rely on unemploy-
ment compensation. en in 1981, after all her children had
returned to Houston, she received a grant to study biomed
-
ical ethics for a year at Indiana University in Bloomington.
While in Bloomington, Anne became an observer in the
university’s renal dialysis program in Indianapolis, and on one
occasion gave a talk sponsored by our Student Philosophy
Club. en Mary Mahowald, a member of our department
to whom tenure had just been awarded, announced she would
be leaving with her children and cell biologist husband, who
had been oered a better position in Cleveland. (ey would
later move to the University of Chicago, where both hus-
band and wife would become leading gures in their respec-
tive elds.) To replace Mary, we advertised for someone who
could do biomedical ethics and feminist philosophy. Having
narrowed our list to ve candidates, one of whom was Anne,
we interviewed them at an APA meeting in Columbus, Ohio.
en, having already heard Anne give a lecture, we used our
limited funds to bring two other candidates to our campus.
Neither was found to be satisfactory for our position, but did
well enough elsewhere. By then the academic year was winding
down and Anne had to make personal arrangements in New
York. So she sat in my oce (I was the department chair) and
insisted on knowing if she had the job or not. I could think
of no relevant reason (other than ageism) why she shouldn’t,
since her interests and competence lled our needs as adver-
tised. So I said yes, and the paperwork began to ow.
Having already found herself an apartment very close to
where I was living, Anne nonetheless agreed to let me show
be the best guide to a better future. At one point, we planned
to publish a text consisting of philosophically relevant short
stories; but we had to cease and desist when we came face to
face with the fees publishers impose for use of their treasured
materials. No matter, she had already compiled a far-reach-
ing agenda for herself. To numerous scholars located around
the world, she will be known as a meticulous analyst of prob-
lems that have arisen and will yet arise in the fast changing
domain of bioethics. Her almost meteoric rise to such prom-
inence could not have been anticipated before her arrival in
Indianapolis, for she obtained her doctorate comparatively
late in life, and her career blossomed only after she gained her
rst tenure-track position from IUPUI at the age of fty-two.
Anne Donchin was raised in Chicago with one sister by
a non-practicing but culturally Jewish father and a non-prac-
ticing but emotionally Catholic mother. She had become
Episcopalian by the time we met. After early admission to
the University of Chicago, she married a geologist at the age of
nineteen, and moved with him to the University of Wisconsin
at Madison, where in 1954 she completed a B.A. majoring in
history. en, after a year in Norway, they settled in Houston,
where he was on the faculty of Rice University, and togeth-
er they raised a daughter and three sons. In 1965 she got a
Master’s Degree in Philosophy there, and then by commut-
ing to Austin she earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1970. She
then taught African-American students for three years at Texas
Southern University, divorced her husband, then moved with
her three sons to New York, where she taught for three years
at SUNY Old Westbury. Her contract there was not renewed,
so she then spent the next six years surviving on a series of
7978
Anne said we could use her parents’ Lake Shore Drive apart-
ment because they were wintering in Florida. On the way to
Chicago, I pulled o the road half-way there and we fell im-
mediately into one another’s arms. Once in her parents’ apart-
ment there was no question of doing anything else before rst
throwing ourselves into the most passionate sexual intercourse
I had ever experienced. e rest of our weekend could be de-
scribed in touristic terms, but a bond had been sealed that
neither of us expected.
In the weeks that followed, Anne sometimes stayed over-
night at my house and I sometimes stayed at her apartment. I
would see to it before I left that my children were settled for
the night, but that was never enough to neutralize concern and
guilt. Eventually, though, Anne freed herself of a relationship in
which she had been involved and began to stay with me more
often. e children saw their time with me being reduced, were
confused about the rapid succession of women in my life, and
never did decide if they liked Anne or not. In spatial terms,
there was room enough in my house for Anne; but she did
not believe she could ever be comfortable in a house associat-
ed with my former wife. So we began to search for what would
be our house; our second oer, on a house just a street away
from her apartment, was accepted. e seller, Sophie Marks,
a widow whose husband had long been incapacitated before
he died, advised us to “make do” with what we had if we pos-
sibly could. Unconsciously, in fact, we had done just that, be-
cause, for example, we had not even noticed there was no door
on the garage (this, according to Sophie, was due to her late
husband’s limited driving skills and her eventually telling him
not to bother xing the garage doors any more).
her a number of other apartment complexes around the city,
none of which was suitable for her. She also accepted my invi-
tation to have a drink in the rotating bar at the top of a local
hotel. As the state oce building came into view at our table, I
thoughtlessly joked that she might want to remember that un-
employment claims are processed there. ough deeply hurt,
she kept her feelings to herself. Chastened by her earlier expe-
riences in New York, she was not about to oend the chair of
the department that had just hired her. Happily, our relation
-
ship deteriorated no further; but it remained professional at
best. en gradually, things began to change. With the Jewish
woman whom I had been seeing, I attended a pre-Christmas
reception Anne gave in her apartment, and was very impressed
by the pâté she had made for the occasion. Soon after, Anne
asked me if I would water her plants while she was away for
the holidays. I agreed, and in carrying out my horticultur-
al responsibilities I felt like a voyeur in the secret palace of a
mystical maiden. Scruples aside, I opened a drawer in a nar-
row dresser and saw her lingerie—no dierent from what can
be seen in any quality department store, but hers. Why was I
so fascinated? What was so special about this elegant woman
whom I almost didn’t even hire?
What I remember next is a January walk together in the
cold and slushy snow of Eagle Creek Park, west of Indianapolis.
What mattered was that we were together; what made lit-
tle sense to either of us was why we chose to do that rather
than be together indoors (but we did come to annualize that
walk as our anniversary). Not long after that occasion we be-
gan talking about driving to Chicago together. e question
of where we would stay came up, and after some hesitation
8180
Mayan ruins at Palenque in Chiapas. Tourist information
guides failed to mention that we would be there in burning
season. After arriving at the Villahermosa Airport, which was
two hours away, we drove o in a rental car at sunset. Farmers
were burning remnants of the previous crop prior to planting
anew, and the smoke reduced visibility close to zero. I turned
on the headlights, only to be told by the police to turn them
o. Driving and arriving in the dark, we did nd our way. e
next day we climbed around on the ruins, and the day after
that we returned to the airport and soon learned that due to
the smoke cover, our ight had been cancelled. I beat oth-
er passengers to the phone and made a hotel reservation in
Villahermosa. Refreshed overnight and fed, we then went to
the Parque Museo La Venta to see wonderful Olmec statues,
then back to the airport and on to another stop, where by con-
suming an ice cube, I came down with Mexican-style diarrhea.
Since I was on sabbatical during the fall semester of 1983,
Anne and I went to London. Eventually, we found a stately at
to rent in Bloomsbury. But our initial quarters in Islington,
close to Friedrich Engels’ former residence, were untenable.
Across the street from us there was a so-called Council house
(property of local government) that got rented out for insuf-
ferably loud and intolerably late-lasting parties. (My remedy
of sleeping under a mattress in the kitchen was ineective.)
Appeals to local police were in vain because, they said, they
had no authority to regulate a Council house. Once moved
from there, we soon regained our sanity.
Having own into Madrid in 1984, Anne and I rent-
ed a car and headed for Barcelona. For a while, the road was
quite modern and easy on the driver. Farther along, I found
We added doors and a proper brick divider, and I moved
in with my two children, Anne joining us later when her lease
expired. en we devoted some time to turning the heavily
draped blue décor of our beige brick 1925 Italianate villa into
a pleasant living environment. In itself unimportant, one of
the rst changes I made was to remove an ancient and long
unused stair lift. In retrospect, this event has a certain reso-
nance: for, years later in New York, I would be doing the same
thing a second time because Anne needed one late in her life,
and after she died I had it removed.
In short, beginning in 1982, Anne and I began to share
one life even as each of us went forth, together or separately,
to various academic conferences. She, in particular, quickly
emerged from scholarly obscurity into a feminist scholar with a
global reputation. As noted above, it all began with her obtain-
ing a tenure-track position in 1982. As the years went by, she
travelled ever more broadly to feminist conferences as far away
as Sweden, Argentina, Taiwan, China, and Japan. Along the
way she also attended some foreign-based conferences on my
itinerary. And for several decades we regularly traveled togeth-
er, at rst as vacationers and then in connection with academic
appointments, several of which were quite prestigious. I certain-
ly do not wish to clutter this manuscript with routine travel-
ogues that are far more entertaining viewed on websites. But I
would like to share some unplanned happenings of ours that
add evidence to the claim that our world is somewhat awed.
During our rst summer together, in 1982, Anne and
I did a two-stop tour of London and Paris, to each of which
we would often return. e following summer we went on a
one-time visit to Mexico. Our rst destination was the ancient
8382
had a bad knee. When the time came to pack up and move to
Paris on April 15, 1990, I discovered my six-month visa was
expiring that very day (Anne had been to Strasburg in the in-
terim, so her deadline had already been extended). ere being
no viable alternative, I arranged an overnight stay with a friend
in Paris and boarded the Eurostar at sunset. It sped along un-
til, on the outskirts of Paris, it came to a stop while the police
investigated a train track suicide. I reached my friend’s apart-
ment at two a.m. Later that same morning, I left on an earli-
er train than the one I had originally reserved and was back in
London less than twenty-four hours after my outgoing depar-
ture. is rapid turn-around clearly made me a person of inter-
est to law enforcement. I was accordingly escorted from train
to gate by an inquisitive gentleman who decided that, suspi-
cions to the contrary, I was not a drug smuggler. My passport
restamped, I reentered for six months but left two weeks later.
Anne and I resided in a high-rise apartment building in
Paris during the spring semester of 1990, but on one occasion
she returned to London to sit in on a Parliamentary debate
over legalizing articial insemination. Returning on a hover-
craft, she tripped on somebody’s suitcase strap, and was bare-
ly recognizable when I picked her up at the Gare du Nord.
She clearly needed medical care for her nose, so I brought her
to a hospital near where we were staying. An aide tended to
her uids over the weekend, then the regular health care pro-
viders returned on Monday morning. An “equipe” (team) of
perhaps ten individuals came to her room, checked her over,
and then after consulting together outside, announced that she
needed to stay for more tests. I told them we had no French
health insurance, and they told me they weren’t yet set up to
myself on a steeply rising, one-lane road with no shoulder
and disturbingly frequent encounters with oncoming vehi-
cles. By the time we reached the town of Morella at the top, I
was too nervous to tolerate lunch. So we left, and soon discov-
ered that descending the eastern side was much easier. Once in
Barcelona (where street signs were not in Spanish but in rebel-
lious Catalan) the ancient streets were so jammed with trac
that I drove not to our hotel but to the car rental oce to re-
turn our car a day early. After legitimating our trip by going to
Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and Joan Miro’s museum, we took a
train back to Madrid while having a silverware and tablecloth
lunch in the dining car. Later on, as Anne and I were walking
to a restaurant, she stopped to mail a postcard and as she raised
her arm a young boy grabbed her bag. He ran right into me,
and I easily pinned him down on the sidewalk. Locals across
the street were watching, and as I looked back at them I quick-
ly realized neither of us knew much Spanish so we couldn’t
easily process the perp at a police station. I got a good grip on
Anne’s bag and let him go. en, by seeing seldom-visited El
Greco paintings in Toledo, we capped our tour successfully.
In 1988, the Eli Lilly Foundation announced a fellowship
competition for second-specialization projects. Both Anne and
I applied, and both were nalists. When interviewed I failed to
convince them, because I had a law degree, that my plan to do
NGO legal volunteering was not just a law career starter. Anne,
impressing them with her bioethics agenda, won an award for
1989–1990 divided between London and Paris. Being a kind
person, she invited me to join her. First in London, from our
basement at on Hugo Road, I often made my way to a phys-
iotherapist rather than to the UCL Main Library, because I
8584
stop away, we stayed by the exit next to a man on crutches on
one side and his companion on the other. When we got o
and began walking toward a stairway, another ex-passenger
ran toward us and in a British-sounding voice shouted, “I say
there, that chap was after your wallet.” I felt my pocket, then
shouted back, “He got it.”
“He did?” the Brit responded. “I say.”
Moral: Lisbon had become home to too many hungry
expats after India retook Goa in 1961. Because I now had no
driver’s license, we replaced our plan to drive to Spain with
several short bus tours and the services of Manuel Sousa, a
private taxi driver.
is next travel tale involves almost uniquely serious tra-
vail. Early in our relationship, Anne had told me that she had
an articial valve in her heart made from pig’s gut. e initial
failure was due to a fever incurred while attending a work-
shop in Colorado and the replacement was done in New York,
where she was still living. We knew it would not last forever,
and I often tried to imagine how we would know when it had
failed. We were about to nd out a decade after our coming
together. In her role as Director of Women’s Studies, Anne
had sought ways to expand the program’s signicance; and by
so doing she fell out of favor with our (male) Dean, who, be-
fore becoming an administrator, had claimed to be a feminist.
To escape the pressure, Anne arranged to spend fall semester
1992 as an unpaid Visiting Research Scholar at the Wellesley
College Center for Research on Women. Her dierences with
the Dean still unresolved, she got him to extend this arrange-
ment through spring semester 1993.
At the end of her stay I ew east to help her move back.
take credit cards. After further deliberation, they sent an ap-
prentice member of their equipe to inform us that hers was
just the right sort of case for outpatient treatment.
Another time, Anne and I were staying in Paris, and ear-
ly in April we abruptly ew o to Florence, or Firenza, for a
week. Once there and settled in at a pension, we discovered
that it was Holy Week; so all the publically owned institu-
tions, notably museums, would be open not at hours posted
in tourist guides but whenever the employees decided. us,
from one day to the next we would pick an ocially open
museum, nd it closed, then go instead to an ocially closed
museum that was open. In this way we succeeded in visiting
all the places on our list, including the Accademia Gallery of
Florence, which houses Michelangelo’s authentic David (not
its outdoor copy). As a Holy Week bonus we got to see medi-
evally accoutered marchers and pigeons released from parade
oats for the occasion. Except for one day spent determining
that the Tower of Pisa was still leaning, we devoured Firenza
every day and returned to Paris utterly enamored.
Anne and I had just arrived in Lisbon, mid-1990s, and
went to see the Ajuda National Palace. at done, we joined
a line to take a bus back to our hotel. She got on the bus but
all of a sudden I was blocked by a crowd of kids. en she
called to me to give her money for the fare, and when I tried
to comply I realized that I had no wallet. She dismounted and
we found our way on foot to the police station, where I re-
ported my loss and lled out a please-retrieve form (this wal-
let, with cash missing, was mailed to my US address months
later). e next day I bought a new wallet, and the day af-
ter we mounted a metro to go to a museum. It being just one
8786
metallic valve that was more reliable than the earlier one but
required lifelong use of Coumadin to avoid clots (she would
live another twenty-two years). Two corollaries of this inter-
vention that also lasted the rest of her life were periodic draw-
ing of blood to check the clotting factor (a procedure she even-
tually tended to herself); and the added risk that comes with
any injury that causes bleeding (occasionally a problem in suc-
ceeding years; and ultimately, as she began having falls, a de-
terminative factor in her demise).
Once sure that Anne was recovering normally after that
emergency surgery, I ew o to Boston with my son Rob, who
had just graduated from college, to retrieve her car and belong-
ings from our friends’ house. is we did with minimal visit-
ing and touring, because Rob was anxious to get back to his
ancée to set forth on their planned trip to Europe. We did
stop overnight, however, at the Ashram in upstate New York
where David and his wife were then staying, and the next night
in southwestern Pennsylvania, where the following day we vis-
ited the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Falling Waters house.
