Live Not By Lies

Essay by Alexander Solzhenitsyn dated Moscow, 12 February 1974, the day he was arrested and deported from the Soviet Union.

"So in our timidity, let us each make a choice: whether to remain consciously a servant of falsehood (of course, it is not out of inclination but to feed one's family that one raises one's children in the spirit of lies), or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man worthy of respect from one's children and contemporaries."

Index on Censorship, vol. 33, no. 2: pp. 203-207, April 2004.

#truth

Encountering the Beautiful

Steven Knepper reviews The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition, by James Matthew Wilson, at Humanitas Journal.

"There is a modern tendency to reduce wonder to curiosity about how things work. Wonder becomes a state of ignorance, one that can be remedied by inquiry. Francis Bacon, for instance, called wonder 'broken knowledge.' What gets lost in this reduction, though, is a deeper sense of wonder at the mystery of being, wonder at the sheer thereness of it all, at there being something rather than nothing. Martin Heidegger, of course, sought to reawaken us to this mystery, but he also claimed that the reduction of'wonder to curiosity had a much older lineage than Bacon. For Heidegger, this reduction—and the attendant 'forgetfulness of being”—is the faulty foundation for the whole tradition of Western metaphysics…"

#beauty #good #truth

Truth, Beauty and Goodness

The latest issue of the Center’s weekly, The Great Ideas Online (No. 1000), begins this three part discussion, based on a presentation by Mortimer J. Adler at the Aspen Institute in August, 1981.

TGIO is emailed to members.

At the Center’s website you’ll find information on how to Become a Member.

#beauty #good #truth

Great Books, Democracy, And Truth

The latest issues of the Center’s weekly, The Great Ideas Online (Nos. 967-968), discussed this essay by Mortimer Adler from 1977, as supplemented and included in his book Reforming Eductation (1988).

TGIO is emailed to members.

At the Center’s website you’ll find information on how to Become a Member.

#democracy #education #truth

Truth, Goodness. and Beauty

The latest issues the Center's weekly, The Great Ideas Online, Nos. 955-57, discussed this December 1981 lecture by Mortimer Adler.

TGIO is emailed to members.

At the Center’s website you’ll find information on how to Become a Member.

#beauty #good #truth

Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology

Alison M. Jaggar in Inquiry.

"This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory."

“What are the Great Ideas: Why & Where Do They Really Matter?”

That's the disputed question for the 43rd Annual Philosophy/Theology Symposium at Walsh University, North Canton, Ohio. All events are free and open to the public, and will be held in Betzler Auditorium. No registration is required. The 2018 Visiting Scholar is William Cathers, an Aspen Institute Moderator, Philosopher, Educator, and Mortimer J. Adler Protégé.

Program Schedule

Tuesday, March 13, 7:30 p.m. “Great Ideas We Judge By:”
- Truth – Dr. Joe Vincenzo
- Goodness – Dr. Brad Beach
- Beauty – Dr. John G. Trapani, Jr.

Wednesday, March 14, 7:30 p.m. “Great Ideas We Live By:”
- Liberty – Dr. Will Cooley
- Equality – Dr. Koop Berry
- Justice – Dr. Joe Torma

Thursday, March 15, 7:30 p.m. Art Form: “Great Ideas in the Arts:”
- Literature – Dr. Matt Akers
- Painting – Dr. Katey Brown
- Music – Dr. Britt Cooper

Friday, March 16, 7:30 p.m. Visiting Scholar: Lecture #1
- Will Cathers: “The Great Ideas: Objects of Understanding”
- Will Cathers: “A Socratic Seminar with Walsh Students; Teaching the Great Ideas the Way Mortimer Adler Would Have Taught Them”

Saturday, March 17, 9:00 a.m.* Visiting Scholar: Lecture #2
- Walsh Seminar Students: Anne Monnin & Andy Zmecek: “Mortimer Adler and the Biographical History of the Great Ideas”
- Will Cathers: Disputed Question #43: “What Are the Great Ideas; Why & Where Do They Really Matter?
*Special recognition to Dr. John G. Trapani Jr. given by President Richard Jusseaume

(via Charita Goshay at The Canton Repository.)

