Someday, if we choose to do so, we can party with the once dead. And no, I am not looking forward to a monster mash, a zombie get together, or Spike coming over for coffee. The souls in Paradise are not undead, but alive again. The distinction counts: as even fairy tales show, a person wants life and not just not-dying. To not die could be wearisome, to have life and that abundantly, is joy! (As an aside: In a long... Read more
They panicked over the fakery in the news. As many as a million people may have believed that Mars was taking over New Jersey in 1938 when Orson Welles and his merry geniuses of the radio did an episode based on the forty year old story War of the Worlds (HG Wells). The first tip to the audience should have been the implausible nature of any advanced race voluntarily expending resources to conquer New Jersey. Most Americans, including a majority in... Read more
We sat talking, a mountain rising over us and a green valley beneath us. The beautiful buildings, some very old, some new, of the monestary fit the scene accenting natural beauty, drawing it out. The bells rang and our kind hosts served us bread and honey they had made. I still could smell traces of the frankincense from the church on my clothes. Every truth spoken in that context had great force and the truth was combined with powerful beauty. The... Read more
Often I wait a bit to read a political book. Media will give me the hottest quotations and if the book is big enough, will dominate discussion for a short time. I am sometimes skeptical the talking heads have read the book, but they have surely read other talkers talking about the book. This is tedious. Two types of book dominate the the political book that speaks to the moment as opposed to historical reflections. The first is the book-on-demand churned... Read more
Plato wrote a great many books and we are blessed with all of them. You can read his ideas about justice in Republic, piety in Euthyphro, or the natural world in Timaeus. Plato wrote carefully and most of his dialogs are masterpieces of Greek prose. The Menexenus proves Plato could parody bad writing when he wanted to do so. By the living jingo, there is some bad speech making in that dialog! As a youngling assigned to write an undergraduate paper... Read more
Today an anti-Semite took a gun and killed good people, fellow Americans. I condemn this evil with all my heart. Yet saying this, I pause. I do not want to posture. This is evil, but who cares about my opinon? Isn’t the evil obvious? Am I just putting myself on Team Virtue by saying what the powers that be would have me say? No. I am saying what I know in the face of evil. I am asked to say... Read more
“Never,” Mom said, “believe a thing, because you wish it to be true.” She brought us up to pursue the truth, even if inconvenient. She spent an entire Saturday, precious childhood time, pressing me to defend my pro-Northern views regarding the Civil War. She agreed with me, of course, after all, where else could I have gotten my ideas if not from my parents (!), but she refused to let me be intellectually lazy. “Why,” she said, “do you think... Read more
MMMBop. If you know it, as some of my colleagues do, then you are younger than I am, but older than our college students. I am not, perhaps, the normal audience for Hanson. That’s my loss as I discovered in Houston on October 23, 2018. Let me report that this is a 1990’s band that has held up well and worth a look if you missed the 1990’s due to work or not yet being born. Do not worry Hanson... Read more
Get Truth Where You Can Get truth where you can. Some useful ideas comes to Christians from non-Christian sources and this is the least surprising fact that surprises critics of Christianity. “Ha! That’s an idea you got from . . . “ is said as if that is a bad thing. If you love wisdom, believe all people are created in the image of God, receive a common grace from God, as Christians do, then you are never surprised when... Read more
There is a species of literary juvenalia that goes looking for contradictions in great books or writers. Teach a semester on Plato and some youngling will discover that “soul” in Phaedo is used in a contradictory way with soul in Timaeus. “Look,” runs the paper that writes itself, “a contradiction in Plato!” Maybe, but usually not. The student reads, but badly. This is most excellent as it allows the Professor to show that (just perhaps) the student has not discovered an... Read more
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