Anne and I had planned these stops, so I felt I was acting on
her behalf. She and I subsequently did visit the house togeth-
er, but in the interim I wrote her a poem memorializing the
initial visit (see Falling Waters in Appendix I-D).
My nal trip with Anne was, to be precise, with her ash-
es. Her daughter, oldest son with his new wife, and a cousin,
together with my children and grandchildren, met in South
Haven, Michigan, where on July 11, 2015, we boarded a repli-
ca sloop. My son, who had driven me and a disintegrable
urn containing Anne’s ashes from New York and thence to
Michigan, carried it now on to the sloop. At a time and place
First, though, we decided to visit historic Salem. While there
she became fatigued, so we had an early lunch, which seemed
to help. But when we then set about walking up a slight incline
to peer at the ocean, she couldn’t keep up with me. Returning
to the car, we headed back to the house where she was staying
(with Victor and Inez in a Boston suburb). She slept all the way
back, went to bed early, and felt no better the following morn-
ing. Our friends suggested possible remedies, but I suspected
this might well be the event we knew would come. I took her
to a hospital in Cambridge, where tests conrmed that the valve
had failed and would need to be replaced with a metallic valve.
By phone, Anne’s cardiologist in Indianapolis, Dr. John
Brown, told her she might as well have it done at Peter Bent
Brigham Hospital there in Boston, that being where sheiks and
sultans come for such operations. A world-renowned specialist
was singled out, but as the days went by it became clear that
he was vacationing and no one knew quite where. By then,
Anne was feeling stronger, and further phone calls got her
scheduled for surgery in Indianapolis the following Monday.
When the taxi arrived to take us to the airport, the owners
were away and I was concentrating so much on Anne’s com-
fort that I neglected to lock the front door of the house (as
I learned later). anks to our caring travel agent, we sat in
rst class on our ight back. On Sunday we were joined at our
house by Anne’s son David and his wife, and they were with
me at University Hospital during Anne’s surgery, performed
by Dr. Brown, and then for several days after until her condi-
tion had clearly stabilized.
In the same Krannert Pavilion where such VIPs as Julie
Eisenhower Nixon had stayed, Anne progressed with a new
8988
Part Three:
Other Aspects of My Life
I
have now covered the two main careers that make up my
life. But there is more to one’s life than careers, as I have il-
lustrated by including various tangential matters along the
way. In addition to these, however, there are other substantive
facets of my life that merit more than just passing comment.
ese involve my dealings with sexuality, with groups, with
physical decline and health care, with religion and/or theol-
ogy, and nally with deaths that occurred to members of my
family and to friends.
Along the way I have indicated how sexuality became a
part of my life. Now, though, I feel I should ll in some gaps
regarding the beginning, middle, and end of my sexual life.
In itself, perhaps, this topic doesn’t require any special com-
mentary, but it surely does given the destructive policies im-
posed on it by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Sexuality
is, of course, a basic dimension of being human, albeit one
that has undergone many cultural concentrations on or de-
viations from its reproductive function. Up to and including
recent times, most concentrations on sexuality’s link to repro-
duction were formulated so as to keep a female loyal to her
(often family-chosen) spouse.
Until modern times, the Chinese dealt with this objective
by miniaturizing girls’ feet, whereas in Africa the preferred ap-
proach has been female genital mutilation (FGM). FGM in-
volves cutting, often removing, external genitalia and/or clitoris
on Lake Michigan approved by the crew, he dropped the urn
over the side of the boat and a member of the crew gave us
our precise latitude and longitude
12
at that moment. us
were Anne’s remains joined with waters that reached Chicago,
where she was raised, and Glen Arbor, where she and I once
had a summer home.
12 42° 24, 64’ N; 086° 17, 34’ W.
9190
for priests. Eorts to remove this ban continued down into the
16th century, but ceased to have any inuence in the post-Ref-
ormation period. From that time to this, the vast majority of
priests in union with Rome have been at least ocially celibate.
Growing up Catholic, I knew nothing about this histo-
ry, nor did any of my elders consider sex education their re-
sponsibility. Once I was old enough to realize that sex dier-
ences matter somehow but would not be elucidated on the
home front, I resorted to picking up tips from an older boy
in the neighborhood. He was neither a good learner nor a
good teacher, however. Nor was sex education included in
my high school’s curriculum; and no Internet was available
as it is now for self-education. So I don’t believe I understood
the “facts” about intercourse or masturbation until I was in
my late teens. By then, however, I had also interiorized the
applicable Catholic rules, which can be reduced to two: no
sex outside of marriage and no sex in marriage that is not in-
herently conducive to conception. After puberty I had “wet
dreams,” and once I started passionate dating, i.e., to the point
of heavy kissing, I occasionally had unintended semen emis-
sions while fully awake.
My virtue (by Catholic standards, be reminded) none-
theless remained intact, and temptations abated once I was en-
sconced in a seminary setting, where inappropriate contact was
kept to a minimum by prohibitions against entering another
seminarian’s room. But intellectual enlightenment was deemed
essential for future confessors: in our course on Canon Law
we learned how to label just about any sexual sin one could
imagine. My virginity continued intact when I was performing
as a priest stateside and then for some time in Belgium. is
from a pre-pubescent girl to substantially diminish her sexual
pleasure quotient and thereby enhance her homing instinct. A
secondary objective of FGM is to prevent bastard births, but
the development of highly eective contraceptives has under-
mined that reason, at least technically. So in our times, argu-
ably the principal reason for imposing cultural controls on fe-
male sexuality is to minimize women’s’ sexual pleasure. ere
are in any event still some 200 million women and girls who
have undergone FGM. And various cultures still tell women
not to have orgasms without male approval. By contrast, men
have been subject to fewer constraints on sexual pleasure, even
in societies subject to otherwise repressive (e.g., Islamic) reli-
gious values. But the Catholic Church, after centuries of ac-
quiescence in this regard, became in time quite restrictive; and
that is where my dealings with sex enter the scene.
For more than half of its now twenty-one-century ex-
istence, the Roman Catholic Church was undecided about
what, if any, special rules needed to be imposed on clerical
sexual activity; so for centuries, none were. By the third cen-
tury AD, pro-ascetic cult ideas, e.g., Manichaeism, began ap-
pealing to both eastern and western men, including arch-as-
cetic Augustine. And during the next several centuries quite
a few joined monasteries, where poverty and celibacy were
de rigueur. Parish priests, meanwhile, married, had children,
and often made their children heirs of Church property. Pope
Pelagius I required priests to sign away their right to deed over
Church property; and in 1022 AD Pope Benedict VIII forbade
priests thenceforth to have wives or mistresses. en in 1139
AD, Pope Innocent II got the Second Lateran Council to de-
clare all priest marriages null and to make celibacy mandatory
92
changed, however, when a Jewish medical student I came to
know told me she felt it was a waste for me to be a virgin and
oered to correct this lacuna whenever I wanted. After some
days reecting on how inappropriate her proposition was, I
eventually arranged to meet her for an introductory lesson. We
met, I failed, and she assured me that would change. It did,
turning me into a sexual animal so taken with it all as to pro-
pose that she and I move to Israel to be happy ever after. Her
response to that was to faint, and so she enabled me to regain
my sanity, but now as a sexual being.
e timing of my introduction to intercourse must have
been divinely arranged, because soon after it had taken place
Claire’s lover broke o with her; and when I next saw her she
seemed despondent, if not suicidal. She accepted my oer to
drive her to Durum in Germany, where we stayed in a room
in an inn with one double bed. Our rst night together I did
not try to have sex with her, and she took this as an indication
of my respect for her. Her response the next day was to ask
me to nd condoms so we could have sex. Without even be-
ing conscious of how far I had departed from Catholic norms
at this point, I simply complied; and so began an intense car-
nal relationship that eventually had me moving into her par-
ents’ house, fully intending to marry their daughter. Physically,
our interactions were altogether fullling; but Claire added a
dimension by calling our respective genitalia Point (dot) and
Virgule (comma) and attributing each of our lovemaking ses-
sions to their express desires. As described above, however, it
all ended in a transatlantic breakup that we both regretted.
As already described, after Claire and I had ended our re-
lationship I was introduced to an ex-nun studying social work.
Grandma’s convent kin
Mother Liliosa, Rose and Frank Heili, me (c. 1955)
Farm sister with Grandpa (July 4, 1946)
Mom with Byrne kinfolk at my First Mass (1960)
Mom and I with friends at my First Mass
With Msgr. Wolf in KS Basilica of BVM in DC
With my sister’s new family (1961) Mass makers on duty
With Blessed Sacrament principal, pastor, and 8th graders With international colleagues in Louvain (1964)
Faculty union leaders
Claire with refreshment Co-authors Ed and Ed
Philosophers of technology I’ve admired
Peg with Coco and Rob
93
Soon my desire to be in a relationship again took hold of me
and on the basis of my superior social status as stressed by her
mother, I won her hand over that of a good dancer she had
been dating. Our married sex life was usually fullling, even
when we were at odds in other respects. Once this relation-
ship ended, again as described above, I became for the most
part celibate until eventually I became attracted to a widowed
Jewish mother whom I actually thought about marrying; but
she had no such thoughts, as she said, “for the foreseeable fu-
ture.” en Anne arrived on the scene.
When Anne and I met she was just over and I just under
fty years of age. I believe I was taken with her from the outset;
but as chair of our department I had to make caution one of
my principal virtues. Eventually, though, as described above,
we became sexually active and entered into a wonderful rela-
tionship that only ended with her death thirty-two years later.
As other seniors might surmise, though, our relationship’s sex-
ual dimension did not continue quite that long. For years I had
been taking medications to regulate my blood pressure, and
eventually they prevented me from having an erection. Once
faced with this common but nonetheless upsetting problem,
I underwent a corrective clinical treatment that was success-
ful but unpleasant. “Erectile dysfunction” (ED) drugs came
on market a few years later (1998 and 2003), and I obtained a
doctor’s prescription. But for some reason I never had the pre-
scription lled. Whatever her feelings, Anne never asked me
to do so, even though, I assume, she would have appreciated
continuation of our sexual activity. Before long, however, other
health problems emerged. For the remaining years of our life
together we regularly expressed our love for one another, but
Philosophers celebrating my retirement
ree generations on my 75th Anne by Lake Michigan
9594
place which for a day was central to my biography: the Minor
Seminary of St. omas Aquinas in Hannibal, Missouri.
e St. omas Aquinas Seminary was established the
same year the diocese was founded with Joseph Marling as its
rst bishop (1956). e year after I left Blessed Sacrament par-
ish, its pastor Richard Kaiser became the seminary’s third rec-
tor (1964–1970). Whatever else he may have accomplished in
that role, he is known for his “underwear speech” to incom-
ing students. e gist of this speech: remove your underwear
before going to bed; tight clothing isn’t healthy; underpants
don’t allow your manhood to breathe. It is now known from
the accounts of a number of former students that this policy
facilitated the pedophile intrusions of a faculty member who
went on to become a bishop. en, in the wake of student rev-
elations, he was forced to resign. e seminary is now closed.
Bishop Marling retired in 1969.13
In contrast to the negative aspects of the foregoing topic,
I can be more positive about contributions to my intellectual
life and the people along the way who did the contributing in
so many ways. Among specialists in other elds I should cite
those who have taught me many things about politics, law, la-
bor studies, business ethics, and in some respects theology as
well. Many people over the years have helped me as a writer
with regard to both ideas and how to express them. Others have
13 Phillip O’Connor, “Secrets, Sins and Silence Part 1: e Untold
Story of Sexual Abuse at St. omas Aquinas Seminary,“ St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, Nov. 13, 2004, online at http://www.bishop-accountability.org/
news2004_07_12/2004_11_13_ OConnor_SecretsSins.htm; “y Child’s
Face: Childproof 19: Louis W. McCorkle and Clergy Sexual Abuse at St.
omas Aquinas Seminary,“ pp. 7-9, online at http://thychildsface.blogspot.
com/2011/09/childproof-19-msgr-louis-w-mccorkle-and.html
mostly with words often abetted by hugs and kisses.
To summarize, my participation in the sexual dimension
of life was not particularly unusual except for the fact that its
emergence was delayed and stultied by politically motivated
Church rules that never should have been enacted and, once
in place, should have been abolished centuries ago. I say this
not only because the celibacy regime is inherently unnatural
but because over the centuries it has by no means been tran-
quilly adhered to by those under its yoke. Rather has it di-
verted a substantial number of purportedly celibate men into
both wholesome and unwholesome activities whereby to sat-
isfy their sexual urges. Many clergy have had mistresses, and
many of the laity have known this to be the case. For ages, the
typical solution on the part of Church ocials was simply to
deny the undeniable. en came the Internet and social me-
dia, which have facilitated bringing the long-buried issues out
in the open. In Italy, the mistresses of clergy are openly beg-
ging the Pope to let them marry.
At the opposite end of this cause are victims’ recounting of
their sexual abuse by untold numbers of pedophile priests. ese
revelations have torn the semblance of propriety from many
dioceses, none more so than the Archdiocese of Boston, where
the hierarchy for decades maintained a policy of concealment
now laid bare in the Oscar-winning lm Spotlight. Numerous
experts are addressing this seeming plague of pedophilia; and
one theory to which I can relate is that the priestly role is im-
posed on a male youth before his sexuality has matured. At the
same time, they seek to explain why women in convents may
be lesbians but are rarely pedophiles. Against this background,
I will now, regrettably, report a sex scandal that occurred in a
9796
that I never did join. After I left the priesthood and went to
MSU—during the Vietnam era—I informed the draft board
in Peoria, Illinois, that I was no longer eligible for a clerical ex-
emption. ey in turn summoned me to appear before them,
and I did. I told them I was now an academic, and they told
me my talents would be better used there than in the military.
I agreed with them then and still do to this day.14
What stands out about that story, of course, is the fact that
I was still healthy enough at that time to perform some useful
function as a military being. at physical well-being has since
declined as my body, like that of other mortals, has yielded to
attacks and challenges of various kinds—beginning, in fact,
even earlier. As a child I was a bed-wetter for so many years
that I was subjected to catheterization as a cure (I did become
14 My ongoing relationship with the US government was never particularly
traumatic, but at times it was anything but problem-free. In contrast to the way
Selective Service and I settled my ex-priest status, my anti-war activism as an
academic negatively aected my faculty status for reasons derived from federal
government preferences. For what it’s worth, I always paid my taxes; federal and
state. As for governmental action, I certainly can’t complain about receiving a
Fulbright grant for a year and having it renewed for an additional year. And
thanks to my CIA contact at the American Embassy, I paid a pittance for a
car in good working condition that a former staer had left behind. is car
enabled me to enjoy many adventures within and beyond Belgium; and yes, as
I’ve reported, got me into several accidents. What might have become a major
problem with the government did not, again thanks to my CIA connection.
e problem itself arose because my passport photo was of me as a priest.
When love came into my life I wanted to be out from under that identity, so
I reported my passport stolen and looked forward to having it replaced. My
CIA friend doubted the veracity of my account and chided me for being so
careless with a passport at a time when Cold War relations were so intense. He
nonetheless recommended that I be given a replacement passport. (is was no
doubt because he had hired Claire for tasks having to do with locating persons
of interest, e.g., by having her go to an embassy in Brussels and inquire by name
for the person being sought.) In any event, I did receive my secular persona on a
new US passport, which I have ever since had renewed when necessary.
befriended, encouraged, advised, and as necessary corrected me
over the years. And lately I have been assisted in my projects
by countless people I shall never know whose labors make the
World Wide Web so valuable. anks to them I have access to
research material that would not otherwise be readily accessible.
