Two Esteemed Holy Cross Professors Examine How Changing the Way We See the World Can Change the Way We Live

Dustin and Ziegler Draw on Collaborative Teaching Experience for New Book

Drawing on sources both ancient and modern, the authors of an important new book — an art historian and philosopher at the College of the Holy Cross — lead us to the place where art and philosophy meet, and explore how we can shape our lives.

Practicing Mortality: Art Philosophy, and Contemplative Seeing (Summer 2005, Cloth, 253 pages, Palgrave/Macmillan) is the fruit of more than a decade of collaborative teaching at the College. In this book, the authors describe "contemplative seeing" not as a passive or idle affair, but as a skilled activity that can and must be practiced every day. Such a contemplative attitude, they argue, is not detached but actively participatory and experientially engaged with works of art and nature. It is as physical as it is intellectual and can be realized in a great variety of ways, all of which promise to enrich our everyday lives.

Christopher Dustin, associate professor and chair of the department of philosophy, and Joanna Ziegler, professor of art history and former chair of the department of visual arts at Holy Cross, have woven a clearly accessible and personally compelling account of how learning to see contemplatively can teach us to live more fully, with a greater awareness of what it means to be human. A contemplative attitude, as they characterize it, is central to what they call "the attitude of mortality," which is an openness to life itself. Combining intellectual depth with their own sensitivity to human experience, and by relating the practice of contemplation to the practice of a craft, the authors show us what it means to live both artfully and philosophically. They develop the idea that "art" in the broadest sense yields an awareness of that which we ourselves do not make. Such an awareness is fundamentally religious. To practice mortality, the authors conclude, is to practice living as a craft.

The authors do not simply present this conclusion in an abstract, theoretical way. By exploring the vital and intimate connection between thinking and seeing — healing the rift between theory and practice — they show us how their ideas can be realized in practical terms. Through its original and sophisticated interpretations of classical and modern texts, its illuminating analyses of actual works of art, and its profound reflections on the meaning such "everyday" human experiences as walking and woodworking, gardening and music-making, Practicing Mortality makes philosophical ideas available to us in ways that few academic books do.

In beautifully written chapters on "What It Means to See," "Thoreau’s Prepared Vision," "The Beatification of the Mundane," "Plato’s Art," "A Reverence for Wood," "Making Kosmos Visible," "Thinking as Craft," "Dwelling," and "Emersonian Materialism," Dustin and Ziegler move their readers closer and closer to the experience of wonder that is so fundamental to their idea of a life well lived. In reading this book, one can truly participate in what it is about. Even readers with a non-academic interest in art or philosophy, religion or spirituality, the problem of technology, or our interactions with the natural world, should find it informative and inspiring. The book breathes new life into old ideas and, at the same time, shows how meaningful our everyday lives can be. By revealing the extraordinary in the everyday - the drinking of tea or the contemplation of an old, weathered but stately barn — Dustin and Ziegler point to fundamental sources of philosophical insight that lie closer to home than we might ever have realized.

Therese Schroeder-Sheker, founder of the Chalice of Repose Project and educator at the Catholic University of America, says, "Practicing Mortality is a masterpiece of the contemplative life. ... With quiet beauty-filled humility, and in a seamless blending of voices that rarely occurs, Professors Ziegler and Dustin return pedagogy to a creative, religious significance and substance that is at once deepening and liberating. ... Thoroughly American, fully grounded, highly textured, radical in its candor, confident and peace-filled, Practicing Mortality is sure to become a spiritual classic: read, re-read, and read again by everyone who enters its world."

Innovative and hopeful, Practicing Mortality synthesizes scholarly thinking with the practical wisdom of two gifted teachers who have reflected long and hard on the challenge of helping their students learn to see ... and to live.