"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."
Sunday, June 30, 2013
First, the good news...
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Faith, Not Proof
"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."
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Denouncing the Classics
"the only time the classics can expect to find peace is when the dreaded day comes that nobody is reading them."
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
The Theory of Happiness
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Social Contract Theory of John Locke (1632-1704) in the Contemporary World
"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."
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The Dreams of Italo Calvino
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.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Time Regained!
"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."
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Super Boys
"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."