As for my involvement in communities that prima fa-
cie were more interpersonal, these too involved elaborate in-
frastructure even if their technical aspects were less apparent.
e Roman Catholic Church dominated the rst three de-
cades of my life in such a way that my role as its agent could
be graphed as a parabola. During the next three decades or so,
my role as an agent of academe again took the form of a pa-
rabola. is academic parabola of agency was arguably more
elevated above the X axis than was the ecclesiastical parabo-
la of agency. Viewed in more detail, however, the dierenc-
es between these respective agencies may have been more in
form than in substance.
ough I believe otherwise, the same might be said about
the various groups I freely chose to join. In any event, I am
now in a position to join (or not) only what are de facto com-
munities of choice. Nonetheless, all sorts of communities and
organizations impinge on my life in various ways and at var-
ious times. ese include a fortiori my children and to some
extent grandchildren as well.
Numerous others touch me only via computer-generated
communication. Some of these intrude rather deeply into my
personal space, as when I receive a property tax bill or am told
that another war is being undertaken on my behalf. Most or-
ganizations, however, are accustomed to seeking my member-
ship via snail mail. And this reminds me of an important group
9998
I was strapped in for a ride up a hill to the local hospital. ere
I was given many tests, after which they declared I was viable
and so free to leave. e bill: under a hundred dollars. A confer-
ence attendee whom I knew well drove me back down the hill
and east to San Juan; and the next day I returned home, with
a rm conviction that I was not acclimated to the Caribbean.
Five years later I came to realize that I was no longer ac-
climated to any activity that required putting weight on my
left knee, which had been damaged originally in 1976 when
I stepped into a grass-concealed hole while racing my young
son to our car. en, in 1996, as we were preparing to leave
for a year-long sabbatical, the scope of my injury manifested
itself quite suddenly. We had rented our house for the year
we would be away on sabbatical, and in May I made many
trips down two ights of stairs to move things from my of-
ce, which was to become a bedroom, to a basement storage
room. One day, as I was carrying something down the steps,
my left knee crackled. I made it the rest of the way down ba-
by-style, one step at a time. e problem then seemed to go
away as I became more cautious about carrying things. But a
week later, as we were out walking at our summer residence, I
felt tremendous pain in my leg. I went to town for emergen-
cy care, and subsequently had anti-inammatory medication
and a series of treatments for muscle strain by an orthopedic
sports medicine specialist. An orthopedic surgeon whom I was
able to see only two months later had x-rays taken and talked
about having an MRI done and then performing arthroscop-
ic surgery on my knee. My departure for London being by
then just a few weeks away, I instead picked up my x-rays with
the idea that treatment would surely be available in the UK.
continent, no doubt in self-defense). I suered from serious
ear infections, and on at least one occasion had to be lanced.
When only six years old, I became the recipient of multiple
stings when the adults minding me in Georgia saw t to kick a
rotten tree stump which yellow jackets were occupying. A few
years later I had my tonsils removed after being given ether;
and for years thereafter cantaloupe always tasted like ether to
me. irty-some years later I had a hemorrhoidectomy which
removed aws brought on by stress at MSU and delayed my
interview in Indianapolis until I was again able to sit.
Also, of course, I have at times needed dental work. e
rst occasion was to smooth the edge on a (still diminished)
front tooth struck by an oil drum that slipped out of a rope
some neighbor kids were pulling on to lift it up over a tree
branch. Far more upbeat were dental treatments I received
while at Conception: I got to walk to the dentist in the near-
by village of Stanberry, where after treatment and mouth still
numb, I would buy a milkshake next door to slurp while walk-
ing back. en a few years later in Washington, D.C., I was a
dental student’s nal exam; and as such I couldn’t speak nor-
mally until his instructor could be found to grade the prepa-
ratory work in my mouth.
Not surprisingly, as I aged I got to experience more serious
health problems. One of these was perhaps a warning. Early in
March 1991, I went to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, for a Society
for Philosophy and Technology conference on a college cam-
pus. e humidity felt excessive to me, but I tried to make the
best of it. By the afternoon of the second day, though, I began
to feel woozy. It was a Saturday, unfortunately, and no campus
services were open, so they called an ambulance. When it arrived
101100
Leaving aside all subsequent eorts to lose weight in re-
sponse to the warning received in London, I must report that
years later, after having moved to New York, the time came
for me to become a patient at New York City’s great Hospital
for Special Surgery, where three years apart I had each knee
replaced with an articial substitute that keeps me going but,
regrettably, is not as good as what nature provides. Well worth
mentioning: the rst knee replacement was done in 1968; fol-
lowing forty years of progress, mine were replaced in 2008 and
2011 by renowned surgeon Charles Cornell.
Be it acknowledged that my knees were not the only
victims of my being overweight. As years went by, a series of
cardiologists who checked me over prescribed various blood
pressure medications. ese seemed to suce until one day
while I was having an EKG as part of a routine exam, the phy-
sician in charge had me transferred to the emergency room
of a nearby hospital in Yonkers, New York. From there I had
myself transferred to my then-cardiologist’s home base, Mt.
Sinai Hospital in New York City, where I had a triple by-pass
to counter closed arteries. A few years later I had a heavily
blocked carotid artery cleared out at the same hospital.
Of course, as I reect on my health over time as deter-
mined by what providers could provide, an angel of some sort
pokes me (gently) in the back and says in Latin (of course):
Mens sana in sano corpore, i.e., (One should have) a sound mind
in a sound body. I agree entirely, but this way of being is eas-
ier to state than to accomplish. Many have sought to bring it
about over the millennia, and some claim to have achieved it.
I too tried in my own way; but my own way has been pretty
much a personal variation on a theme composed by the Holy
To this end, a friend of ours in the health care industry gave
me the name of a specialist in London whom I could consult
when I got there.
Getting there from Indianapolis, sad to say, was quite an
ordeal. At O’Hare Airport in Chicago I had to walk up and
down many steps because our scheduled ight was cancelled
and we had to go to another terminal. en at Heathrow in
London we faced a comparable challenge. Once settled in,
though, I arranged to see the specialist whose name I was car-
rying with me: Dr. Paul Aicroth, head of the knee surgery unit
at Wellington Hospital. I didn’t see him, but one of his asso-
ciates, Mr. Duri, who looked me over carefully, examined my
x-rays, and advised not surgery but physical therapy, hydro-
therapy, and serious weight loss. As he put it in his report to
Dr. Aicroth: “He is grossly overweight. I have explained to him
the importance of reducing his body weight, attending physio-
therapy in the form of hydrotherapy, to be followed by muscu-
lar work as well as taking non-steroidal anti-inammatories…
In due course, he may need an Arthroscopic Debridement of
the left knee joint and a Medial Meniscectomy.”
His explanation, not on the written record, included an-
ecdotes about corpulent potentates of one sort or another who
had come to him with similar symptoms, so I felt honored to
be included in such an august company of men who had lived
too well. e bottom line, however, was this: surgery may be
necessary in the future, but how soon, if at all, would depend
on how much reduced weight and muscle development could
make life easier for my poor, overburdened knee. What we did
not discuss, however, is how much my right knee had over the
years been compensating for the left one’s inadequacy.
103102
means to an end, not, at least to me, an end in itself. Yet in
that era before Vatican II, an attentive student surely noticed
the Counter-Reformation mentality at work in the process
of determining which people in the world are and which are
not likely to be saved. e answer to which we were exposed
was represented as a value-stratifying pyramid of proximity
to God, with those most fully Christian at the top and under
them, separated by subtle distinctions, millions of others who
have some connection with those more righteous by denition.
Anyone could enjoy the “ordinary” presence of God;
only the chosen got in on God’s “extraordinary” presence.
“Nature” was available to all, “grace” to the few. is, however,
justied the Church’s “mission to teach,” with all that implies
about those who prefer not to be taught. Teaching, however,
was thought of mainly as a dispersal of words, like the bib-
lical parable about strewing seeds, some of which germinate
while others do not. If Mother eresa is right, of course, the
teaching that matters most is by way of example; but as gen-
erations of catechists have been taught, sucient for propagat-
ing the faith are concise answers to brief doctrinal questions.
Even now my brain probably still has in storage remnants of
this verbal substitute for living one’s faith. But at least now
I understand what must be emphasized if that faith is to be
fully human. What follows are some reections conducive to
such a horizontally directed faith.
First o, how best emulate Jesus? I ask because it is not
easy to think through layers of interpretation inherent in and
imposed on the Gospel texts. is is the case especially with
regard to concepts given the most theological weight; for ex-
ample the son of God, or the resurrected Christ. Barely less
Roman Catholic Church. To be sure, my connection with reli-
gious belief has certainly changed over time. Beginning as un-
reected concepts that made up my religion, it became more
intellectualized as I devoted four years to the study of theolo-
gy. en, with changes in my life situation, it became the ba-
sis for a set of cultural practices that had little bearing on my
everyday activities. Now as I face my end largely on my own,
I begin to appreciate blurred edges, doors left ajar, and hori-
zons beyond which lie worlds unknown. In accord with this
openness to unexamined possibility, I now revisit my thoughts
about the relationship between theology and belief in God.
e term theology, from the Greek, means literally the
study of God (or gods). Whether it focuses on the singular or
the plural object, it has often been faced with all sorts of “di-
vine” actions and interventions in human aairs that invite
praise or desire to emulate only if one is eager to gain pow-
er over others. e ancient Greek gods, for example, are por-
trayed as self-centered and biased in their support of humans
(see, for example, the Iliad and the Odyssey). And somewhat
similarly, a monotheistic theologian can easily nd compara-
ble selective intercessions, e.g., in the Hebrew Bible and, for
that matter, in the Christian New Testament (see below). Such
intercessions, though, are supposedly superseded by whole-
some interventions aliated with the “good news” of divine
redemption. Given the diversity of actions attributed to God,
however, a person who wants to believe in God may well feel
unable to do so without qualication.
e theology to which I was exposed as a Catholic sem-
inarian in the 1960s I tended to accept without critical l-
ter. Like other pre-professional curricula, this one too was a
105104
cosmology. Included here are tales told in the Old Testament
that include reference to the great bowl the ancient Hebrews
thought of as their sky. ese perhaps have theological im-
plications only indirectly. But should I accept Christ’s “as-
cension into heaven” as a matter of dogma or should I rather
see it as culturally limiting, as a demythologizing theologian
would recommend?
How might a science-sensitive religionist get around “as-
censionism”? At the very least he or she will need a view of our
cosmos broad enough in scope to include the totality of hu-
man experience and human aspirations with regard to “the be-
yond.” And anyone open to such a broadening of perspective
would probably not be comfortable with any purely scientic
account unless it somehow made room for the more spiritual
meaning that is at play here. Similarly, if one overly intellec-
tualizes religious truth, as did the medieval scholastics, what
remains is an emotionless account of teachings that are meant
to be life-changing. For example, instead of reecting on the
Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer that make up much of the
Sermon on the Mount, you might erroneously assume that
the teachings of Jesus are contained primarily in a fund of doc-
trines; an intellectual system. is being assumed, a Christian
tends to be dened (as if nding a denition is important) by
the doctrines to which he or she must adhere, e.g., by reciting
at Mass a Credo constructed by bishops at a long ago Council.
From this sort of hierarchical vantage point, one can also put
together a list on a sliding scale of each heretical holding to be
avoided, or failing that, for which to be punished.
Historians may claim otherwise, but it seems to me that
the Church Fathers divorced theology from human experience
challenging are the supra-human miracles that the evangelists
attribute to him. Without deciding how these should be un-
derstood, I take it as a given not only that Jesus lived but that
he lived a highly inspiring life (though not to an imperialist
Roman). His very life was a great lesson, at least for anyone
who sees value in loving and sacricing for others. ose who
do, and try to live accordingly, are more substantively his fol-
lowers than are nominal Christians who are unwilling to love
others even a little, not to mention unto death.
Secondly, how is one to distinguish between the Jesus
immortalized in writings declared to be sacred and the Jesus
institutionalized in the songs, liturgy, and writings of one ec-
clesiastical denomination after another? is lore, construct-
ed in response to historical pressures of all kinds, nonetheless
claims continuity with the revelations reported in the com-
monly shared sacred texts. is, however, is harder to do with
some texts than with others, since many of those more embed-
ded in cultural mores seem remote from anything like a reve-
lation. So a conscientious theologian might want to downplay
the signicance of such words. For, how might one go about
nding more of God’s message in an ancient Hebrew war-chant
than in a modern plea for world peace, or nd less revelation
in contemporary views about human rights than in Paul’s cul-
turally circumscribed views on slavery, women, and marriage?
To oversimplify for a moment, let’s say the primary re-
ality is human beings, and any quest for a God beyond and
above human beings is subject to all the misjudgments that
come from disregarding the limitations of time-bound con-
cepts. For example, some theological ideas have been built on
thought patterns that presuppose a false or at least inadequate
107106
So it is within the human that one must look for any divine
dimension of human beings.
Such observations should, I think, warn believers to in-
ternalize the doctrines of their faith with wonder and humili-
ty. And some do just that. But collectively, believers are partial
to the idea that, when all is said and done, they do “have the
truth.” And if so inclined, they might think this entails having
some sort of mission to teach others. Oblivious of Augustine’s
view (subscribed to later by Aquinas) that in the last analy-
sis no one can be taught except by God, they set about try-
ing to share with others that particular collection of “truths”
which to their minds constitute “the truth.” How this aected
Christian colonizers is an embarrassing story in its own right.
But it is a part of the broader phenomenon that Christianity
(or Catholicism, or Lutheranism, or whatever) has often been
disseminated largely as something to be learned by rote, like
the alphabet or the table of elements. And thus a person is
thought to be or not be on the right team as he or she accepts
what a given sect says is to be accepted. is, in turn, may in-
clude ethical rigidity based not on any heavenly inspirations,
but on the dictates of that sect’s approved gurus. Having placed
so much trust in the clarity and simplicity of the “divine mes-
sage” on oer and having so little considered the opacity and
complexity of that message as processed through human pat-
terns of thought and action, the believer is taught to attribute
non-compliance to bad will.
A kind of provincialism is thus engendered and is man-
ifested in people’s inability to think in any categories other
than those with which they are familiar. Being thus limited
in their outlook, and having identied their outlook with the
at its foundation. us, while two evangelists (Matthew and
Luke) tell ordinary people about Jesus’ birth but disagree as
to what events or mythical celebrators had anything to do
with it, Church scholars concerned only with doctrine sim-
ply ignore such details as they speak more abstractly about
the Incarnation; and this doctrine, having divinized the new-
born child, renders unimportant whatever might be learned
about the reality of growing up human in that country at that
time. If you then endow these guardians of scholastic purity
with political power, you are preparing them to administer the
Inquisition and other vile usages of secular power focused on
eliminating politically identied heretics. Admittedly, though,
there is a learning curve at work in the world. Today we shake
our heads at the exegetical narrowmindedness of those respon-
sible for condemning Galileo; but the fundamental reason for
that blunder (papal apologies notwithstanding) still pervades
the entire theological enterprise. It lies, I think, in a maze of
consequences that follow from the assumption that theology is
somehow “divine” whereas other disciplines are only human.
How can any human enterprise, even one as austere as
theology, be anything but human? Each division of human
knowledge is without exception laden with human constructs.
ere is, then, absolutely no basis for making one style of hu-
man thinking the judge and executioner of any other. e mere
fact that one studies “divine things” does not make him or her
for that reason alone any more divine; nor does restricting one’s
studies to blatantly “human things” make one for that reason
alone any less divine. A human mind, whatever the scope of
its interests, cannot transcend the operative system provided
to it by the evolutionary process whereby humans came to be.
