Friday, November 2, 2012

A Little Required Reading

Hugh Nibley's piece "Nobody to Blame" should be required reading for any Latter-day Saint going into academics. The piece can be found in Hugh Nibley. Eloquent Witness: Nibley on Himself, Others, and the Temple, Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 17, ed. Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 2008), 125—41. Unfortunately it is not currently available online.

Granted the piece is dated a bit; it was written over fifty years ago and some thing about BYU have changed in the intervening years. The intellectual issues have not changed at all. There are still those who wish to be popular in the eyes of the academic world and think that they can get the academic world to respect them simply by capitulating to whatever other academics think. As Nibley points out, such individuals make their entire career one great face-saving move at the expense of the Church. I see this on a daily basis.

I have seen Nibley's arguments in this article brushed aside but I have rarely seen them engaged, and never seen them refuted.