Best professor you've ever had and why

TiggerDad
Sun, 06 Aug 2017 18:32:40 +0000

Three at UCSB in the early 80’s:

Herbert Fingarette: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Fingarette

After submitting a paper (that I thought was particularly well-written) on Albert Camus’s The Stranger, I was shocked to receive the grade of “C,” my first ever, with his comment that I basically raped the author. He taught me that I need to learn to “read.”

Ninian Smart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninian_Smart

One thing he said that I’ve never forgotten in spite of decades now past: “The problem with monotheistic religions is that they have too many Gods.” I always remember him lecturing with his fly open and pee stained trousers.

Raimundo Panikkar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raimon_Panikkar

I believe the course was called “Nature and Religion.” He began the course writing “nature” in some dozen languages on the blackboard starting with Sanskrit, Green, Latin and so on. Then, he did the same with the word, “religion.” It was to illustrate how the origins of the words we’ve come to take for granted could shed some very interesting lights.

All remarkable lives…