109108
inherently self-serving and hence inadequate justications.
us, for example, the campaigns of Joshua and others, down
to and including the Maccabees, are not instances of God’s
plan in action any more than were the Crusades centuries lat-
er or radical Muslim mayhem today. In each of these cases, it
is the data, the “stu,” of human life that remain open to our
critical judgment. Similarly, the suppression and persecution
of the Jews throughout much of the Christian era cannot be
defended theologically or ethically no matter how readily con-
temporary spokespersons found such mistreatment biblically
appropriate. As with regard to other aspects of our lives, we
must not live and think within thought patterns of a bygone
day when principled analysts thereof have shown them to have
been reprehensible—if not for that day then certainly for ours.
Church theologians have dealt with this problem of in-
terpretation from earliest times, notably by distinguishing the
literal sense of a text from its spiritual meaning. To medie-
val scholars, the latter could be an allegorical sense, a moral
sense, or a future sense. ese diverse spiritual senses obvi-
ously have no more truth value than what the reputation of
its proponent has to oer. Accordingly, the historical-critical
method which emerged several centuries ago has become pre-
dominant, especially in Protestant circles. Whether this path
to the literal sense leaves any room for a reputable spiritual
sense is another matter entirely.
e search for the inherent meaning of biblical texts is,
of course, rarely welcomed by anyone who already has a pre-
ferred interpretation and would rather not be confused by
discrepancies that arise between an original language text and
how translators decide to render it in their modern language
truth, they are scarcely able to look objectively at the views
of others. Herein lie all sorts of problems familiar to anyone
acquainted with epistemology. But these problems cannot be
resolved merely by applying the insights of this philosophi
-
cal tool. For they cannot even be adequately addressed with-
out rethinking the idea that Christianity is primarily a mat-
ter of truths to be believed. One must instead consider what
problems human beings have faced and how these problems
opened them to insights on their condition that in some way
merit being called revelation.
Take, for starters, the writings in what Christians call
the Old Testament. Church theologians have looked to these
writings for inspiration and even for revelation of divine pref-
erences; and the liturgy brings them to the laity on a week-
ly basis. But if one reads these ancient tribal writings without
theological blinders, one will surely notice how consistent-
ly they take as their point of departure and as their constant
theme the problems and activities of an allegedly favored in-
group of human beings. Everything from love to war they look
upon not so much objectively but with a view to how the in-
group will come out best and accordingly what their god’s in-
tercession should bring about. ey are extremely provincial
and extremely prejudiced in their theologizing. e conclu-
sions they reach with regard to life and death and good and
evil are often, to our eyes, simplistic. But they are dealing in
human terms with perfectly human problems. e solutions
they nd for those problems we either accept or not depend-
ing on how appropriate we take their means and ends to be.
e point is simply this: solutions to problems, even if
deemed theological, are refutable to the extent that they are
111110
loss and sometimes absence does make the heart grow fonder.
So the pain associated with losing loved ones is incremental.
My rst acquaintance with death occurred when my fa-
ther passed away six months after my third birthday. I remem-
ber him coming home from work and announcing he felt ill.
And I also see from photos in the family album that I remained
in mourning for years thereafter. My maternal grandparents
died under very dierent circumstances: he, several months be-
fore my ordination in 1960, after several major heart attacks;
she, thirty years later, after declining gradually and then drift-
ing o forever. eir remains are buried side by side in their
last residence together; Peoria, Illinois.
My dear mother died at the age of ninety-nine after sev-
enty-one years as a widow, including several decades in vari-
ous residential facilities in Denver where I would come visit
her. She had an ample inheritance plus the personal atten-
tion rst of her brother and then of her daughter; but con
-
sidering her many ne qualities, she deserved a richer life. I
missed her funeral because I was recovering from major sur-
gery myself; but I gave her eulogy at a later family memori-
al service at her gravesite next to my father’s in Kansas City,
Missouri. I then served as executor of her estate, dividing her
assets with my sister.
ree of my maternal cousins have died. Frankie, who
had been born prematurely, raised a large family in Kansas
City, Missouri, then died prematurely of cancer that he proba-
bly incurred while serving in the military. Jane, who had been
a school teacher in Minneapolis, fell victim to problematic
surgical interventions. en her sister Ann died suddenly.
My maternal uncle Francis and his wife Rosemary have
version. By contrast, the desire to nd the original meaning
of biblical texts was behind the decision of thoughtful de-
fenders of God’s primary message to seek after it by the use
of such methods as “demythologization.” An early proponent
of such an approach was Baruch Spinoza in the 17th century,
Immanuel Kant a century later, and then more systematical-
ly Rudolph Bultmann (1884–1976) and Paul Tillich (1886–
1965). As Bultmann elucidated his agenda, what must be
found and favored in the culturally complex writings of the
Bible is their kerygma, i.e., their gospel proclamation.
is movement, important though it was, did not trans-
form theology in any major way (to my knowledge). Nor has
ecumenical cross-thinking about diverse religious teachings done
so. is failure is not due to any aw in either the end or the
means of the movement toward communitarian intermingling.
Rather is it due in large part to politically motivated extremists
who exaggerate the importance of theological dierences to jus-
tify random acts of violence that emulate the behavior attribut-
ed by struggling people in ancient times to gods they have in-
vented. In this conict-oriented milieu, it is dicult to sustain
an unqualied belief in God. For, even if one is thinking of the
God who is and who encourages love, many people who cause
harm claim to be acting in the name they give to that God.
at said, I still want to believe in God because I certain-
ly do believe in death. Over four decades I have had to deal
with the death of a loved one on numerous occasions. None of
these experiences has made the next one any easier to bear. So
it would be most helpful if one could be sure there is a heav-
en, and for a Christian that depends on there being a God.
Until one achieves clarity about that, a loss is perceived as a
113112
Part Four:
What It’s All About, I ink
L
ooking back over the life I’ve tried to put into words,
I don’t see how I could have done so before actually
living it, for it didn’t follow any script that I could
have simply invented and put onto a page. For starters, my
father should not have died; nor should I have left Kansas
City, then left Peoria to be in South Carolina at such a tender
age to confront kids so unlike myself. But because I had this
experience, I demonstrated very prematurely that I would not
easily accept things as they are merely because they are. at
I spent summers in Kansas as a teenager might have been
predicted given my mother’s background, but that I would be
put in charge of getting farm chores done presupposes some
ability to predict my host’s need for health care far away.
Without an understanding of the rigidities inherent in
American Catholicism before Vatican II, who could have pre-
dicted that I would become liberal in my thinking or that this
orientation would so profoundly undermine my welcome
in a seminary? Or that as a priest I would be so directly in-
volved in helping women leave the convent? Or so powerful-
ly aected by my belated discovery of sexual activity? By con-
trast, when I was an untenured faculty member at MSU and
the deck was so stacked against me, at least someone might
have warned me that freedom of speech did not extend at the
time to opposing the war in Vietnam. Similarly, someone in
Indianapolis must have known that my male-dominant views
both died after raising six children and providing a home for
both my grandmother and my mother. I knew them rst in
Peoria, then visited them in Evanston, Illinois, in St. Paul,
Minnesota, and nally in Atchison, Kansas, where Rosemary
had grown up. In St. Paul, my uncle lived in a spacious one-
time ocer’s house inside Fort Snelling and helped the Veterans
Administration switch to electronic data processing or, today, IS.
I barely knew my paternal grandparents except in photos.
So also for several of their children. I did come to know my un-
cle Bob, his wife Mildred, and their children whom they raised
in Kansas City. ey are gone, as are three of their children that
I know of. I got to know them when I was a teenager, and of-
ten thought I would have been a more spirited person had I
grown up near them. I also got to know my other uncle Joe
and his family, but not as well. During my time at Conception
Seminary, though, their son Bob spent a brief time there pre-
paring to be a monk; but after a while he changed his mind.
Other deaths along the way include one of my sister’s
sons. Also, Adam Miller, a close childhood friend of my son
got run over by an out of control car that crashed through the
wall and rammed into him as he sat on a bleacher in a YMCA
gym. My son named his own rstborn son after Adam.
All these deaths, each important and meaningful, have had
less eect on me than has the death of my dear life partner Anne,
whose death I have reected on in the poem A Traveler’s Tale (see
Appendix I-E). What we were for each other through the years
is neatly summarized in her message to me on the occasion of
my birthday just three months before she died: “To Ed: ank
you for sharing your life with me. Happy 81! Love, Anne.”
115114
might wonder why it is not on the above list of fullling ac-
tivities or roles. It is not there because there is nothing about
the priesthood as I experienced it that added any depth to my
being human. e problem-solving expertise attributed to me
just by virtue of my title was fraudulent. Only insofar as I was
able to relate to people as a person and not as a priest did I
feel I was really living my life, at least to some extent, and not
just playing a role.
Having thus depreciated the signicance of my priestly
days, I am in no position to say whether in general a religious
or an intellectual life enables one to make a greater contribu-
tion to our common destiny. Either is meaningful enough to
one who is living it, if not under duress of any kind but truly
by choice. But the priesthood as now practiced in the Catholic
Church is problematic because it precludes full development
of human relationships, including those imbued with physi-
cality and sexuality. (is lacuna came about in my story al-
most entirely because of my religious role; other men, e.g., one-
time British university dons, had sexual deprivation imposed
on them precisely because they were academics.)
Finally, be it noted that my list of positive decisions does
not include becoming an attorney. is is because the conse-
quences of that decision, though by no means altogether neg-
ative, did not add nearly as much to my life as the three that
are cited. I might be inclined to reconsider this exclusion,
though, were I to reect more deeply on the fact that my fa-
ther had wanted to be a lawyer and was in fact taking night
courses when he died.
about marriage could not prevail in an age when dual work-
ers were becoming so commonplace. Moreover, I regret not
having been more directly involved with my children over a
greater number of years.
No doubt when I became an attorney it was understand-
able that I should want to use my new competence doing
things that required authentic lawyering. But anyone who
knew anything about academe might have told me that by
doing so as I did (in support of faculty interests), I would not
endear myself to administrators. On the other hand, I really
have no idea who might have provided me with enough pro-
fessional savvy to understand fully and deal appropriately with
publishers who did not respond as I wished when I wanted
them to publish things I wrote.
Countering the regrets just acknowledged, I can say with-
out hesitation that I made the right decision and did the right
thing in (1) becoming a writer and nding a way to qualify for
and pursue an academic career; (2) sharing my life with Anne;
and (3) accepting the Belgian woman’s invitation to experience
sex. As for which of these decisions was most important in
fullling my potential as a human being, I’m not sure I know
what criteria should be applied in choosing. But on the basis
of what made my life most meaningful and fullled, sharing
it with Anne was far and away in rst place. Our relationship,
moreover, stands out in this way because it was richly fed by
our both being writers and academics and by our both want-
ing sexual communion, which for me presupposed my expe-
rience with the Belgian woman.
Considering how much of my narrative is about my be-
ing led into the priesthood and nding my way out of it, one
117116
Appendix I.
Poetic Commentary on Lived Experiences
I have now covered the two major phases of my profession-
al life, plus my private life. ere’s another aspect, however,
that has only been cited so far, except for one place where
material that belongs here was inserted directly into the
text. Now I’d like to make it the center of attention, name-
ly, some of my poems. Where did they come from? Well, in
-
tense situations sometimes led me to poetry. at was cer-
tainly the case when my marriage broke up. It’s not for me
to say whether any poem I wrote was really good poetry. But
my output was good enough for me to be welcomed among
a group of amateur poets who read their work to one an-
other and received feedback. I remained in this group for
several years, then drifted away as my life situation im
-
proved. But since then I have at times returned to poetry
when again faced with an emotionally intense situation.
What follows are some poetic responses to situations and
circumstances that are included at least implicitly in the
account now on the record.
119118
It was a summer job
America hot-warring yet
again, so soon again,
this time in South Korea.
Our country’s thirst was on
to water post-war drought,
and we the Class of ‘51
were bound for college, draft
deferred. e “college punks,”
some called us. We had come,
they felt, to help them slake
their drinking thirsts. For this
we were envied, and maybe worse,
by these obese older men
who drank their breakfast there
to start the morning shift
then oated through their day
of cans and bottles, vats
and cases empty and full.
A. WHEN YOUNGER THAN SPRINGTIME
Postwar Progress (1981)
For years I’ve favored beer
from abroad, but now I have
a thirsty urge for a can
of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer,
a can whose label cites
not only Milwaukee but
Peoria Heights, a place
where I and other youths
pushed cases, empty or full,
down long conveyor belts
then stopped for a beer
unloaded cans from a car,
then stopped for a beer
did day shift, or did nights.
We’d hear our elders tell
of the awesome sex they had
and we’d drink to that; also
we learned the limits on
how much to work in a day
and we all drank to that.
121120
A Christmas Memory (1980)
Bright lights on a plastic tree
blink on, then fade to dark
like seasonal reminders
Of a world, a life, a me
that used to be when saints
and angels cheered my
avoidance of iniquity.
Unlike the bloody wars
that undermine the good,
My quiet deeds weren’t great,
nor were they dangerous.
But they helped me feel alive.
We “temporaries” took
our turn atop the pile,
that is, the Bottle Pile:
a million million pile,
a soggy heaping mass
of old-style bottles, brown,
returned in cases throughout
those dreary beerless years
of ghting German and “Jap”
(when I sold “extras” at
the Caterpillar shift-
change gate after GIs took
Tobruk in Libya,
Salerno, Rome, Paris.
D-Day too, and VE/VJ Day.
A nickel each, all sold
in minutes.)
e war was good
for my bottom line but not
for drinking beer. So the time
had come to bottle beer,
so to put the bottles back
to work; and so atop the pile
we picked it clean, to retrieve
each one from gush and gunk.
e pile, the post-war pile
of long-forgotten drinks,
now swarmed with draft-deferred
young temps to college bound;
and the foreman, I mean our boss,
kept us xed on our task
with his earthy battle cry:
“All I want to see, you guys,
are assholes and elbows! Dig?”
123122
B. MARITAL DENOUEMENT
I’ve Never Danced With You (1981)
I’ve never danced with you
I learned some simple steps
that I did try
to do with you.
But you are faster than I
(going farther?)
And though you said you might
stay close to home
if I learned to dance
My heart’s not really in it.
We had some mellow years
when you played wife
and mother too.
While I looked for myself
in sterile texts
I once admired,
You slowly slipped away—
dishes done, you’d leave
to dance, have fun.
From the corner of my eye
I noticed, smiled
and wept inside.
Picking Grapes
(dedicated to Edward A. Maziarz)
We share a common sky and stars. e same events
are on our TV screens. e way we talk, the clothes
we wear, the politics and miseries of the world
diuse our dierences.
But you no longer walk with me down vineyard rows
or share your helpful thoughts while tending sun-fed soil
and leaves.
How likely it once seemed that we would
build those ordinary tasks
into a way of life.
But the simple world that let us think that way
is now in the hands of machines.
Machines now pick the grapes in the vineyards we
once worked.
Eremites like you rely on thinner air to dull the din
of harvesting. e dispossessed like me are searching dier-
ent fruit.
We both remember hand-picked grapes.
You count on their return. I’ve learned to do without.
We share the sky and stars and televised events.
For grapes we’re on our own.
125124
Radio Freeze Europe (1981)
(Written after wife returned home alone)
Alone in Dijon, I seek
the solace of radio sounds:
Prices are high, employment’s low
but there’s a plan, you know.
Like to swing on a Billy-gate?
Expect a hurricane to seal your fate?
e mother of the queen is eighty today,
and her son’s found a place to stay.
e Belgians love their language line.
A train in Bologna blown up by a mine.
e French are at their azure sea,
where “vacance” is a reason for nudity.
e Germans found a cantata by Bach—
in the toe of an ancient sock?
