Uncle Janko Killed in Car Crash

[Dennis Ruhl]

A dissertation of many years ago:

Loyola University, Chicago, James G. Keenan reporting

John Weaver-Hudson, The Republic of the Sacred: A Commentary on Book II of Cicero's On the Laws
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Current:

Re: Uncle Janko killed in auto accident
by John Bear on Fri Jan 30, 2009 2:55 am

He had been working on his dissertation for at least nine years, and I regard it as an academic masterpiece: The Republic of the Sacred: A Commentary on Book II of Cicero's On the Laws.
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Tell me that Dr. Bear is wrong. Janko may have been a cranky old man with a uniquely personal sense of morality, but the same title - no.

Edit - Bear was wrong - Dr. Song was his adviser at U. of Zululand. Song knows as much about Cicero as I know about doctor level theology - little. Apparently the degree was a ThD not a PhD.

From Bear - The real title

The dissertation title and abstract
by John Bear on Tue Feb 03, 2009 1:28 am

Earlier, I provided an incorrect title -- one that appeared on an earlier draft, that I had been sent a year or so ago. The title, as published, is:
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HOLINESS AND HUMANISM: A Comparative-Religions Commentary on Book 2 of Cicero's Laws, with Special Reference to Confucianism and Chinese Thought.

ABSTRACT
After a brief introduction, a new translation of De Legibus II, and prolegomenal remarks, the commentary discusses in Cicero's sequence how place connects to ancient times and traditions, God's Law, and his judgment on human laws, tension between Roman religion and Greek philosophy, and the setting forth of Cicero's code of religious law. The code covers whom to worship, the power of Cicero's own priesthood, religion and political unity, social justice, and religious rites. Cicero's digressions on a turf-war beween augurs and pontifices and priestly responsibility for religious law alone, the rites of death, and the prospect of immortality.

Excursuses within the commentary include holy reason as imago Dei in humans; dialogists' family and friendship, legitimacy of law in Confucianism; the supreme God and His/Its relation to lesser deities, especially Minerva; hyperphilologism and ancient holist theology (hence referece to current African philosophy and theology and to modern religious traditions), Cicero's anti-Platonism, parallel Confucian-Mohist enmity, and the common substrate of family and family rite; mistaking propriety for agnosticism and tacit knowing for unbelief; reliability of the canonical texts; the sages' descendants and clasical explications; tyranny as the sin of patricide; Roman priesthoods with reference to the religious power of women; family religious rites; the augural priesthood and its liberationist implications.

Selected interpretive issues meriting further enquiry follows: the integrity of theology in DL2, and aspects of classical Confucianism, Cicero's theological language and the use of translations; theological anti-totalitarianism in Cicero and his contemporary Han Dynasty Confucians; scholoarly contempt for Cicery and its civic-theological implications; late-dating of DL as buttress of its civic-theoloigical character; Isocrates as anti-Platonic paradigm of theological political praxis; the distinctiveness of our sages over against mediaeval philosophical theology in the West and China, and anti-imperialism theology in Viet Nam or Cicero's Philippics.

The conclusion offers encouragement in civic-theological resistance to tyranny, the role of humane reason in theology, and the present applicability of aspects of the theology of Cicero and that of Confucius


259 pages (12 pt. Times type, 1 1/2 spacing) + 19 pages of bibliographyJohn Bear
Senior Member

So Janko took his failed thesis from Loyola and threw in some Chinese stuff to impress Dr. Song who only knows that Cicero is a dead white guy but being Chinese is an obvious expert in Confucius. What part did I get wrong?

I don't know anything about doctoral theses but don't the topics seem to be a little disjointed like a number of unrelated works have been cut and pasted together without thought for a central theme - maybe a contrived theme?