No Devil, No God

Last updated on: September 24, 2014 at 4:52 pm By Artur Rosman

There is an amusing episode recounted by the distinguished historian Tony Judt in his NYRB obituary for Leszek Kolakowski: The seductively suggestive title of Kołakowski’s talk was “The Devil in History” [I believe it was renamed “Politics and the Devil” and collected in Modernity on Endless Trial] For a while there was silence as students, faculty, and visitors listened intently. Kołakowski’s writings were well known to many of those present and his penchant for irony and close reasoning was familiar.... Read more

Ruined by Books 2: My TOP10 Philosophy List

Last updated on: November 27, 2015 at 8:36 pm By Artur Rosman

Today, as promised in last week’s TOP10 novel list, we continue on my semi-autobiographical experiment in book classification. We’re turning to philosophy. Compiling a pure philosophy list is problematic, because I believe, following Henri de Lubac‘s The Drama of Atheist Humanism and John Milbank‘s Theology and Social Theory that the boundary between religion and philosophy is so porous that it is pretty much meaningless. If some of my choices or omissions seem arbitrary to you then next week’s theology list might atone for... Read more

All the Best to the Russians, But I Am Profoundly Skeptical

Last updated on: February 1, 2015 at 10:01 am By Artur Rosman

The Merton Annual asked me to write a piece about the Thomas Merton – Czeslaw Milosz correspondence that was published some time ago as Striving Towards Being. The correspondence includes a long discussion of Russia. I admit Russia is a minor obsession of mine; quite natural for a Pole, after all. The thinness of today’s Western political writing on Russia has something to do with the desperation of conservatives who are pretty much the only intellectuals who are actively interested... Read more

Ruined by Books: My TOP10 Novel List

Last updated on: April 24, 2016 at 2:18 pm By Artur Rosman

Thinking through betrayal reminded me of Hermann Broch’s novel The Sleepwalkers. It’s one of those books that you faithfully return to whenever you get the chance. I’ve encountered my fair share of such books. I’ve also been tagged in those “influential books” lists on social media, but I can’t get it all down into a list of only ten books from all genres. Therefore, I’ll attempt a quasi-bracketology approach by making TOP10 lists of genres (to be determined later) over... Read more

Hermann, Max, Woody and Falling Out of the Ordo Amoris

Last updated on: January 11, 2015 at 7:41 pm By Artur Rosman

Yesterday we discussed Woody Allen as a liminal personality stuck somewhere between belief and disbelief. Being lukewarm is acceptable to most, even if it’s a bit hard on God’s stomach, but when one makes a jump into either committed belief or unbelief (from its opposite), then one becomes an outcast. There is nothing more frightening than the person who has betrayed a community to that community; bridges burn automatically behind them. Being haunted by both belief and non-belief, a certain brand... Read more

Woody Allen Considers Conversion

Last updated on: September 16, 2014 at 9:58 am By Artur Rosman

Allen’s latest film Magic in the Moonlight has not received the credit it deserves. At first glance it is a starkly different film than Blue Jasmine. It seems this way because it channels some of the brainy levity of the films from the 80s, and even 70s classics like Love and Death or Annie Hall. Such a stereotyping of the earlier films ignores the existentially dead-serious serious thought-experiments and questions posed by those films through, not in spite of, their use of the comedy genre. Furthermore, Magic... Read more

The Empire Strikes Back: Feast of the Holy Cross

Last updated on: September 15, 2014 at 10:51 am By Artur Rosman

It’s easy to forget the Feast of the Holy Cross is a consummate Constantinian feast. St. Helen (patron saint of archaeologists), mother of Constantine, so the story goes, found the True Cross on an expedition in 326. This was a mere year after the imperial-doctrinal consolidation at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea that would keep Christians and the Empire together. The feast was rolled out with the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on 13 September 334.... Read more

They Were Not Able to Separate the Soul From the Flesh

Last updated on: September 12, 2014 at 4:11 pm By Artur Rosman

Finishing Theology of Transformation was one of those bittersweet reading moments: I was happy to discover the work of Oliver Davies, but sad the book ended. I’ve already explored his discussions of what he calls the Second Scientific Revolution, the way it helps to locate Christ in our cosmos in a new way, and how it helps to put some flesh back into our theologies (I’ll have more to say about his work soon). Reading Davies led me into posts... Read more

America’s Post 9/11 Nihilism

Last updated on: January 11, 2015 at 7:59 pm By Artur Rosman

John Zmirak’s writing, while it it is not serious theology, philosophy, or economic theory, has served as a fun foil for some of my best pieces. Thanks to him I was able, for example, to put the Inquisition in proper historical perspective, or come to terms with the libertarian nihilistic option for the rich. The Z-Man has a new book coming, a kind of halfhearted rip-off of TOP10 internet lists that I like to do so much. It’s called The... Read more

Atheism’s Ancient Creation Myth

Last updated on: March 18, 2015 at 2:44 pm By Artur Rosman

The cardinal rule for writing a book is starting out strong with a memorable story, anecdote, or aphorism. Frequently the promise of those first pages is enough to keep the readers glued to the rest of the book even if it doesn’t live up to the promise. Michel Foucault was a master at this, for example, when he began Discipline and Punish with the enthralling story of a regicide’s quartering. Tolstoy masterfully pulled his readers into the brick called Anna... Read more