Bulgaria’s beaming an Italian tune
while Beograd sends “Claire de lune.”
A piano makes love to a cello;
a guitar makes a boor sound mellow.
Disco bop, plus de slop.
Nichts mehr ohne Mahler!
Verkaufen Sie, verkaufen Sie.
Zwei franke? Why not dollars?
Je t’aime bien. Where’s the Cannes?
(A native knows even more.)
A bronze to the Fonze? J’ai tort.
C’etait certainement d’or.
In pride I refused to see
you sought to nd
a life beyond me.
Your pain was a deadly thing
it ate at you,
though you felt free.
en our house came tumbling down:
you left, I searched;
when found, you cried.
Since then we’ve mellowed some:
our bodies blend
but just in sex
For, dressed we show our past
and thoughts of hurts
cling tight like lint.
Apart we seek in friends
what once we had
but now can’t nd.
So at times it seems the band
is playing a tune
to which we could dance.
But you are moving faster
maybe farther
And my heart’s no longer in it.
127126
C. SURVIVING SOLITUDE
My Mirror Image (1981)
I was a slender being
in my tender years because
I learned to play, then turned
to sports. I jogged and more
in my college days, and for
oral needs used cigarettes.
A decade or so later, though,
I was professorial; and
to play this part, I switched
my smokes to a pipe, which I
then also dropped. But I
cut back as well on exercise.
I still have a slender soul
quite tidily concealed within
a body that’s built to t
the larger sizes that I
have begun to require. Look not
at bodies but, as Plato taught,
nd their forms. ey last!
Brief Respite (1981)
ey were waiting when
she started her car
packed full of things and ed my star
to live alone.
e sight of them
prepared to share
her rented space
evoked despair
of privacy.
So car still packed
she ventured back to my abode
to await results of an
insecticide.
e caption reads:
“As one again.”
We’re reconciled
till roaches’ end
shall us two part.
129128
e Slow Movement (1981)
With Ashkenazi at the keys
Giuliani signaled for the Brahms
and thunder lled reality
reverberating in my ears
more turbulence than I could bear
I made some tea and tried to read
old arguments that God exists
while hardly sure that I was there
or that the world takes note of me
with or without divinity
Just then the tempo changed
and peaceful strings began to coax
from gentle horns soft mellow chords
that sang inside of me a tonal prayer
which urged the universe to care
Tea and book I put aside
to let some tears reply “Amen”
to the awesome orchestrations that
ensued in celebration of
what life can be with hope for love.
Aquariology (1981)
I’m known as a sh.
I live in a tank
with others who go
by that label too.
A few that I see
are constructed like me.
Most are quite strange,
with fanciful tails
or uttering ns
or glittering scales.
When it comes to rapport
some are consummate boors,
and their sexual mores
may be quite bizarre.
But there’s surface enough
and plant life besides
to air supply all;
and be one a molly
or kissing gourami,
a low Corydoras
or Betta splendens,
a provident hand
feeds all from above.
So to all I say
we’re in this together
so swim while we may.
131130
Parent Without Partner (1982)
What do my children mean to me
as I live through my loneliness
providing what I can for them
without a partner at my side?
I cook their meals and pay the bills
and give them rides and goodnight hugs
and watch them reach beyond my world
to friends who help them to forget
the love that gave them birth before
it shattered like a fragile glass
and set me searching all around
for an outstretched hand that I might hold
as they at times still reach for mine
to guide them on past darker days
to some uncharted destiny
awaiting them away from me.
Busy-ness (1981)
Copy this and deal with that.
Meet with him—call it o.
Met with her, type it up.
Deadline, hurry! Lunch?
See more, hear more, talk more.
Make a contribution—home!
TV: football, cops, and cars.
Children come and go.
Voices—theirs, not mine.
Doors bang shut. Distant fun.
Furnace hums
Dishes clack
Washer gurgles on.
ere’s silence in my life.
133132
e Long Gray Leuven Streets (1981)
e long, gray Leuven streets
were deserted when I detrained
after fourteen years away
to show my wife around.
is ancient place to learn
fell victim to many wars,
the worst of which was fought
over language dierences.
Dare I praise the proud Walloons
who spoke Français as they built
on land they called “Louvain”
a university of renown?
For centuries scholars came
from beyond the Belgian soil,
and lived apart from the native folk
whose language was Flamande.
Here also came Nazi troops
who preached to Flanders folk
the ethnic reasons for
their longtime servitude.
Herbert Hoover’s statue, though,
reminds us he restored
the library and its books
that First War Bosch had burned.
D. TRAVELS, MOSTLY WITH ANNE
Solidarity (1981)
(after attending a conference in Warsaw)
We stayed in Warsaw
just a couple days
exploring common sights
on bus and streetcar lines
while people, Polish people
hurried by on foot
or bikes, some even in Fiats.
It was the calm before…
it was before.
When I now look back
through my tourist slides
I cannot nd at any place
on any face a warning
that their tolerance soon
would be no more.
135134
I found no sign in French
in the building that was once my school,
rang in vain at dear Claire’s door,
and left a never-answered note.
en we went to a restaurant where
I often used to dine.
It was almost empty except
for two academic men.
en halfway through our meal,
a ood of Flemish youth
took over all empty space,
as clearly it was their place.
I paid our shocking bill
with my American Express
and we left in search of rest.
But rental rooms were all closed.
So to the station back
we went and took the next
train out for Brussels, where
we could sleep bilingually.
Here Americans would come
in the mighty dollar days
to pursue advanced degrees
in a semblance of Français,
drink Stella Artois beer
and dine in restaurants
too dear for students from here
who survived on subsidies.
Here too came I to learn
with a Fulbright all my own
(an international IOU)
and philosophy my eld.
Here I gained a new career,
learned how to live and love.
Here a wine distributor
treated me like a son.
Here a Flemish Francophone
won me over body and soul
though at the end we let
our continents divide.
Gone now the Americans,
made poor by Europe’s rise,
gone too the students now,
on vacation after exams.
As I walked the lonely streets
my American wife at my side
I took pics of buildings I knew,
noted new ones here and there.
137136
From Tarragona to Tortosa (1984)
I was here before, dear Anne,
twenty years ago with Claire
in Tarragona, Spain.
How little we knew, she and I,
as we drove from Bilbao
to nd some sun in the sky.
What history we ignored
as we ate our bread and cheese
in my vintage British Ford:
castles down the street,
great works of art nearby,
and Roman ruins at our feet!
What knew we of Vizcaya
or Navarre or Aragon –
Republicans or Guernica?
From far above a high
Tortosa wall I watch
the Ebro owing by
the Fascist victory spire
that honors Franco’s reign
oer graves of martyred men.
A hundred fty thou-
sand men—the price they paid
to be in charge of Spain!
It wasn’t enough, dear Claire,
Just to seek the sun back then
ough we were young and free.
Boating Around (1982)
Whenever your boat
has a starboard and lee
assume you will ride
ambivalently
Like the rope-hung ski
that brought me home
to an isolate isle
near the Capitol dome
Or in whitewater once
in a birch canoe
where the lady and I
had paddles for two
By liner we once
found dubious play
in skeptical waves
that questioned our way
en a ferry took us
to a net full of sh
that lled up a pot
o Antigonish
Less fun on the Main
from a Frankfurt dock:
past mounds of old cars
and rusting away stock
See why we now miss
the warm water cays
where shimmering blue
hides the manta rays?
139138
So much for monuments!
e colonies are gone,
and dying for the crown
no longer earns a stone
carved “at the public expense.”
While tourists mull about
in spite of signs that invite
no one but worshippers,
a soprano and an organist
prepare for a future rite;
and among the purchasers
of posters, cards and slides
an ocious canon roams
as if to say: Well, now,
it really is a church!
Martial Saints (1989)
Just east of old law courts
the domed St. Paul’s looks down
on a double-decker bus
in which more tourists come
to glance and move on by.
Inside, soft words sound loud
beneath the gilded dome:
“e Whispering Gallery,”
says the recorded English tour.
All about Sir Wren’s abode
the woes of martial saints
are monumentally ignored.
So grateful England is
that when embodied still
they fell in brave defense
of its imperial greed.
Here one shot through the heart
while having at the French,
there one the Bengals slew,
and Burma’s guardian, “Slim”;
and a general word of thanks
to India’s “volunteers”
who served East India Company,
then helped the crown
hold on through two “world” wars.
141140
Bikes I’ve Known and Lost (1983)
Foot down, foot up, foot down;
foot down, up and down, again.
e miles go by in tenths
on the visual display.
Such technical grandeur for
a Depression-era boy
whose rst twenty-six he bought
from a kid who was moving away.
My friends still bike to work
to foil the establishment.
Not I. Cars aim at bikes,
and some at bikers too.
My daughter lost two bikes.
My son gave his Huy to
a blade-bearing kid as short
as he. “Too bad,” said the cop.
In Belgium once, a man
rode his bike in front of my car.
I still hear the Flemish words
he screamed at me in the ward.
Wringing Out the Old
Our bargain fare to London town
required we stay another week.
But Londoners were on holiday
and Hobson was in charge of choice.
e cultural fare was “popular.”
Nothing of interest in Leicester Square,
we queued for Les Miserables returns.
None came, so we bought a dierent pair—
at twenty pounds apiece! But one
last night at a musical fete would not
redeem six days of drift. So we paid
more fare to y home at dawn.
For lunch, as planned, we joined some friends,
as did Natasha and Vladimir.
We spoke of science and scholarship,
and they of changes in their world:
once plentiful in Moscow stores,
food now arrives in random spurts.
But their grandma found them things to eat
by standing in every promising queue.
Would Aspects of Love (two in the stalls)
be thought a clumsy gift? ey smiled.
We rose to leave, and at the door
I wished them well in the days ahead.
143142
Mountains and Motorbikes (1984)
(written while staying in Le Bar-sur-Loup, France)
Uphill from the metallic waves
of the motorized Cote d’Azur,
above hydrocarbon haze,
via serpentine mountain roads
that wind past olive groves
and roadside inns, stone walls
of ancient towns, old trees
and sculpted hedge, tile roofs
and wrought iron fence, they live
in a sturdy carved-stone town.
Here narrow lanes go up and down,
and level ground is rare. But on
a at dirt eld, men play at boule.
Home-oriented women buy
baguettes and fresh pâté, and wash
the clothes at a common well. But wait!
Each morning, at half past six, the sound
of grumbling gasoline is heard:
a motorbike is restored to life,
and another roaring day begins.
In cars men go to work, trucks come
with food and drink and news to read.
At points where we can pass, they wait
for someone to retreat. Meanwhile,
the motorbikes roar up and down,
right through the behemoths’ battlegrounds.
Longstanding precedents give way
to noisy ricochets o walls
of somber stone. While parents wait,
their two-wheeled children play.
More terrifying by far the scream
that bursts from each mangled bike
in drawings I saw one day
on a Warsaw spending spree.
Your mother meant well, dear Anne,
protecting you from biking’s risks.
But I miss the pastoral bliss
of pedaling along at your side.
Foot down, foot up, foot down;
foot down, up and down again.
e miles go by in tenths
on the visual display.
145144
E. THOUGHTS ON LIFE AND DEATH
So is it settled who I am? (1981)
So is it settled who I am?
Has every die been cast?
So often as I chose a path
I really had no choice—
at least it so appeared to me.
I chose as best I could
to best achieve each goal I could
that seemed the best to reach.
So now I’ve reached them one by one
and now I’m out of goals
that I could choose to challenge me.
I am what I’ve become
but it somehow doesn’t feel like me.
And yet I don’t know where
to look for new identity.
So is it settled who I am?
Falling Waters (1993)
We arrived at dawn, my son
and I, at the famous house
that sits on granite rocks.
It still joins human lives
to water spilling from high
on the left, past pleased
rhododendrons, into pools
that welcome it, then send
it right to vanish in
the woods. All this we watched
through windows beckoning
to surrounding greenery,
or from porches held aloft
by cantilevers, each
with a view of a Buddha head.
“Will we only see the house?”
my son had asked. I said
there would be more. In fact
you too were here, even as
we had planned: your taste
in art, including Wright’s
designs in every room,
mothering in many forms.
Yes, you were far away
in search of who you are
conjoined to and beyond
the implanted artifact
through which your life now ows.
But I whispered (to myself):
Oh yes, my son, there’s more.
147146
To an Actor Friend (1981)
So again, dear actor friend,
you’ve let your mounting fright
revise your walk-on role
for closing night.
How carefully you cued
my “enter left” so I’d come by
and have you emptied out
lest you really die!
ey’ve tied you to the bed
with an ocer at the door;
and tomorrow a solicitous judge
will, as before,
decree that you open next
where walls reect the sun
on inmates playing cards and guards
who say who’s won;
and all you do is marked
on your individual chart
to record when you walk or talk
or faint or fart
(so they can show they’ve cared
if you meaningfully live or die).
So long as you pee in the pot,
don’t question why,
arrive on time for your dose
of Ridalin or orazine,
you’ll have a major part
in every scene.
Dachau Dirt (1966)
(regarding a Jewish Belgian woman)
Quiet on her mantle lies
a box of inlaid wood
containing Dachau dirt.
She harvested it one day
while I viewed shower rooms
and crematoria.
She’d already confronted her fears
lying down in the car to hide
from Aachen’s gray smokestacks
once we’d crossed the line
from her own homeland to ride
on the Fuehrer’s Autobahn
A second time in the Germans’ land
at a wedding in Wuppertal,
she charmed the mid-life men
whose unknown wartime deeds
she swallowed with the champagne
to vomit on the edge of town.
But quiet on her mantle lies
the dirt that links her life
to a sudden Brussels day
when someone’s hands her scream
suppressed as she watched
her parents hauled away.
149148
Faithfulness (1989)
(regarding my mother’s life)
e funeral sermon will honor you
for your virtuous life. You will be praised
for love, devotion, selessness.
Such words to mark a life unlived!
Your learning years: in boarding schools.
Short married life, then widowhood.
Your harp and piano set aside.
Your mother raised your children while
you worked your youth away. Now four
score years and more yourself, you tend
this mother child whose person lives
in a body past mobility.
What life might yours have been were you
unshackled from your faithfulness?
Billie’s Photo Album
(after she left to bury her son)
Stately and rened
you stand proud and tall
beside your man,
in a fading picture
decades old.
Stately one more time
a couple children on,
mounted upright, proud,
face turned to the sun
on a horse named Lad.
Otherwise you’re in the shade
cast by your sunning parents,
or watching others’ fun
or simply o the scene
because you’re the camera,
recording the lives
that others lead
for themselves.
You’re no longer there,
but no one seems to mind.
Most shots are out of focus
but they’re saved
as there are no others.
151150
Around the room were statues: some
fair maidens in distress and some
brave soldiers shooting down the foe—
and a mighty archer taking aim.
e arrow in his bow would not
stay put. I always set it right
before I went to bed. And he’d
stand guard, bow taut, all through the night.
e Vigilant Archer15 (1987)
(read at the funeral of Anne’s father)
I didn’t know you when you were young.
I didn’t know you when you were well.
But I’m glad your heart was strong enough
to drive your esh and spirit on
til I could share your chivalry.
At rst you fooled me, acting brusque;
but you fought a ercer enemy.
Too young for World War I, not “t”
in ‘forty-one, you served for life.
You lived each day with death. It walked
with you. It sat nearby when you
stayed up to read. It watched you when
you napped or dined or shopped or caught
the business news. You knew the odds,
but vowed to do your best. It knocked
you down from time to time, but this
just angered you. You would ght on!
For honor and for heritage!
Your duty called: protect from harm
those in your charge. All were at risk,
but risk excites true gallantry.
In your den among your les on stocks
and bonds and market trends you led
mementos of your family.
