Art in Public: An Alternative Case for Government Arts Funding.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Art in Public: An Alternative Case for Government Arts Funding.” Published online in The Other Journal, Issue 15 on Aesthetics, July 3, 2009.

Why should governments provide funding for the arts? This essay explores three mainstream political answers and provides a reformational alternative. My more complete account is in the book Art in Public: Politics, Economics, and a Democratic Culture (Cambridge UP, 2011).

Multiple Intelligences, judgment, and the realization of value.

Blomberg, Douglas Gordon. “Multiple Intelligences, Judgment, and the Realization of Value.” Ethics and Education, 4(2), 2009, Volume 4, Issue 2 pp. 163-175

Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences has been enthusiastically received by school teachers, including Christian teachers. Despite its significant positive impact, MI is profoundly deficient in its perspective on the value (normative) dimensions of life, regarding these as subjective, non-rational impositions on intelligent functioning, thus perpetuating the “fact/value” dichotomy that supports the illusion of the religious neutrality of scholarship and schooling.

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Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth.” Philosophia Reformata, 74 (2009): 1-20. Available for download at: http://www.philosophia-reformata.org/content/archive.

Read it in the ICS Institutional Repository: hdl.handle.net/10756/250091

This essay presents my general conception of truth and shows how it relates to Herman Dooyeweerd’s conception. I propose that truth is a dynamic correlation between (1) human fidelity to societal principles and (2) a life-giving disclosure of society. This proposal puts the notion of propositional truth in a wider context, and it links the discursive justification of truth claims with our practically bearing witness to the truth.

Ethical Turns: Adorno Defended against His Devotees.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Ethical Turns: Adorno Defended against His Devotees.” Symposium, 13 (Spring 2009) 22-39. Available for download at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/symposium/vol13/iss1/2/.

This essay examines Theodor W. Adorno’s politics and ethics. Taking issue with sympathetic readings that overlook both his radical structural critique and his political limitations, I argue for a return to questions of collective agency and social ethics. I suggest that a democratic politics of global transformation is required in order to do justice to Adorno’s insights. The essay is a revised excerpt from Chapter 6 in Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge UP, 2007).

Earth’s Lament: Suffering, Hope, and Wisdom.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Earth’s Lament: Suffering, Hope, and Wisdom.” Published online in The Other Journal, Issue 14 (January 27, 2009).

Read it in the ICS Institutional Repository: hdl.handle.net/10756/294559

This essay is a revised version of the ICS inaugural lecture I gave in 2003. It proposes a philosophy that is committed to truth and passionate for comprehensive wisdom, one that expresses suffering out of hope for God’s future.