This is a sample of Dr. Minnich's published work:

"In Conversation with Elizabeth Minnich"

Identity, Liberal Learning, Democracy: Reflections, featured in "Diversity & Democracy," Volume 13, Number 2 (2010). The link above takes you to the essay on the Diversity and Democracy website. If you would like to download a PDF version, right click here and choose "Save Target As" or "Save Link As."

"Reflections on the Wellsprings of Interdisciplinary Studies and Transformative Education," a 231k PDF file of a keynote address for the Oct. 17, 2004, conference of the Association for Integrative Studies; published in "Issues in Integrative Studies," Number 22 - 2004; p. 141-154.

"Teaching Thinking: Moral and Political Considerations," a 650k PDF file of an article published in "Change," September/October (2003), pp 19-24.

"Why Not Lie", a 2.2mb PDF File of an article published in "Soundings," Winter 1985, Vol. LXVIII, No. 4

"Arendt, Heidegger, Eichmann: Thinking in and for the World," a 752kb PDF File of an article published in "Soundings", Spring/Summer 2003, Vol. LXXXVI, No. 1-2

This is a collection of quotations from a sample of Dr. Minnich's published work -- articles, books and book chapters. Some of the following excerpts have been adjusted slightly to preserve their context.

“Those who have not encountered the differences among people in ways that interrupted their certainties do not make good thinkers; they also make poor citizens of democracies. Insofar as our education limits the others in whose place we learn to think, it limits our thinking, and thus also our political abilities.” (“From Ivory Tower to Tower of Babel?”the "South Atlantic Quarterly," Winter 1990)

“Whether the truths that we yearn for are truths that respond to questions of reason or of faith or of multiple plays of power, I still want to say, ‘If you want truth, work for justice.’ (“If You Want Truth, Work for Justice: Some Reflections on Partiality versus Particularity in Relation to Universality,” in Christianity and Culture in the Crossfire, eds. David A. Hoekema and Bobby Fong)

“Show me what you do in this world with others, and I will know what you mean by your faith, whether it be in science, in some kind of philosophical reasoning, in religion, in postmodernism, or whatever.” (“If You Want Truth, Work for Justice: Some Reflections on Partiality versus Particularity in Relation to Universality,” in Christianity and Culture in the Crossfire, eds. David A. Hoekema and Bobby Fong)

“I have no doubt but that changes we make, assertions we fiercely state, are themselves flawed. They, too, will be human, all too human. But that conviction does not release me from responsibility to take positions and work for change in a country that has never been monocultural or of only one religious faith.”(“If You Want Truth, Work for Justice: Some Reflections on Partiality versus Particularity in Relation to Universality,” in Christianity and Culture in the Crossfire, eds. David A. Hoekema and Bobby Fong)

“We remain beings who can think, but that does not mean that we will do so, or that we will do so well. Our ability to think does not deny us the capacity to lie to ourselves.” (“Judging in Freedom: Hannah Arendt on The Relation of Thinking and Judgment,” in Hannah Arendt: Thinking, Judging, Freedom, eds. Gisela T. Kaplan and Clive S. Kessler)

“In the realm of human action in which freedom is fundamental for us all, neither the tyranny of principle nor the tyranny of random individual will is acceptable.” (“To Judge in Freedom: Hannah Arendt on The Relation of Thinking and Morality,” in Hannah Arendt: Thinking, Judging, Freedom, eds. Gisela T. Kaplan and Clive S. Kessler)

“The rare and wonderful judge is able to honor both principle and individual, struggling to bring them together such that neither is violated but both are illuminated, both are better understood.” (“To Judge in Freedom: Hannah Arendt on The Relation of Thinking and Morality,” in Hannah Arendt: Thinking, Judging, Freedom, eds. Gisela T. Kaplan and Clive S. Kessler)

“As we practice thinking, judging, and acting, we become who we are. If we do so well, we remain our own friends, we achieve reconciliation with ourselves, the others we think with, and with reality.” (“To Judge in Freedom: Hannah Arendt on The Relation of Thinking and Morality,” in Hannah Arendt: Thinking, Judging, Freedom, eds. Gisela T. Kaplan and Clive S. Kessler)

“The life of the mind of the thinker in itself constitutes a reason for caring about the life of action.” (“To Judge in Freedom: Hannah Arendt on The Relation of Thinking and Morality,” in Hannah Arendt: Thinking, Judging, Freedom, eds. Gisela T. Kaplan and Clive S. Kessler)

“As living organisms, we are creatures and creators of mutual interchange, always in transactional relations with our environments. This physical condition of life is not something to transcend: it corresponds with the co-creative relationality of moral, social, political thinking and action.” (“Dewey’s Philosophy of Life: Revisiting Democracy and Education,” paper delivered at The John Dewey Society)