15 While recovering at home from a heart attack, he was hospitalized again after
trying to lift his wife who had fallen when her articial hip gave out. She was in
the same hospital, on a dierent oor, when he died.
153152
Appendix II.
Author’s Other Publications
BOOKS PUBLISHED
Secular and Religious: An American Quest for Coexistence, Bloomington,
IN: Author House, 2011, also downloadable to a Kindle at
Amazon.com.
Why and How Secular Society Should Accommodate Religion: A
Philosophical Proposal, Lewiston, NY: Mellen Press, 2010.
Public Power, Private Interests, Bloomington, IN: Author House, 1999.
Work, Inc: A Philosophical Inquiry, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press, 1990; pbk, 1992.
Technological Transformation, Philosophy and Technology, vol. 5, co-ed-
itor with Joseph Pitt, Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1989.
Philosophy of Work: A Study Guide, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Extended Studies Program, 1986.
Human Being and Being Human, with Edward A. Maziarz, New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969.
Probability and Opinion, e Hague: Martinus Nijho, 1968.
ARTICLES AND CONTRIBUTED PAPERS
2017: “Making Drones to Kill Civilians: Is It Ethical?” Journal of Business
Ethics, forthcoming, online at doi: 10.1007/s10551-015-2950-4.
2015: “Work,” rev., in Ethics, Science, Technology, and Engineering: An
International Resource, ed. J. B. Holbrook, 2nd ed. (Farmington Hills,
MI: Macmillan Reference USA), vol. 4, pp. 543–549.
A Traveler’s Tale (2015)
(to and about Anne)
roughout your adult years
you arranged your life so that
in time you would see the world
beyond your daily haunts.
To north and south you went,
to east and west as well:
to Canada and Mexico,
to Jerusalem and Beijing,
Kyoto and Oslo too.
When staying in London you
saw all parts of the British Isles
and many in France as well.
You likewise came to know
each New York neighborhood.
How, then, you might have sighed
when mobility abandoned you
and your travels were just
a few steps with a walker; and
I helped you put on your feet
the only shoes that still t.
155154
2005b: “e 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq: Militarism in the Service of
Geopolitics” in Justice and Violence: Political Violence, Pacism
and Cultural Transformation, ed. A. Eickelmann, E. Nelson, and
T. Lansford (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate), pp.
193–216.
2004a: “e Post-9/11 State of Emergency: Reality versus Rhetoric”
in Social Philosophy Today 19, ed. C. Hughes (Charlottesville, VA:
Philosophy Documentation Center), pp. 193–215.
2004b: “Commentary on Lawrence Blum’s I’m Not a Racist, But...: e
Moral Quandary of Race” in Social Philosophy Today 19, ed. C.
Hughes (Charlottesville, VA: Philosophy Documentation Center),
pp. 239–41.
2002a: “Reviewing Academic Books: Are ere Ethical Issues?” Journal of
Information Ethics 11:1 (Spring) 57–65.
2002b: “Business Ethics: A Helpful Hybrid in Search of Integrity”
Journal of Business Ethics 37: 121–133.
2002c: “Special Issue on Work Ethics” Journal of Business Ethics 40:2
(Oct.), editor.
2001: “Introduction” Journal of Business Ethics 29: 287–88, as editor of
Special Issue on Work.
1999: “Give Peace a Chance: A Mantra for Business Strategy” Journal of
Business Ethics 20: 27–37.
2003: “Comments on Philip Coles’ Philosophy of Exclusion” in Social
Philosophy Today 18.
1998a: “Mission in Modern Life: A Public Role for Religious Belief ”
Paideia, posted at www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Poli/PoliByrn.htm
1998b: “Privacy,” in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, ed. Ruth Chadwick
(San Diego: Academic Press): 649–59.
1998c: “Business-Inicted Social Harm,” in Technology, Morality and
Social Policy, ed. Yeager Hudson. Studies in Social and Political
eory, Vol. 18 {Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press}: 55–69.
2014a: “In Lieu of a Sovereignty Shield, Multinational Corporations
Should Be Responsible for the Harm ey Cause.” Journal
of Business Ethics 124:4, pp. 609–621, online at doi:
10.1007/s/10551-013-1891-z.
2014b: “Towards Enforceable Bans on Illicit Businesses: From Moral
Relativism to Human Rights.” Journal of Business Ethics 119:1, 119–
130, online at doi: 10.1007/s10551-013-1619-0.
2012: “Appropriating Resources: Land Claims, Law, and Illicit
Businesses,” Journal of Business Ethics, 106:4, 453–466, online at
doi: 10.1007/s0551-011-1010-y
2011: “Business Ethics Should Study Illicit Businesses: To Advance
Respect for Human Rights,” Journal of Business Ethics 103:4, 497–
509, online at doi: 10.1007/s0551-011-0885-y
2010: “e U.S. Military-Industrial Complex is Circumstantially
Unethical,” Journal of Business Ethics 95:2 pp. 153–165, online at
doi: 10.1007/s10551-009-0361-0.
2009: “Just War eory and Peace Studies,” in Teaching Philosophy 32:3
(Sept.) pp. 297–304.
2008: “Can Arms Be Sold Responsibly in the Global Market?” Social
Philosophy Today 23: International Law and Justice, ed. John R.
Rowan (Charlottesville, VA: Philosophy Documentation Center),
pp. 103–114.
2007a: “Assessing the Arms Industry’s Corporate Social Responsibility”
Journal of Business Ethics 74:3 pp. 401–17.
2007b: “e Planned Obsolescence of the Humanities: Is It Unethical?”
Journal of Academic Ethics 5, pp. 141–152.
2006: “Leave No Oil Reserves Behind, Including Iraq’s” in Radical
Philosophy Today 4, ed. T. Smith and H. Van der Linden
(Charlottesville, VA: Philosophy Documentation Center),
pp. 39–54.
2005a: “Work” in Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society, ed. C.
Mitcham (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA).
157156
1988b: “Building Community into Property,” Journal of Business Ethics 7:
171–183.
1986a: “Mikroelektronik und Arbeitsrechte,” in Technikphilosophie im
Zeitalter der Informationstechnik, eds. A. Huning and C. Mitcham,
BraunschweiglWiesbaden, West Germany: Vieweg & Sohn, pp.
179–192.
1986b: “e Adversary System: Who Needs It?” in Ethics and the
Legal Profession, eds. M. Davis and F. A. Elliston, Bualo, NY:
Prometheus, pp. 204–15; also in ALSA Forum VI {1982} 1–17.
1985a: “Microelectronics and Workers’ Rights,” in Philosophy and
Technology 11, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series,
ed. Carl Mitcham, Dordrecht/Boston: D. Reidel, pp. 205–216.
1985b: “Displaced Workers: America’s Unpaid Debt,” Journal of Business
Ethics 4: 31–41.
1985c: “Utopia Without Work? Myth, Machines and Public Policy,”
in Research in Philosophy and Technology VIII, ed. P. T. Durbin,
Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, pp. 133–148.
1984: “Displaced Workers: Whose Responsibility?” in Social Policy and
Conict Resolution, eds. M. Bradie 8 R. G. Frey, Bowling Green,
OH: Applied Philosophy Program, pp. 74–87.
1983a: “Can Government Regulate Technology?” in Philosophy and
Technology, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 80,
eds. P. T. Durbin and F. Rapp, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 17–33.
1983b: “Robots and the Future of Work,” in e World of Work: Careers
and the Future, ed. H.F. Didsbury, Jr., Bethesda, MD: World Future
Society, pp. 30–38.
1982a: “Law as Technology Assessment,” in Research in Philosophy
and Technology V, ed. P. T. Durbin, Greenwich, CT.: JAI Press,
pp. 101–15.
1982b: “Kann die Regierung die Technik steuern?” in Technikphilosophie
in der Diskussion, ed. F. Rapp, Wiesbaden, W. Germany: Vieweg &
Sohn, pp. 19–25.
1995a: “e Two-Tiered Ethics of EDP,” Journal of Business Ethics 14:
53–61; earlier version in Technology and Ecology, ed. L.A. Hickman
and E. F. Porter (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University
Department of Philosophy, 1994), pp. 184–201.
1995b: “Public Goods and the Paying Public,” Journal of Business Ethics
14: 117–23.
1993: “e Compensatory Rights of Emerging Interest Groups,” in e
Bill of Rights: Bicentennial Reections, Social Philosophy Today No.
8, ed. Y. Hudson and C. Peden, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, pp.
397–416.
1991: “Technology and Privacy,” in e Technology of Discovery and
the Discovery of Technology, ed. Joseph C. Pitt and Elena Lugo,
Proceedings of 6th International Conference of Society for
Philosophy and Technology, Blacksburg, VA: Society for Philosophy
and Technology.
1989a: “Nuclear Holocaust in American Films,” in Technology and Ethics:
Research in Philosophy and Technology, ed. C. Mitcham, Westport,
CT: JAI Press, pp. 3–21.
1989b: “Globalization and Community,” in Technological Transformation,
Philosophy and Technology, Vol. 5, eds. E. F. Byrne and J. R. Pitt,
Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 141-1 61.
1989c: “Workplace Democracy for Teachers: John Dewey’s
Contribution,” in Philosophy and Technology, ed. P. T. Durbin,
Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 81–95.
1989d: “e Labor-Saving Device: Evidence of Responsibility?” in From
Artifact to Habitat: Studies in the Critical Engagement of Technology,
ed. G. L. Ormiston, Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, pp.
132–54; also in Technology and Contemporary Life, Philosophy and
Technology, Vol. 4, ed. P. T. Durbin, Dordrecht/Boston: D. Reidel,
1988, pp. 63–85.
1988a: “Work and Technology: A Bibliographical Essay,” in Technology
and Contemporary Life, Philosophy and Technology, Vol. 4, ed. P. T.
Durbin, Dordrecht/Boston: D. Reidel, pp. 295–313.
159158
BOOK REVIEWS
P.T. Deutermann, e Last Man: A Novel (New York: St. Martin’s, 2012),
in Michigan War Studies Review, 3 Aug. 2016.
David Cortright, Rachel Fairhurst, and Kristen Wall, eds., Drones and the
Future of Armed Conict: Ethical, Legal, and Strategic Implications
(Chicago: Univ. Of Chicago Press, 2015), in Michigan War Studies
Review, 5 July 2016.
Chris Woods, Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2015), in Michigan War Studies Review, 2015–106.
Lloyd C. Gardner, Killing Machine: e American Presidency in the Age
of Drone Warfare (New York: New Press, 2013), in Michigan War
Studies Review, 2014–045.
Andrew J. Polsky, Elusive Victories: e American Presidency at War
(Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), in Michigan
War Studies Review, 2013–043.
William Nester, Haunted Victory: e American Crusade to Destroy
Saddam and Impose Democracy on Iraq (Washington, DC: Potomac
Books, 2012), in Michigan War Studies Review, 2012–048.
Alex Michalos, Trade Barriers to the Public Good: Free Trade and
Environmental Protection (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2008), in Techne: Journal of Philosophy and
Technology 15:3 (Fall 2011) pp. 235–237.
Henry Shue & David Rodin, eds., Preemption: Military Action and Moral
Justication (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010;
orig. 2007), in Michigan War Studies Review, 2011–004.
Brendan Sweetman, Why Politics Needs Religion: e Place of Religious
Arguments in the Public Square (Intervarsity Press Academic, 2006),
in Teaching Philosophy 31:2 (June 2008) 192–196.
Tom Rockmore et al., eds., e Philosophical Challenge of September 11
(Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), in Teaching
Philosophy 29:3 (Sept. 2006) 269–271.
1981a: “Death and Aging in Technopolis: Towards a Role Denition
of Wisdom,” in Philosophical Foundations of Gerontologv, ed. P. L.
McKee, New York: Human Sciences Press, pp. 54–77; also in J. of
Value Inquiry 10 (Fall 1976) 161–77.
1981b: “U.S. Domsat Policy: A Case Study of Economic Constraints
on Technology Assessment,” Prace Naukoznawcze i Prognostvczne
(Papers on Science of Science and Forecasting) 1–2 (Wroclaw,
Poland), pp. 71-86.
1980: “After ‘Mental Illness’ What? A Philosophical Endorsement of
Statutory Reform,” in Action and Responsibility, eds. M. Bradie &
M. Brand, Bowling Green, OH: Applied Philosophy Program,
pp. 122–31.
1979a: “e Normative Side of Technology,” in Research in Philosophy
and Technology, 11, ed. P. T. Durbin, Greenwich, CT.: JAI Press,
pp. 91–109.
1979b: “Technology and Human Existence,” Southwestern Journal of
Philosophy, 10 (Spring) 55–69.
1978: “Humanization of Technology: Slogan or Ethical Imperative?”
in Research in Philosophy and Technology, 1, ed. P. T. Durbin,
Greenwich, CT.: JAI Press, pp. 149–77.
1973: “e Depersonalization of Violence: Reections on the Future of
Personal Responsibility,” J. of Value Inquiry 7 (Fall) 161–72.
1972: “Evolution and Revolution: e Drama of Realtime
Complementarity,” Philosophy Forum 2 (March) 167–206. Also
published in Evolution-Revolution, eds. R. Gotesky & E. Laszlo,
London: Gordon & Breach, 1971.
1966: “Situation et Probabilité chez Saint omas d’Aquin,” Revue
Philosophique de Louvain 64 (Nov.) 525–59.
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Teaching Philosophy 17:2 (June 1994) 185- 188.
Mark L. Greenberg and Lance Schacterle, ed., Technology and Literature
(Lehigh University Press/Associated University Press, 1992), in
Canadian Philosophical Reviews 13:5 (Oct. 1993): 35–37.
Elizabeth Wolgast, e Grammar of Justice (Cornell Univ. Press, 1987), in
Nous 25 (March 1991) 137–139.
Benjamin M. Becker and David L. Gibberman, On Trial! Law, Lawyers,
and the Legal System (Philosophical Library, 1987), in Journal of
Legal Education, March 1989.
Gertrude Ezorsky, ed., Moral Rights in the Workplace (SUNY Press, 1987),
in Labor Studies Journal 13:4 (Winter 1988) 80–82.
Denise Giardina, Storming Heaven (W. W. Norton & Co., 1987), in
Labor Studies Journal 13:4 (Winter 1988) 88–89.
Mark H. McCormack, e Terrible Truth about Lawyers (William
Morrow, 1987), in Journal of Legal Education 38 (Sept.
1988) 481–3.
Robert Howard, Brave New Workplace, in Labor Studies Journal 12:1
(Spring 1987) 99–100.
James K. Feibleman, Technology and Reality, in Nature and System
6:4 (1984).
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1981) 184–188.
Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technolog y, in Nature and System 1(Dec.
1979) 283–286.
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Culture 19 (Oct. 1978) 795–796.
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1977,” Technology and Culture 9 (Jan. 1978) 100–103.
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(New York: Dutton, 2004) in Teaching Philosophy 27:4 (Dec. 2004)
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Teaching Philosophy 28:4 (June 2005) 376–379.
James P. Sterba, ed., Terrorism and International Justice (Oxford University
Press, 2003), in Teaching Philosophy 27:2 (June 2004) 181–184.
Andrew Fiala, e Philosopher’s Voice: Philosophy, Politics, and Language in
the Nineteenth Century (SUNY Press, 2002), in Journal of Speculative
Philosophy 18:4 (2004) 333–335.
Roger S. Gottlieb, Joining Hands: Politics and Religion Together for Social
Change (Perseus Westview, 2002), in Teaching Philosophy 27:1
(March 2004) 65–68.
Philip Cole, Philosophies of Exclusion: Liberal Political eory and
Immigration (University of Edinburgh Press, 2000), in Teaching
Philosophy 25:2 (June 2002) 165 –169.
