Author: Douglas V. Henry

Douglas Henry is Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Honors College at Baylor University. In addition to research interests in ancient philosophy and in ethics, Henry's scholarly essays have taken up the problem of evil as well as the history, philosophy, and theology of Christian higher education. His published work has addressed such varied writers as Plato, Boethius, Walker Percy, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI and diverse topics including divine hiddenness, doubt, freedom, hope, and love. He has co-edited three books: Faithful Learning and the Christian Scholarly Vocation (Eerdmans, 2003), Christianity and the Soul of the University: Faith as a Foundation for Intellectual Community (Baker Academic, 2005), and The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education (Baylor University Press, 2007).

Smartphones and vocational reflection

Do smartphones help or hinder reflection upon vocation? It depends. Medieval Christians distinguished between curiositas—a vice—and studiositas—a virtue. Curiositas is inconsistent with vocational reflection; studiositas undergirds real reflection upon calling. Although I enjoy my iPhone, I know it encourages shallow curiosity rather than contemplative wonder.

Smartphones constitute ideal technology for cultivating and satisfying curiositas. These pocket-sized gadgets provide easy access to new knowledge on demand, so that a hunger for novelty finds endless fodder, inadequate though it is for real intellectual sustenance. Smartphones also present Continue reading “Smartphones and vocational reflection”