John Senior and the Restoration of Realism

Description

In this detailed and provocative study, Francis Bethel examines the life and thought of cultural critic, university professor, and sometime cowboy, John Senior (1923 1999). A privileged young man who studied the occult but became a leading proponent of traditional wisdom and arts (eventually converting to the Catholic Faith), Senior, unlike many of even his conservative peers, argued for something more than mere book learning. He championed the full restoration of realism, in which would be brought together the whole man senses, imagination, emotion, will, intellect, and body. Bethel uncovers the roots of Senior's thought, traces its provocative application, and reveals the possibilities it offers today to an academy wounded by pervasive moral and intellectual relativism, the loss of public credibility, and spiraling costs.

About the Author

FRANCIS BETHEL, O.S.B. is a native of Wichita, Kansas. He attended the University of Kansas from 1971 to 1974, where he studied under John Senior and his colleagues, Dennis Quinn and Frank Nelick. In 1975, Bethel entered the French Benedictine Abbey Notre Dame de Fontgombault, where he made his vows as a Benedictine monk in 1977 and was ordained a priest in 1983. In 1999 he returned to the United States and was among the founders of the Benedictine monastery of Our Lady of Clear Creek in Hulbert, Oklahoma. Fr. Bethel serves as Prior of that monastery (now an Abbey), as well as the Master of Novices and the Master of Oblates. Within the monastery he teaches Dogmatic Theology.

Forward / by Alice von Hildebrand

Introduction: Made for the stars but rooted in the soil

Part I. Two perennial philosophies. The cowboy and the scholar ; The way down ; The real is really real ; The real presence of he-who-is ; The contemporary form of the perennial heresy

Part II. Nurturing realism. The man and the teacher ; A gradual education ; Learning how to gaze on reality ; The poetic mode of knowledge

Part III. The gymnastic and music of Christian culture. The death of Christian culture ; The restoration of elemental things ; The restoration of innocence ; Sources of inspiration

Part IV. May they be born in wonder. Features of the Integrated Humanities Program ; A fundamental battle at the University of Kansas ; Realist pedagogy taken seriously ; Love stronger than death ; A risk of certainty

In this detailed and provocative study, Francis Bethel examines the life and thought of cultural critic, university professor, and sometimes-cowboy John Senior (1923–1999). A privileged young man who studied the occult but became a leading proponent of traditional wisdom and arts—eventually converting to the Catholic faith—Senior, unlike many of even his conservative peers, argued for something more than mere book learning. He championed the full “restoration of realism,” in which would be brought together the whole man—senses, imagination, emotion, will, intellect, and body.

In doing so, he brought down upon himself a firestorm of criticism. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, American higher education was in turmoil. Student unrest, philosophical skepticism, and the abandonment of the Western Canon were commonplace. Pedagogical revolutions ran parallel to social upheavals throughout Europe and the United States. Within a few decades, the New Left had transformed the fabled ivory towers of academia from places of leisurely learning into citadels of ideology and economic pragmatism. Yet, on the northern fringe of the Osage Plains of Kansas, John Senior and two friends launched a quiet counterrevolution.

A former favored student in the 1940s of Columbia professor and literary critic Mark Van Doren, Senior would later author works of cultural criticism, including the controversial The Death of Christian Culture. Yet far greater was Senior’s influence as a teacher and mentor in the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas.

Before it was shut down by the University under a cloud of controversy, the Integrated Humanities Program had educated hundreds of students. Several bishops, an abbot, a prioress, directors of seminaries, lawyers, federal judges, and numerous teachers number among them. In addition, the founding of several counter-cultural colleges and schools over the past quarter-century owe their existence and derive much of the curriculum from the ideas of John Senior. He and his vision would even be the central inspiration behind Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera’s 2013 international bestseller, The Awakening of Miss Prim.

In this compelling book, Bethel uncovers the roots of Senior’s thought, traces its provocative application, and reveals the possibilities it offers today to an academy wounded by pervasive moral and intellectual relativism, the loss of public credibility, and spiraling costs.