Peggy DesAutels, Margaret P. Battin, and Larry May, Praying for a
Cure: When Medical and Religious Practices Conict (Rowman and
Littleeld, 1999), in Teaching Philosophy 25:1 (March 2002) 75–77.
Carrie Gustafson and Peter Juviler, eds., Religion and Human Rights:
Competing Claims? (M E. Sharpe, 1999), in Teaching Philosophy 23:4
(Dec. 2000) 384–387.
Michael Davis, inking Like An Engineer: Studies in the Ethics of a
Profession (Oxford University Press, 1998), in Teaching Philosophy
23:3 (Sept. 2000) 306–309.
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of the Political (Princeton University Press, 1996), in Teaching
Philosophy 22:1 (March 1999) 99–101.
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163162
Appendix III.
Excerpts from Applications, Letters, and Reports
L
ast week I was informed that my application for a
Fulbright has been endorsed by the IIE’s National
Screening Committee. us, the nal decision is now
in the hands of an Educational Commission abroad, and ul-
timately, the Board of Foreign Scholarships.
Knowing your early interest and accomplishments in the
philosophy of science, and knowing that you yourself studied
at Louvain, I have written, hoping against hope, to ask if you
might be so gracious as to help me in any way at this import-
ant turning point in my life. Even so simple a thing as a letter
to Louvain, from you, would be immensely helpful.
By way of conclusion, I should like to mention—as an
indication of the origin of my esteem for you—that I am a
graduate of Spalding Institute in Peoria, Illinois. -- Letter to
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Feb. 7, 1963. (He responded favor-
ably Feb. 25,1963.)
* * *
Having… established my academic program at Louvain,
I am proceeding as intended with research into the notions of
Probability, Dialectic, and Opinion in the writings of omas
Aquinas. My chief reason for this particular study is to in-
vestigate for signs of continuity between ancient concepts of
non-certain, or “probable” knowledge and the same concepts as
they are widely discussed today, largely as a result of a profound
(Also an occasionally published poet.)
Unpublished legal history of an unsuccessful attempt to pass
legislation that would enable university faculty in Indiana to bargain
collectively:
Collective Bargaining in Indiana – Not Yet for State University Faculty:
A Report on the Political and Technical Evolution of H.B. 1647 in the Indiana
General Assembly, 1975. Submitted to Professor William Fox in fulllment
of requirements for his course on legislation (N602).
(See excerpt in Appendix III.)
165164
is the competence to go beyond problem-analysis to a profes-
sionally knowledgeable consideration of mechanisms avail-
able in our society for translating analysis into policy. As a re-
sult, students who take my courses are sometimes surely left
with an overwhelming appreciation of the complexity of hu-
man aairs that is not suciently counterbalanced with a like
appreciation of ways in which we can incorporate technolo-
gy into the social fabric without our becoming either obsolete
or neo-Luddite. With such goals in mind, I read widely: and
I participate in a variety of multi-disciplinary conferences on
such topics as science and society (AAAS), philosophy and an-
thropology, the values of integrative knowledge, and the im-
pact of technology and urbanization on traditional societies
(NSF-AAAS grant)… I have found ways to utilize both the
computer and the movie projector in my classes. But the overall
thrust of my concerns is in the direction of public policy; and
it is at this point, quite obviously, that an extensive knowledge
of both the principles and the practice of law becomes essen-
tial. – Application for admission to law school, April 14, 1973.
* * *
[Resolution] (1a) [regarding services at IUB and at
IUPUI] and (1b) [regarding planned elimination of dupli-
cate programs] are perhaps nowhere more strongly supported
than in Professor J. Gus Liebenow’s June 28 letter to the I.U.
Board of Trustees informing them of his resignation as Vice-
President and Dean for Academic Aairs, and in his expanded
statement of his views dated August 26, 1974. Specic unan-
swered questions with regard to both quality and economy of
educational programs in a so-called ‘core’ are innumerable, but
transformation of mathematics and experimental science which
involves the fruitful application of mathematical statistics and
probability theory to a variety of scientic problems (the most
important application being that of quantum mechanics). To
date, I have read, among other things, more than half of the
relevant works of Saint omas (and will have completed this
reading by June) and my ndings more than justify the eort.
Along with a delicately nuanced logico-epistemological theo-
ry of probability, Aquinas discusses many aspects of probable
knowledge which are currently of intense concern in the phi-
losophy of science. – Application for Extension and for Renewal
of Fulbright Grant, 1964.
* * *
(M)y predominant motivation for wanting to study law
arises out of a real and present need: my academic specializa-
tion simply requires the kind of systematic underpinning that
only the study of law can provide.
e kinds of issues which I deal with both in my cours-
es and in my writing might all be associated with a title such
as the social philosophy of science and technology. To the ex-
tent that these issues have a single orientation, they might be
related to what some call the humanization of technology. But
this latter expression concedes too much, in my judgment, to
the private dimension and too little to the public dimension
of the great issues that face a society such as ours that is ori-
ented toward and increasingly dependent upon high technol-
ogy. My broad expertise in philosophy equips me adequately
to articulate and expound upon such issues in order to bring
them to the forefront of my students’ awareness. What I lack
167166
Sept. 16, 1974 to Dr. Richard D. Gibb, Commissioner of the
Indiana State Commission for Higher Education, from Edmund
Byrne, President, American Association of University Professors/
IUPUI, with attached Resolution on the [IU Board of Trustees]
Proposed Reorganization of Indiana University.
a few examples may serve to suggest the complexity of the is-
sues at stake. Will all services—health, legal aid, and transpor-
tation being just a few—automatically become available to all
students enrolled in Indianapolis as well as in Bloomington? If
not, why not? If so, at what cost and at whose expense? Will
membership on the Board of Trustees of Indiana University
now be modied to represent more fairly the diverse interests
which the Board is required to serve? In the absence of clear-
ly dened campuses heretofore called IUB and IUPUI, what,
if anything, will be the role of the campus governing bodies
authorized by the recently adopted IU All-University Faculty
Constitution? In the absence of an oce of Chancellor on ei
-
ther campus, at what level of the centralized administration
shall decisions bearing directly upon location-specic prob-
lems be made, especially in case of emergency? In the event of
grievances arising among faculty, sta, or students, what au-
thority, if any, shall reside in the structures already established
to deal with local problems locally?
It is obvious that each of these areas, taken by itself, is a
matter of administration internal to the university. But tak-
en collectively, all are likely to be aected… by the proposed
reorganization; and thus viewed they become… a matter of
concern to an outside agency responsible for safeguarding the
quality of educational opportunity available to the citizens
of Indiana… For the underlying issue is one of policy-per-
petuated economic discrimination between the two campus-
es, in a manner that has been analyzed nationwide in the
recently published study on part-time students by a commit-
tee of the American Council on Education, reported in a re-
cent issue of e Chronicle of Higher Education. – Letter dated
169168
intellectual knowledge. It involves propositions, the positing
thereof and adherence thereto. It is often erroneous, but rea-
soning is the only means to glimpse what is seen by the intel-
lectual betters, and dialectic is the road to truth. Authority is
not sucient for determining truth. Opinions are evalu ated
by disputation. When an assertion is made, the opinion be-
comes credible. An opinion widely accepted is probable, but
not necessarily true. Disputation requires a common vocabu-
lary, a common starting point, and a common goal, which is
to point toward truth.
Knowledge thus obtained is probable. It becomes science
when demonstrated. Science is a structure built on rst prin-
ciples by induction through sense experi ence or by deduction
from its rst prin ciples. Its propositions should be universal,
necessary, and certain. A proposition is demonstrable when it
can be reduced to the rst principles. A science whose prin-
ciples can be proven in a more funda mental science is subal-
ternate. To its stu dents, the principles are probabilities until
they are demonstrated.
ings which always happen are neces sary, demonstrable,
and thus scientic. ings which happen most of the time are
demonstrable, disregarding exceptions. ings which happen
occasionally are chance events, not necessary. A proposi tion
which is not necessary but only con tingent is non-scientic.
e book is concluded with a discussion of the follow-
ing points:
1. ere is a similarity between omas’ thought pat-
terns and contemporary thought patterns.
2. ere is a similarity between omas’ notion of
probable knowledge and the modern notion of
Appendix IV.
Reviews of Author’s Other Books
Probability and Opinion, e Hague: Martinus Nijho,
1968 A.S. Saidan, Higher Teachers Training
Institute, Omdurman, Sudan, in Isis, 60:2 (Summer
1969), pp. 255-257.
Guided by a statement by J. H. Randall that the foun-
dations of modern thought should be sought in the Middle
Ages, Edmund F. Byrne in Probability and Opinion aims at
presenting the notion of probability as it appears in the writ-
ings of omas Aquinas.
In the rst chapter, the views of leading modern writers
on probability are pointed out and summarized with a skele-
ton outline… In ve other chapters this notion is followed up
in omas’ theory of knowledge, with special stress on opin-
ionative, that is, probable knowledge: God knows everything
by wisdom. Next come the angels who know by understand-
ing. Man’s knowledge is by nature imperfect, not certain, only
probable, to be made more and more probable by argumen-
tation. e Holy Scriptures give truth par excellence revealed
by God; any contradiction to them is false. But opinions may
dier in interpretation, and here argumentation shows which
is the more probable opinion or which leads to the golden
mean. Next to the Scriptures we have two traditions: that of
the saints and that of the philosophers, especially Aristotle.
Man’s cause of error is phantasm. Opin ion leads to
certitude. In itself, it is an ensemble of non-demonstrative
171170
or think that the story is only partly told. Readers will
also wish that the index were extended to con tain tech-
nical terms or that a glossary of these terms were added.
Ivo omas, University of Notre Dame, in Philosophy of
Science, 38:4 (Dec. 1971), p. 616
is doctoral dissertation has three themes: Aquinas’s
treatment of probability, its handling by mathematicians and
scientists, and the relevance of the former to the latter. e rst
of these is dealt with very thoroughly and occupies the body of
the book, pp. 53-277; by themselves these pages would make
an interesting monograph. But this was not enough for the
author, who evidently considered that he had in the making a
worthwhile essay in the history of ideas. Briey, the assertion
is that corresponding to the “logical” interpretation of proba-
bility (as the degree of conrmation of a proposition) one can
nd in Aquinas the notion of a probable proposition as one
which is argumentatively supported; while corresponding to
the “mathematical” interpretation of probability (as the rela-
tive frequency of a class of events) one can nd the notion of
what is contingent, as what happens in fewer or in most cases.
Perhaps this is not too surprising; from the sixteenth
century on, there has been a steady endeavor to formalize the
notion, and these two aspects of the confused intuitive idea
have come to dominate the formal scene. It would be strang-
er if they did not turn up in some guise in the work of an ear-
lier prolic and perceptive writer. Whether anything Aquinas
had to say on these matters can be termed “relevant” to his
contemporary successors is more problematical. If similari-
ties between two very dissimilar universes of thought are to
non-demonstrable knowledge.
3. ere is a similarity between omas’ disputation
and the calculus of prob ability.
4. ere is a similarity between omas’ theory of
probability and the con temporary logical theory,
and be tween omas’ theory of contingency and
the contemporary frequency theory.
5. ere is a relationship between omas’ distinc-
tion between scientia and opinion-probability and
the modern problem of probability of science.
As a study of omas’ opinion, the book has ful-
lled its aim. Despite the lack of quotations, the reader
feels safe when he sees the long list of selected bibliog raphy
(21 pp.) and knows that the work is the revised version of
a doctoral disser tation awarded la plus grande distinction by
the University of Louvain. It is not in
tended to be a com-
parative study; it shows omas as an Aristotelian but
does not show his debt to others or his place among the
builders of the foundations of present thought. omas
is isolated even from his historical environment, and thus
we hardly know about his personal life except that he laid
down his pen saying, “All I have written is as straw,” and
died shortly thereafter in 1274. e following is a case in
point: omas lived in an age largely inuenced by the
teachings of Averroes, who explained Aristotle in a way
which was found to undermine faith. omas was urged
by the authorities to refute these teachings, a task he ful-
lled without undermining Aristotle. Readers of Byrne
who know this may miss detailed references to Averroes
173172
the subtle, patient, precise and sound analyses is the descrip-
tion of a conscious attitude and its objective expression in vir-
tue of which the concept of probability makes sense. For ex-
ample: “Opinion, Error and Human Perfection“ (chapter 1);
“Tradition as a Source of Opinion and Probability“ (chapter
3); “Probability in Disputation and Demonstration“ (chap-
ter 4); “e Quasi-Mathematics of Truth: Semper and Some
of the Time“ (chapter 5); “omas’s eocentric Perspective
on Probability“ (chapter 6). e Conclusion analyzes the
“Historical Dimension of Probability.”
A mathematician or a statistician could not recognize
in those themes the problems with which he deals in his in-
vestigations. Indeed, the rst part has underlined the weak-
ness of a position which can be reduced to a purely formal
mathematical system. e mathematical technique of prob-
ability has been called by some a mere theory of fractions;
even the mathematical denition of probability could be
criticized as implying a vicious circle insofar as there is no
clear-cut border between probability and possibility, name-
ly, the deniendum and the denition. ese remarks show
to a modern reader that something precedes the formaliza-
tion, namely a prescientic language which signies a prim-
itive meaning. e question is whether this meaning has
been faithfully kept through the formalization, or to what
extent it has been formalized without distortion.
Even if the techniques are dierent or absent, it is not
certain that medieval thought is radically dierent from
modern thought. e purpose of the book has been to
question, in a very particular case, the alleged dichotomy
between medieval and modern patterns of thinking. e
count as relevance, the point may be granted; that a modern
writer on probability could expect to nd very much stimu-
lation in the thirteenth-century work seems rather doubtful.
e chapters on Servien, Carnap, Russell, and so on, sit very
oddly with those on heresy, angelic knowledge, the tradition
of the saints, etc. e author knew the score when he came to
write the preface: “We shall not nd [not ‘and’] his (Aquinas’s)
thoughts on and in terms of probability of any signicant help
in connection with the modern problem of the foundations
of mathematical probability. But we shall be able to add his-
torical perspective to current discussions of both mathemati-
cal and extra-mathematical probability.”
Èleuthère Winance, St, John’s College, Camarillo, CA,
in Journal of the History of Philosophy, 12:3 (July
1974), pp. 394–395.
is study is divided into two parts and a conclusion. Part
1, by way of introduction, summarizes “Modern Notions of
Probability”: their historical origins, the foundations of prob-
ability, the mathematical approach, “objective theories,” ex-
tra-mathematical interpretations, non-objective aspects, and
nally, probability modern and medieval. Part 2, the core of
the work, presents under all its aspects and implications the
“Medieval Notion of Probability.” emes treated in various
chapters reveal to us the very nature of the approach to the
problem of probability. It is not at all a question of a math-
ematical technique, unknown to the Middle Ages at least in
its modern elaboration, but of philosophical presuppositions
which have escaped the awareness of many mathematicians.
Let us put it in these words: what constitutes the object of
175174
approached in a narrow-minded way.
Work, Inc. 1990. C. Tausky, University of Massachusetts
at Amherst, in Choice, Nov. 1990, no. 403
Byrne, an attorney and academic (philosophy, Indiana
University) . . . raises issues of work-related ethics: specical-
ly, transnational corporations’ power to inuence nations and
people’s lives and livelihoods. His approach is both philosoph-
ical and empirical. One may agree that large rms exercise tre-
mendous inuence while pursuing narrowly dened corporate
interests, and in so doing can disrupt lives and shrink pock-
etbooks. However, Byrne’s solutions are vague and, in this re-
viewer’s opinion, unpromising.