#idea #truth #good #beauty #liberty #equality #justice #art #education #MortimerAdler

Little Errors in the Beginning

Mortimer J. Adler at The Thomist (January 1974)

"... I would like to call attention to the two ways in which little errors in the beginning occur. In some cases, they are made because something that needs to be known or understood has not yet been discovered or learned. Such mistakes are, of course, excusable, however regrettable they may be. In other cases, the errors are made as a result of culpable ignorance--ignorance of an essential point, an insight or distinction, that has already been discovered and expounded.

"It is mainly in this second way that modern philosophers have made their little errors in the beginning. When they are made in this way and then perpetuated by the same ignorance that accounts for their origin, they are ugly monuments to failures in education--failures that have one or both of the following sources: on the one hand, corruptions in the tradition of learning, like the corrupt and decadent scholasticism of the 15th and 16th centuries, the effects of which are so evident in the writings of Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke;¹ on the other hand, an attitude of antagonism toward or even contempt for the past--for the achievements of those who have come before. Both of these causes are operative today. ...

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"1 Though the 15th and 16th centuries were the centuries of Cajetan and Jean Poinsot, their work exercised little influence on current scholastic thought, and none outside it."

#truth #MortimerAdler

From the Center: Adler on truth; Frodeman and Briggle on philosophy;

Recent communications with members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on the pursuit of truth
• Sixteen essays on Great Ideas published in The Great Ideas Today, the annual supplement to Great Books of the Western World published 1961-1998.
• Frodeman and Briggle's critique of contemporary philosophy
• Mortimer Adler at 79, The New York Times, November 15, 1981

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Become a member

[Aristotle], On Trolling

Rachel Barney at the Journal of the American Philosophical Association

(via Chris Morrissey)

From the Center: Adler on Mind; Searle on Truth; Goldstein on Philosophy;

Recent communications with members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• John Searle on Realism vs Relativism
• Mortimer Adler on Mind as one of The Great Ideas
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on philosophy today

Here at the weblog, added the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture to the Books and Ideas Blogroll in the sidebar.

From the Center: Adler on matter; all about relativism

Recent communications with members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on matter as one of the Great Ideas
• Everything you ever wanted to know about relativism...

P.S.

• Adler on how to mark a book
• Katherine Byrne on the care of books

From the Center: Adler in 'Time'; McIntyre on truth; Erskine on being intelligent;

Recent communications with members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

Mortimer Adler's ninety-six appearances in Time

Lee McIntyre on truth and consequences

John Erskine's "The Moral Obligation To Be Intelligent"

From the Center: Heitman on Montaigne; Adler on 'Six Great Ideas'

Recent communications with members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on Finding Truth in Faith
• Danny Heitman on Montaigne and the essay

Here at the weblog, Tabletop Whale, "an original science illustration blog" by Eleanor Lutz, is added to the Books and Ideas Blogroll in the sidebar.

P.S. Links to various versions of Montaigne's Essays can be found at The Online Books Page.

Artists & politics

A lecture delivered by Donald Kagan after he received the second Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture and Society, in The New Criterion, included this.

"It was a summer session and one course was being taught by my old student and friend, the late Al Bernstein. He was teaching a course in Western Civilization to his students and one of the students—he was teaching Plato’s Republic that day—popped up after Bernstein had given his spiel about what it was about and he said, 'You know, Mr. Bernstein, I don’t think that’s really right. The fact is, when Plato says the things that you have been criticizing he really didn’t mean for you to believe that what he said was what he meant. That was just for the ordinary person, but for the person with the perception and the capacities he meant the exact opposite.' So Bernstein says, 'Who told you that?' And the kid says, 'Well, I learned that from Professor [Allan] Bloom.' And Bernstein says, 'Look, you don’t understand. What Bloom told you, that was meant for the ordinary person, but for the person of real perception, he meant the opposite.' "