Teaching Philosophy of Religion Series Ep. 5 Eric Dickman On Pedagogical Structures

Nathan Loewen:

Welcome to our podcast series from the Global Critical Philosophy of Religion project. This project aims to rethink the philosophy of religion from the ground up with an entirely new set of categories and questions. As you may imagine, this is no small task. The interview series on teaching is created by Nathan Loewen. The interviews are supported by a grant from the Wabash Center. All of the podcasts you find here on the Global Critical Philosophy of Religion are hosted by Study Religion, a production of the department of religious studies at the University of Alabama.

Nathan Loewen:

How might philosophy of religion be taught and studied in the 21st century? Nathan Eric Dickman is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of the Ozarks. You can find his CV, publications, and videos at ozarks.academia.edu/nathandickman. Professor Dickman was a part of a pilot project teaching Philosophy of Religion with a global critical approach. The pilot was supported by a Wabash center grant administered by Gereon Kopf of Luther College. Our conversation on November 22nd, 2021, focused on how Professor Dickman structures a cross-cultural introduction to the Philosophy of Religion.

Nathan Loewen:

Well, it’s great to have you here for a conversation of about your teaching practices in the Philosophy of Religion. I mean, what are the challenges of your teaching situation? To my understanding, the University of Ozarks is a small liberal arts college.

Eric Dickman:

Yeah.

Nathan Loewen:

You teach in a department of philosophy and religious studies. So walk us through the nature of that teaching situation.

Eric Dickman:

Yeah. So the program is a philosophy program, but the course Philosophy of Religion is cross listed both for philosophy and for religious studies. And so for me, the issue is trying to create a philosophy of religion class, but at the same time, this may be the only class as a general elective, this may be the only class that a student takes, where they get exposed to religious traditions other than Christianity. So my goal is to find a way to deliver a relatively introductory level course, at the same time as getting them exposed to multiple religious cultures, traditions, and methodologies, and all these sorts of things. So for me, that’s the situation, it’s not a Buddhist philosophy course. It is a Philosophy of Religion, where we can look at religions.

Nathan Loewen:

Wow. So this is like you’ve carved out a really specific niche that you need to fill a whole bunch of things into. Multiple traditions, you’re examining …

Eric Dickman:

Multiple methods.

Nathan Loewen:

Multiple methods. Several different themes so that students can tie in and branch out and potentially have this as their only experience, as you just said. So as you’re doing that, what do you try to build in there? What kinds of things are scaffolded into this tight little space of your course?

Eric Dickman:

Yeah. I want to meet Kevin Schilbrack’s challenge about, or to institutionalize philosophy of religion courses in textbooks, in his criticism of them that they’re narrow intellectualistic and insular. So how can I make sure that my course is broad in the sense of covering multiple religious traditions? Not intellectualistic, that is exploring other dimensions of religious life, that’s not merely belief and doctrine, and then how can I make sure that it’s not insular, that is how can I make sure that it’s insufficient conversation with religious studies and the interdisciplinarity of religious studies. Taking into consideration things like feminism, post-colonialism, these sorts of things. So when I scaffold the course, I want to make sure that there may be some of that in every unit and the lessons themselves can display a systematic organization while at the same time maintaining kind of an open-endedness.

Nathan Loewen:

And so I think with everyone who teaches a global critical philosophy of religion class, you’re again, talking about something that is working really hard to address a series of specific challenges related to critiques of a field. And you also want to engage students, but at the same time, students aren’t unaware. They are critical receptors of our teaching and how they are learning. And so they want to see a path, right? They want to know that they’re going somewhere. They don’t want to be just going all over the place. And you said things like post-colonial and feminist and not intellectualistic, but at the same time academic. So, I mean, how do you thread that needle? What’s the framework that you use?

Eric Dickman:

Yeah. I don’t want them to experience the course as just a survey, and so I want it to make sense to have kind of a spinal cord to it. And the framework that I use is cons analysis of the three ideas of pure reason, or the illusions of dialectical reason. The self, the world, and the divine our God, and I use these to create the units of the course. And it’s not just those three, it’s also the unconditioned itself that refracts into these three components, the unconditioned being this kind of ultimate answer to the question why. Like the toddler that can’t stop asking why? Well, because of this, because of this, at a certain point there’s going to be the ultimate.

Nathan Loewen:

And so, just jump in, for you then if I get this right Philosophy of Religion class does involve asking questions about ultimacy or absolute, and this is part of that framework?