At the global level, some form of world government is ap-
parently attractive. At the level of local “community,” Byrne es-
pouses the need for leaders oriented to labor’s interests to con-
trol corporations’ self-serving actions. En route, the work ethic
is exposed as a means of manipulation, since people by their
nature “are more inclined to play than work,” and should not
be forced to work, since that is “enslavement.” Certainly this is
one possible outlook. But one can as readily argue that extrin-
sic encouragement of work has some merit, that full autonomy
and community are contradictory notions. ose interested in a
philosophical deconstruction of power and its related work ethic
will nd this an interesting, stimulating, and very readable book.
Author’s Comment: In 2001, 2012, 2015 James Franklin
published a nearly 500-page book entitled e Science of
Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). As far as I can tell, my
Probability and Opinion is nowhere mentioned in this tome.
method has been to place the problems in their own respec-
tive ideological universes. By
doing so, the author believes
that he has been able to discover a set of similarities between
omas’ patterns and those of the moderns; between his no-
tion of opinion and the modern knowledge of non-demon-
strative science; between the procedure of disputation and the
calculus of probability; between his theory of contingency and
the contemporary frequency theory of probability; between
his theory of science and opinion probability and the prob-
lem of probability in science.
It
is clear that the treatment of probability by the me-
dieval doctor and the contemporary mathematicians and
logicians is not the same; that when the notion of proba-
bility is not reduced to its mathematical meaning it tran-
scends the bounds of mathematics and pervades a wide do-
main of reections. As the author says in his preface, “We
shall be able to add historical perspective to current discus-
sions of both mathematical and extra-mathematical prob-
ability.” He does not hesitate to follow omas to his ul-
timate solution of certain and comprehensive knowledge,
union with God, which substitutes certitude for opinion.
In a magistral [sic] preface, Professor Ladriere sketches a
Status Questionis of the fundamental philosophical prob-
lems related to proba b i li ty.
e author has treated his subject with great competence,
broad-minded openness to contemporary problems and a deep
understanding of the texts of omas. is work must be read
both by those who want a better understanding of the rela-
tions between the Middle Ages and modern life and by those
who want to broaden their perspective in a subject sometimes
177176
historical and contempo rary relationships among the three
corners of the triangle:
A. Between workers and the community: He explores
this relationship in terms of the work ethic. Exactly
what kind of obligation do people in general have
to their community to do useful work? What kind
and amount of work should workers in particu-
lar contract to perform? Both work and leisure have
been prized as necessary for a meaningful life. What
is the proper balance between them under contem-
porary conditions?
B. Between the corporation and workers: What obli-
gations do corpo rations have to provide equal op-
portunity for meaningful and adequately compen-
sated jobs for members of work forces in particular
communities? What liberties should be protected
for workers in the workplace? How are the needs
of workers to be met in the face of automation and
the opportunity which corporations enjoy to move
facilities to new locations across the world for great-
er prots?
C. Between the corporation and the community: How
can economic survival and reasonable prots be
assured businesses without allowing them to deci-
mate communities, corrupt governments or exploit
workers? How can communities regain control or
at least a reasonable degree of inuence over the ac-
tions of the corporations which function in them
and profoundly aect their well-being?
Work, Inc. John Kultgen, University of Missouri,
Columbia, MO, in Teaching Philosophy 15:1, March
1992, pp 91-93.
In this work, Byrne explores the dimensions of the disso-
lution of what he thinks of as a social contract that has existed
until recent times between business, labor, and government
in this country. e contract dened the rights and responsi-
bilities of each group toward the others for the benet of all.
Byrne believes that the contract has been broken by corpora-
tions, whose power has so grown as to enable them to disregard
the interests not only of their workers but of the communities
in which their productive facilities are located. “...the social
contract involving business, labor, and government is no lon-
ger tenable ‘as written,’ because business now exer cises de facto
sovereignty over the other two parties to the contract (277).”
It is Byrne’s aim to develop the specications in terms of
which repre sentatives of workers might negotiate a new con-
tract with representatives of business and communities un-
der a defensible concept of distributive justice. e contract
would not only protect the legitimate interests of the work-
ers, but it would provide for the integrity of the communities
in which they live and work and concede to the businesses no
more than what is due to them.
Byrne argues that workers have to present a common
front with com munities toward corporations to counterbal
-
ance the latter’s superior power. e only incentive he oers
corporations to be reasonable and fair in negotiating the new
contract is the opportunity to regain the respect of the hu-
man community. To put meat on these bones, Byrne discusses
179178
summary characterization:
...a social contract is an empirically discernible but ul-
timately hypotheti cal agreement that encompasses the
basic terms and conditions in refer ence to which a sta-
ble group of interacting human beings assess the legiti-
macy and propriety of their interactions. In saying that
it is empiri cally discernible I do not mean that it is an
actual contract (as between two parties in respect to a
mutual exchange) but that its essential terms and con-
ditions are disclosed by the ways in which people count
upon one another and express recrimination when their
expectations frustrated. In saying that it is hypothetical,
however, I do not rule out the possibility of its being
subject to reform in light of an arguably better, even if
not ideal, dispensation. (7)
Byrne appears to be speaking of actual expectations which
people have of each other (otherwise the contract would not
be “empirically discernible”) yet not to be claiming that the
expectations are the result of or justied by an agreement (the
social contract, he says, is not an actual contract).
I also do not know what Byrne means when he says that
the “contract” is hypothetical other than we must hypoth-
esize what the expectations are that constitute it and try to
conrm our hypotheses by empirical studies. If this is what
Byrne means, it is not clear what a discovery of people’s ac-
tual expectations would tell us about what they ought to ex-
pect (under either the existing or an arguably better “dispen-
sation”). e expecta tions do not obtain their obligatory force
from promises such as those which would be incorporated in
Since Byrne’s conceptions of what workers ought to get
for themselves and their communities is closely tied to what
they want and have either enjoyed or been denied, much of
his argument appeals for support to studies of historians and
social scientists, that is, to secondhand accounts of work and
its conditions, though he indicates that he has proted from
conversations with many people active in the labor movement.
His over view of the literature will be useful for anyone inter-
ested in the social ethic of work. He also provides a wealth of
useful factual data. Most of these data naturally pertain to the
United States (especially his home state of Indiana) but some
bear on conditions in other parts of the world, since many of
the problems with corporations are caused by their ability to
function internationally and move elsewhere if they are not
given their way in a particular community.
e book is ably assembled, coherent (though somewhat
indecisive) in its conclusions and, from this reviewer’s perspec-
tive, fundamentally sound. e writing is straightforward and
serviceable, if not always felici tous. It is not unnecessarily tech-
nical, nor does it hide its points behind jargon. When I had
diculty understanding the author, it was usually when he was
striving to add color and zest to a somewhat austere subject.
e main limitation of the work is the short shrift which
it gives to theoretical foundations. It takes a contractual ap-
proach to social ethics, derived from Rawls but diverging sig-
nicantly from him, in its eort to determine what is just
and benecial for associations between businesses, workers,
and communities. I found myself uncertain about exactly
what the author takes a social contract to be and how he de-
termines what its proper ingredients would be. Consider this
181180
labor ethics for organizers, lawyers, or others planning careers
in labor relations. It would be useful in courses on business
ethics as a complement, and antidote, to the usual texts which
present issues from the standpoint of management.
Albert Borgmann, Philosophy, University of Montana,
in Journal of Business Ethics (Nov. 1992) 11(11)
pp. 830 .
Professor Byrne has given us a passionate and diligent
book. What provokes his passion is the plight of the workers.
ey have lost their dignity and security, they feel betrayed
and abandoned. Professor Byrne’s concern with the fate of the
workers is not ltered through Marxism, socialism, or union-
ism, nor is its anger clothed in one of the standard vocabu-
laries of the left. Professor Byrne simply sees a lot of working
people without a job, health insurance, a pension, any hope of
employment and advancement, and without any condence
that they can do anything about this.
Workers need a voice. Not that the poor and powerless
of our society altogether lack advocacy. But you require a spe-
cial and politically correct grievance to capture the media and
gain a hearing. (Getting relief is another matter.) Simply to be
unemployed, underemployed, uninsured, unneeded, or inse-
cure is not enough. Nor is it the case that philosophers have
neglected the problem of social justice. It is at the center of
Rawlsian liberalism, and the latter has been a vigorous and
even revolutionary school of thought in professional philos-
ophy since the early 1970s. Yet the theorists of justice are to
the workers what the medical researchers are to patients. e
theorists have removed themselves from immediate misery to
an actual contract.
Moreover, if the old “contract” has been dissolved, this
must mean there are no longer actual mutual expectations to
be found empirically. We are left, then, to determine what peo
-
ple’s expectations of each other should be. It is hard to see how
an imaginary (hypothetical?) contract helps to determine this.
What Byrne does appear to be doing is proposing new
practices, atti tudes and ideologies which would do justice to
the interests of workers and communities as well as corpora-
tions—if a way could be found to induce these three groups to
internalize them. His review of past and existing practices, at-
titudes and ideologies helps him determine what proposals are
practicable, i.e., which have any change of being internal ized
in the necessary way. It is not clear how this practical enter-
prise is furthered by presenting its content as a contract which
imaginary repre sentatives of labor would propose to the other
two groups or accept from them. Nor is it clear how the exer-
cise in the imagination enables one to determine for himself
or herself what would be just in the rst place.
Byrne’s specic proposals are intuitively appealing and
evince consid erable insight and a lively imagination, howev-
er uncertain he leaves one about the ultimate commitments
on which he bases them. As proposals, they challenge readers
to explain why they might not accept them. ey would raise
important questions for students to address and provide pos-
sible answers, not only the author’s answers but alternatives
which he lays out fairly and objectively.
e book is perhaps better suited to use as a reference
than as a text in college, graduate or professional courses. It
might serve as the center piece text for a specialized course in
183182
background and basis of the issues that concern him. When
it comes to the obligation of work and the value of leisure, he
will present you with the social facts and theoretical positions
from the Greeks to the present (pp. 65–76). When it comes
to the validity of tests for employment screening, he will walk
you through the relevant case law, using his legal expertise to
evident advantage (pp. 161–65). He has used, appraised, and
acknowledged an enormous amount of data and secondary
sources. And a skillfully constructed index provides the key
to all the material.
e theoretical thread that runs through Professor Byrne’s
book is the notion of the “workers’ representative,” the party
that would properly represent workers in a renegotiation of the
social contract. e “workers’ representative” marks Professor
Byrne’s standard of what in the expanse of his material is cru-
cially relevant and benecial to the well-being of workers. He
presents this notion as a modication of John Rawls’s origi-
nal position in A eory of Justice. But why modify rather than
adopt Rawls? Professor Byrne’s general, and generally agreeable,
reason is the relatively abstract and individualist structure of
Rawls’s edice. But in his specic criticisms of Rawls, Professor
Byrne has embarked on a wrong-headed and error-lled course.
Professor Byrne’s principal problem is a mistaken view of how
Rawls conceives of the position in which the social contract
is originally agreed upon. Professor Byrne fears that the par-
ties to the original position will, behind the veil of ignorance,
agree on a contract so loosely circumscribed that the welfare
of workers will remain gravely vulnerable to the power and
greed of the corporations. What is needed [if justice is to be
achieved], Professor Byrne concludes, is a representative who is
work out a powerful remedy once and for all. While medi-
cal scientists may yet defeat heart disease, cancer, and AIDS,
it is more than doubtful now whether philosophers will ever
achieve an analogous victory. Accordingly, Professor Byrne
is weary and wary of professional philosophy (pp. 7, 10, 41,
45) and attends to the diculties and varieties of the work-
ers’ concrete situation.
Professor Byrne pursues his task with enormous diligence.
In an introductory chapter he sketches the unhappy upheav-
als that have overtaken the once relatively stable and mutually
fruitful relation between corporations and workers… In Part
I, entitled “Worker and Community,” he gives an exposition
of the views that have guided and misguided us in thinking
of work as obligatory, redeeming, ennobling, and as an enti-
tlement to welfare.
Part II, “Worker and Corporation,” portrays the arsenal
of arguments, inducements, and enforcements that corpora-
tions have used to bend workers to their will. It ends by con-
sidering the nal solution to the demands and unruliness of
workers— elimination through automation. “Corporation and
Community,” the third and last part, unfolds the struggle be-
tween these two institutions over the control of the working
environment, a ght almost always won by the corporations
and now further weighted in their favor by the global econo-
my that provides corporations with still more options when
faced with a demanding community. A solution to the workers’
plight, Professor Byrne contends, requires a global agreement
on justice and, at the local level, a rearmation of the city as
the salient place for communal solidarity and self-assertion...
Professor Byrne spares no labor supplying detail to the
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corporation. It is surely premature to proclaim the demise of
the large corporation. But there is daily evidence that the once
paradigmatic rms of this country are losing mass and rigidity.
e center of gravity in our economy does not lie with-
in the corporations. It is found in people’s implication in a
life of disburdenment and consumption. is is where it must
be exposed. And if there is any hope of bringing force to bear
on it so that things will begin to move in a salutary direction,
we must discover new paths in the emerging postindustrial
and postmodern terrain. In preparation for all this, we would
do well to heed Professor Byrne’s plea for the working people
and to avail ourselves of the wealth of material he has gath-
ered for us.
Author’s response to Borgmann
In his predominantly positive assessment of Work, Inc.,
Borgmann identies three principal aws: (1) a misconstru-
al of Rawls’ original position; (2) inadequate foundation for
global justice; and (3) inadequate attention to corporations.
For the second and third lacunas see relevant articles written
after Work, Inc. in Appendix II, above. For the rst, suce to
say here that Rawls’s negotiator behind the veil of ignorance
is so abstract that he (?) ignores basic dierences that must be
openly considered if truly just principles are to be attained.
Feminist scholars have made this point abundantly with re-
gard to women. My position, in Work, Inc. and still today, is
that the dierence between a corporate magnate and an ordi-
nary worker cannot be theoretically equated without under-
mining any possibility of achieving just principles. See also
Alyssa R. Bernstein, “Original Position,” in Encyclopedia of
well-informed and well-concerned from the start (pp. 9–11)…
e purpose of Rawls’ original position is precisely to
yield and justify principles of justice. ey are to be the basis,
not the point of contention, of real life bargaining. By mis
-
construing Rawls’s original position as a real bargaining sit-
uation, Professor Byrne robs it of its function as a source for
principles of justice, and he has no other source to put in its
place. [Important note here about divergent quests for prin-
ciples of justice.]
Accordingly, there is resignation, if not despair, running
underneath Professor Byrne’s compassion with the workers’ pre-
dicament. At times his indictment has air and conviction. e
stylistic standard bearer of such vigor is what H. W. Fowler has
called the sentry particle. Frequently used by Professor Byrne,
it alerts our attention and promises great tidings. But as Fowler
warns, fatigue and disjointedness are likely to overtake this con-
struction. When stylistic exhaustion and substantive weariness
converge in Professor Byrne’s prose, its tone tends to become
sarcastic (e.g., pp. 27, 33, 142). Not that the objects of Professor
Byrne’s scorn are always undeserving. But the eect on readers
is the danger of surrendering the compassion and insight they
owe Professor Byrne to doubt and helplessness. In the face of
such misgivings, Professor Byrne’s call for global justice and lo-
cal activism is too tentative to inspire and guide his readers…
Now that the end of the modern era is coming into view,
both our aspirations and the economic structures our hopes
have been entrusted to are losing their vigor. As regards eco-
nomic structures, Professor Byrne pays little attention to the
post-industrial changes that are weakening and restructur-
ing the sinister force that looms so large in his account—the
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Global Justice, ed. Dean Chatterlee et al., Vol. 2.
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