“Choosing to lessen the possibilities of vitally multiple, mutually engaging relations of life in social, political associations that correspond with healthy eco-systems, those who would dominate have chosen stagnation that leads to devolution – the processes of dying rather than living.” (“Dewey’s Philosophy of Life: Revisiting Democracy and Education,”paper delivered at The John Dewey Society)

“What is given for us as developmental physical and social beings informs, but does not dictate, what we can and morally should make of it.” (“Dewey’s Philosophy of Life: Revisiting Democracy and Education,”paper delivered at The John Dewey Society)

“The givens of our being, like the past, are prologue, but the play we enact with others will shape them anew while we live, surprising and interesting us ever again like an emerging work of art.” (“Dewey’s Philosophy of Life: Revisiting Democracy and Education,”paper delivered at The John Dewey Society)

“The activity of thinking prefigures, prepares for, and lets us practice the freedom of mind we require to exercise discerning judgment while living among people who differ from us.” (“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“Thinking persistently undoes certainties, thereby opening us to what is unique about individuals, contexts, and situations.” (“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“Independent, open minds that regard knowledge and skills as resources to be used for responsible purposes, rather than possessions to be exploited for personal gain and power, remain all too rare.” (“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“When we read the works that continue to change lives, we encounter people who risked thinking afresh and then tried to tell us how that was and where it led, in a way that invites us into that process so that we may keep it going, renewed.” (“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“There are clearly both moral and political values in play when we think together, practicing rather than preaching equality and freedom, respect and independence.” (“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“We teach knowledge, as we teach language and socialize our children, to conserve our world by preparing newcomers to join and continually to revitalize it.”(“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“Knowledge gives us something we share that matters enough to have opinions about; opinions give us differing perspectives about the meanings as distinct from truth claims of knowledge.” (“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“Knowledge should not trump but remain in generative tension with our human plurality, our differences, our multiple perspectives, and our responsibilities.” (“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“We want students, and ourselves, to comprehend the knowledge for which they come to us, not to move inside it and shut the door, emerging only to apply what is already known like cookie cutters.” (“Teaching Thinking: Political and Moral Considerations,” “Change” magazine)

“Systems set the terms within which we all live, and they, far more dangerously than individuals, can also ‘go mad’ in the specific sense that they make use of a totalized logic to legitimate all-too-real efforts to remake human beings by their prescriptions.” (“Thinking Friends, Moral Taste, Public Concerns: for Sara Ruddick, in “Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy”)

“Rationality can itself go wrong and become not an antidote to but a source of justification for evil when it is not troubled by disruptive thinking that dissolves categories” (“Thinking Friends, Moral Taste, Public Concerns: for Sara Ruddick, in “Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy”)

“For thinking friends we cannot but be grateful, even while recognizing that gratitude will be, in their view, inappropriate. They are, after all, more, not less, puzzled than others by the world and its questions of right and wrong, and more, not less, aware of their own need for others with whom to worry those questions.” (“Thinking Friends, Moral Taste, Public Concerns: for Sara Ruddick, in “Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy”)

“There is nothing ‘merely academic’ about how we think and what we think we know.” (Transforming Knowledge, Second Edition)

“We are creatures and creators of meaning. Among the many meanings that interweave our varied worlds, the meanings of human being are central. They can sustain us in peaceful, caring, just relation with others and with the earth we share. They can divide and rank us within systems of dominance. We remain responsible.” (Transforming Knowledge, Second Edition)

“Making sense with one another – which is both enabled and limited by culturally framed interactions – is an ongoing project that can never be completed. It is a transactional process that has no products but does have crucial effects. And those effects are of great importance: through them, we can be deformed as well as informed, and sometimes even transformed.” (Transforming Knowledge, Second Edition)

“The informal arts of being together are necessary to protect us against thoughtlessness. Trained technical and theoretical proficiency, as well as other internalized conventions, can lead to mis-taking what is before us by forcing it into frames of meaning within which it cannot reveal its unruly uniqueness.”(Transforming Knowledge, Second Edition)

“If we are to have a world in which no ‘kind’ of human is taken to be the defining, ideal type and standard for all, and no others are defined as ‘kinds’ whom it is legitimate for the few to use and abuse, we have a stake in inclusive, complex thinking. It is a requisite for fine-tuned, effective action.”.(Transforming Knowledge, Second Edition)

“The moral madness of a collective order does not exculpate the individuals who go along with it.” (Transforming Knowledge, Second Edition)

“If both thinking and acting are essential to freedom, as freedom is essential to them, then they should be enjoyed for their own sake as well as for what they may lead us toward. Thinking and acting together give us experiences of freedom and of community; they are not only means to an end.” (Transforming Knowledge, Second Edition)