Until Our Minds Rest in Thee: Open-Mindedness, Intellectual Diversity, and the Christian Lif

This dissertation subjects the intellectual habit of open-mindedness to a virtue ethics analysis. It begins by sorting through a number of semblances, corresponding vices, and accompanying virtues (Chapters 2-4), before proposing a definition for virtuous open-mindedness (Chapter 5) as a non-contradictory active receptivity or open disposition towards new ideas and beliefs, or a studious appetite to learn from the broadest possible range of teachers and sources. Chapter 6 addresses the related matter of intellectual diversity---defined as a variety of disagreeing, conflicting beliefs and opinions as encountered in a local, lived manner---arguing that, despite its lack of (philosophically demonstrable) utilitarian value, intellectual diversity is naturally present in the experience of the open-minded individual, especially one who desires friendship (understood in an Aristotelian manner) with others. Chapter 7 discusses the proper Christian view of intellectual diversity and the missional reasons for Christians to seek out those with whom they disagree, and insists that Christians have additional theological reasons to refuse to rest content with intellectual fragmentation. Chapter 8 considers the difference that the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love make to the virtue of open-mindedness (how they "elevate" and "perfect" the virtue by changing its end, in the language of virtue ethics). Chapter 9 explores the fate of open-mindedness and intellectual diversity in the Christian afterlife, arguing that open-mindedness, in both its acquired and infused forms, becomes superfluous and thus passes away---blessed minds being finally closed minds---and that intellectual diversity (whose inevitable existence has already been characterized as a lamentable result of the Fall) similarly ceases to be.