The Missionary Positions of the Hitchens Family: On Cosmic Delusions

Last updated on: February 9, 2015 at 11:49 pm By Artur Rosman

The Hitchens family is well known for its missionary positions. Christopher Hitchens was so hellbent on converting the non-atheist heathen that he didn’t stop at bending interpretations way past breaking. Nowhere is this more evident than in his fascinating (as in a car crash) book on Mother Teresa that gives this post its name. The article “Mommie Dearest: The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud” gives you a good glimpse of the interpretive pretzels he... Read more

Q: How does Belichick Have a Leg up on the Devil & Pete Carroll?

Last updated on: February 2, 2015 at 9:37 pm By Artur Rosman

Wait for it, wait for it, wait like for Godot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... Read more

Milosz Mentors Merton on Manichaeism & the Modern Mind

Last updated on: January 31, 2015 at 2:25 pm By Artur Rosman

It is fashionable to dump upon Thomas Merton. He seems to have been too open to dialogue with other religions and cultures. Accusations of heresy fly from certain quarters as frequently as those against St. John Paul II for inaugurating the Assisi World Day of Prayer for Peace. Paul Elie gets plenty wrong in his discussion of the exchange of letters between Merton and Milosz in The Life You Save May Be Your Own. For example, Milosz never formally joined... Read more

Upward Trends: The State of Catholic Culture Report

Last updated on: January 30, 2015 at 9:51 pm By Artur Rosman

The Republican dropping of abortion into the political dumpster put the failure of the Pro-Life movement‘s right of center strategy front and center. It seems the Republicans were only mirroring the Democrat Left at the Altar with a Right of the Altar of their own. If nothing else, the failed vote hopefully allowed some self-identifying “conservative Catholics” to kick back and enjoy the delicious humor of Obama ad lib (“I know, because I won them both”) during the State of the... Read more

How is Aquinas so Premodern That He’s Postmodern?

Last updated on: January 29, 2015 at 4:53 pm By Artur Rosman

If you hang around enough weird overeducated people, then you’ve probably heard the phrase “He’s so premodern, he’s postmodern.” On the most basic level this means that postmodernity, in its opposition to the modern, brings recouperates salient elements of the premodern worldview. This is the main reason why you should not listen to your standard parish apocalyptic fear-mongerer when he (or she) tells you to be afraid of postmodernism. You might think “that’s fine,” but you’d like a more concrete... Read more

5 Facts Holocaust and World War II Remembrances Frequently Forget

Last updated on: January 13, 2016 at 10:16 pm By Artur Rosman

The Holocaust is inextricably tied to memory through maxims such as: Emil Fackenheim‘s “Never forget” and George Santayana‘s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” However, historical memory is fickle and influenced by present exigencies. Below you will find 5 facts generally not remembered about the Holocaust: 1. The Holocaust is not some metaphysically necessary event that dropped into the lap of history: The drive toward the total extermination of the Jews was contingent upon many historical... Read more

Why Study Philosophy as a Spiritual Exercise?

Last updated on: January 27, 2015 at 2:29 pm By Artur Rosman

As great as John Milbank is, there are plenty of other great things going on in Nottingham at the Centre of Theology and Philosophy. One of them is the “Why study?” series of interviews conducted by Tom O’Loughlin they post periodically to youtube. As it happens, one of their researchers, Philip Goodchild (best known for his tomes on Capitalism and Religion and the Theology of Money) recently published a book On Philosophy as a Spiritual Exercise the topic of my recent... Read more

St. Socrates: Philosophy’s Permanent Ties to Theology

Last updated on: February 9, 2017 at 3:51 pm By Artur Rosman

Dominique Janicaud has spent the great part of his academic career attempting to somewhat belligerently keep phenomenology (the main current of continental philosophy) pure from contamination by theology. Trends in contemporary French phenomenology suggest he has completely failed. It was a gallant, but all too quixotic, battle. Janicaud should have been more Rabelaisian in his approach. He was always stuck rowing against the current of phenomenology’s founding ties to theology. Not even the seemingly methodologically atheist Heidegger was immune. The proof will continue... Read more

#Roe42: Abortion, Cognitive Bias & the Problem of Representation

Last updated on: January 22, 2015 at 3:07 pm By Artur Rosman

The problem of representation is one of the key issues of modern philosophy. It ranges all the way from the question of what can be represented all the way to what by definition cannot be represented. In fact, Descartes’ search for ways to represent clearly and distinctly launched the modern philosophical project. Yet, by the 20th century Descartes’ own French philosophical tradition was wholesale denigrating visual representation. I’m in the process of interviewing David Griffith, the author of A Good... Read more

How Did Disappearing Middle Eastern Religions Survive in the First Place?

Last updated on: January 26, 2015 at 11:44 pm By Artur Rosman

Gerard Russell’s Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East should be on everyone’s reading list. Its discussion of Islam’s coexistence with ancient faiths gives us hints about our Jewish and Christian roots. It is a necessary corrective to the one-sided coverage of Islam in the media and among combox tyrants. Russell is a bit like the recently deceased Polish eyewitness journalist and (time-) travel writer Ryszard Kapuscinski, author of Shah of Shahs (on events leading... Read more