Eric Dickman:

Yeah. I think that that’s part of the framework. Because I mean, even students will come in who are somewhat religious and they’ll appeal to things like, God is beyond human understanding, right? Human limits on their concepts, can’t really grasp God or God’s plan or things like this. So they already have the rhetoric or the jargon of God being beyond human limits, right? And so it’s just saying, well, let’s start there since you’re kind of using that.

Nathan Loewen:

Right. And so I know we’re trying to get to you talking about the parts of your framework, but I’ll just jump in because you said, the students come to class with this already, is there a way that you actually survey and find out what is the prior knowledge or the baggage that they’re coming with? Are there media examples? Do you get them to pull out things from their lives? Then you say, “Well, this is transcendental. This is ultimate. This is theological.” And get them to recognize that this is what’s going on in the kind of language that they’re already using?

Eric Dickman:

I don’t get that explicit in terms of labeling things as transcendental. In fact, throughout the whole class, I might not use the word transcendental at all. I do use the word transcendent or transcendence, but I don’t use the word transcendental because that’s such a complicated term in Kantian philosophy in the first place. But I do a prior knowledge assessment quiz or whatever on the very first day where I just say, “What do you think religion is? What do you think philosophy is? What is the point of doing philosophy about religion? What are we even doing?” To see what some of their assumptions are, and often, they might say confessionally religious things, or they might say-

Nathan Loewen:

Yeah. Okay. And so that gets to it. The framework that we still haven’t gotten to you telling us what it is, but I think folks who have read Immanuel Kant might have an idea.

Eric Dickman:

Exactly.

Nathan Loewen:

But you don’t talk about that thing. So there are the things the students talk about, but then there’s the thing you’re using to organize how you talk to the students about the things they’re talking about or?

Eric Dickman:

Yeah. I don’t think we… at this point, I do not have students read Kant at all in this class. In this class, I don’t think I mention Kant at all or the transcendental dialectic or these three ideas of pure reason, anything like that. It’s definitely for me for organizing the course content where it provides a systematic structure that is simultaneously flexible for any kind of material that I want to bring in.

Nathan Loewen:

With the time that we have left, maybe you could just describe what are the outcomes, what do you see happening with the students? Or in another sense, what are the payoffs to this framework and the contents that you’ve glossed over in our conversation?

Eric Dickman:

Well, for me, I think it’s this open ended. So payoff for instructors versus payoff for students. Pay off for instructors, I think this framework is something that anybody can make use of to maintain like a standardization across Philosophy of Religion specific courses. And like I said, this is not a Buddhist philosophy course, this is a distinctively titled philosophy of religions class. So how do you maintain like a systematic structure that is flexible enough for any instructor to be able to go, “Well, I’m going to use these readings or these movies, or these materials for this unit on the south, in different religious traditions or, or different cultural traditions, or I’m going to use these readings, right?” So any instructor can create their own dynamic class while at the same time, maintaining this consistency of organization. The payoff for the students, I think is, it addresses the criteria that I had to begin with.

Eric Dickman:

Like, how do I make sure that students get exposed to multiple religious traditions instead of maintaining this kind of theistic centered model of philosophy of religion. So I want them to have read and understand [inaudible 00:11:13] to some degree, right? Of course, they’re not going to be experts by the end of the class, but to have some in-depth analysis of it, to think about, what is the nature of the world or the universe in this kind of religious paradigm.

Eric Dickman:

And this is quite different than Camus saying that the world is absurd. And this is quite different than a kind of a Muslim worldview where it’s kind of thinking that it’s the stage for God’s ultimate plan for human connection with God. So being able to see different worldviews like that through kind of this shared topic of, we’re not looking at their beliefs about divine being or whether they exist, we’re not looking at their beliefs about what it means to be their doctrine. What are their rational commitments and things like this. Is it true or false. It’s more like, we’re exploring this to try to understand why they think this way, what use it has and how it relates to their practices.

Nathan Loewen:

Well, thanks so much for talking with us a little bit about your approach to teaching a philosophy of religion class. I think it’s a fascinating approach that as you say, the payoff for other folks will be to look at what you’re doing and see if this is a framework that works for them. Thanks so much. We’ll end.

Eric Dickman:

Thank you for the conversation. I appreciate the time to talk with you.

Nathan Loewen:

Brilliant. All right.

Nathan Loewen:

Thanks for listening. For more information about the global critical philosophy of religion project, please visit our website @globalcritical, and that’s all one word .as.ua.edu. There you’ll find our participating scholars, publications, sponsors, projects, and contact information. Study Religion is a production of the department of religious studies at the University of Alabama. For more information about our department, please visit the website @religion.ua.edu, or you can search for our department on Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, Facebook, SoundCloud, Apple podcasts, or Spotify podcasts. Thanks, goodbye.