First, the good news...

B.C. at The Economist's Erasmus weblog posts on a recent controversy involving 'Hell, atheism and the pope'.

"Amidst all the apparent contradiction and confusion, there is a basic problem that besets all communication between the religious and the secular worlds. Religious statements are rooted in a metaphysical system, an understanding of the universe, which is pretty foreign to the modern, liberal mind. In traditional Christian thought, the primordial (and for many modern minds, intensely controversial) assertion is the existence of a loving God, from whom humanity has been estranged. Within that system, self-exclusion from that loving God is self-evidently a 'hellish' choice; that is almost a tautology, a statement of the obvious. Outside that metaphysical system, statements about exclusion from God's love don't make any sense at all, they sound like pious nonsense."

Faith, Not Proof

Drew Christiansen reviews God in Proof: The Story of the Search from the Ancients to the Internet, by Nathan Schneider, at America.

"Argument only takes you so far. In a late autobiographical essay, Mortimer Adler, the University of Chicago philosopher and the founder and editor in chief of The Great Books series, explained that he taught Thomism for sixty years, but only at age 80 did he believe and convert to Christianity."

Denouncing the Classics

Canon Fodder: Denouncing the Classics, posted by Sam Sacks at The New Yorker.

"the only time the classics can expect to find peace is when the dreaded day comes that nobody is reading them."

The Theory of Happiness

In this Encyclopaedia Britannica film, Mortimer J. Adler explains the first book of Aristotle's Ethics.

Social Contract Theory of John Locke (1632-1704) in the Contemporary World

Among currently popular downloads at Law Commons is this article by Daudi Mwita Nyamaka in the St. Augustine University Law Journal.

"Abstract

"The 17th century period was marked by an attempt to erect effective safeguard against violations of natural law by governments. Law in this period was conceptualized as an instrument for the prevention of autocracy and despotism. Absolutism in Europe that was associated with governmental encroachments necessitated a strong shield of individual liberty. In this period legal theory placed the main emphasis on liberty, thus the law was to render governments capable of functioning as a guarantor of individual rights. This paper aims at examining the social contract theory of the 17th-century English philosopher, John Locke, its parameters, limitations and its essence in the contemporary world with a view as to why should we obey the law, the origin, essence and legitimacy of the government, the origin of the state and the law and more importantly how can we punish the government in case they fail to fulfill their functions."

The Dreams of Italo Calvino

Jonathan Galassi reviews Letters, 1941–1985, by Italo Calvino, selected by Michael Wood, translated by Martin McLaughlin, at The New York Review of Books.

The Bibliography of Additional Readings of Great Books of the Western World (2nd ed. 1990) includes Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler and Invisible Cities.

Time Regained!

James Gleick reviews Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, by Lee Smolin, at The New York Review of Books.

"For him the past is gone; the future is open: 'The fact that it is always some moment in our perception, and that we experience that moment as one of a flow of moments, is not an illusion.' Timelessness, eternity, the four-dimensional space-time loaf—these are the illusions."

Super Boys

Peter Keepnews reviews Superheroes: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — the Creators of Superman at The New York Times.

"What made Siegel and Shuster’s creation special, he argues, is the strange triangle they created: Superman, the mysterious and powerful outsider; his alter ego, Clark Kent, the quintessential schlemiel; and Lois Lane, the beauty who yearns for Superman but disdains Clark. 'The added register of that character having to hide his true identity under a bold lie — so as to fool a girl — defined not only the genre, but its readers as well,' he writes."

Great Books, Higher Education, and the Logos

Great Books, Higher Education, and the Logos, essay by Michael M. Jordan at Modern Age