The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology is excited to announce that philosopher, professor, and author Dr. Esther Meek will be serving as the inaugural Senior Scholar starting in 2022. As we celebrate twenty-five years as an interdisciplinary graduate school and seminary, this new position and opportunity highlights our theological scholarship. Senior Scholars at The Seattle School will develop intellectual capital and content, such as coursework and lectures, in order to support faculty and students in our graduate programs as well as non-degree learners and wider audiences.
Esther Lightcap Meek (BA Cedarville College, MA Western Kentucky University, PhD Temple University) is Professor of Philosophy emeritus at Geneva College in Western Pennsylvania. In addition to her appointment as Senior Scholar with The Seattle School for Theology and Psychology, she is a Fujimura Institute Scholar, an Associate Fellow with the Kirby Laing Center for Public Theology, and a member of the Polanyi Society.
Her books include Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Brazos, 2003); Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (Cascade, 2011); A Little Manual for Knowing (Cascade, 2014); and Contact With Reality: Michael Polanyi’s Realism and Why It Matters (Cascade, 2017). Her forthcoming book is Doorway to Artistry: Attuning Your Philosophy to Enhance Your Creativity (Cascade, 2023).
The appointment of Dr. Meek as our inaugural Senior Scholar at The Seattle School recognizes the profound value of her philosophical thought and formalizes years of ongoing collaboration. Her books are regular texts in our core curriculum: students and alumni of our school are familiar with Dr. Meek’s writings, including her call to explore a covenantal epistemology that centers loving at the heart of knowing. She has shared her philosophical scholarship with The Seattle School community on a number of occasions, including at the 2018 Stanley Grenz Lectures when she spoke on how we know what we know and why it matters.
President and Provost of The Seattle School, Dr. J. Derek McNeil, explains this appointment: “Esther’s ideas about epistemology, or how we know, uniquely fit and aid our work at the school: her sense of embodied thought bridges the gap between theology and psychology, offering a nexus point of deep resonance with our interdisciplinary journey. In these uncertain times, her philosophical work redirects us towards the real and challenges us with the centrality of knowing relationships in the work of integration.”
Dr. Meek is glad to contribute and collaborate to the mission of The Seattle School: “The Seattle School distinctively realizes that philosophy is foundational to all our efforts as human persons in the world. They build this astute professionalism into their core curriculum. And this is rare: many people and institutions in our antiphilosophical Modern Age fail to understand how we live out philosophical commitments we may not even be aware of.”
“If you want to accomplish transformative engagement, it isn’t only psychological, social, and spiritual approaches you must attend to. You must address and re-form your deepest-level philosophical orientation. You need a transformative, integrative, philosophy of engagement, as The Seattle School understands.”