They sentenced me to twenty years of blogwatch Camassia<\/span>: More on The Last Station<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n MarriageDebate<\/span> is just a cornucopia, people. \u201cAre Sperm Donors Really Anonymous Anymore?\u201d; \u201cWould Your Boyfriend Be Pleased By Your Surprise Fetus?\u201d; Can a court tell a parent what religion his child will be?; Catholic girls (and Canadian schoolteachers) gone wild; Yale administration promotes sincerist sex; and whether major economic shifts are leading women to redefine \u201cmarriage material.\u201d And much, much more.<\/a> As always, send me links if you\u2019ve got \u2019em\u2026.<\/p>\n The Rat<\/span> is back to frequent, linkalicious blogging! Opera, lit, meta-cannoli and much more<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cWhy There Is No Jewish Narnia.<\/a>\u201c<\/span> Really intriguing, though I\u2019m way too far from being a Tolkein or Narnia fan to address its claims. I\u2019d be interested in others\u2019 reactions. Two recent novels, Lev Grossman\u2019s The Magicians<\/span> and Hagar Yanai\u2019s Ha-Mayim she-bein ha-olamot<\/span> (The Water Between the Worlds), are reviewed as part of a longer and more speculative essay. Plus the piece is worth it just for the rabbinic description of the fate of Leviathan! Via Arts & Letters Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWeaponizing Mozart<\/a>,\u201d<\/span> and other present-tense dystopias from the place that was England.<\/p>\n To Save a Thousand Souls<\/span><\/span>, a new book for men discerning a vocation to the priesthood, has excerpts posted here<\/a>. The book aims to answer \u201cfrequently asked questions\u201d with clear examples and stories. Via Mark Shea<\/a>.<\/p>\n Stanley Fish<\/span> asks, \u201cAre there secular reasons?\u201d<\/a> He says no, but\u2013kinda like what I did when I addressed the same question here<\/a> and here<\/a>\u2013he equivocates on how a fully-secular philosophy might proceed. What are the possible objects for the philosopher\u2019s eros, the nuptial meaning of the mind, in a fully secular worldview? I dunno, because I\u2019ve never done it, but I welcome your thoughts. Anyway, here is a bit of Fish, fishifying:<\/p>\n \u2026Once the world is no longer assumed to be informed by some presiding meaning or spirit (associated either with a theology or an undoubted philosophical first principle) and is instead thought of as being \u201ccomposed of atomic particles randomly colliding and . . . sometimes evolving into more and more complicated systems and entities including ourselves\u201d there is no way, says Smith, to look at it and answer normative questions, questions like \u201cwhat are we supposed to do?\u201d and \u201cat the behest of who or what are we to do it?\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Smith observes, the self-impoverished discourse of secular reason does in fact produce judgments, formulate and defend agendas, and speak in a normative vocabulary. How is this managed? By \u201csmuggling,\u201d Smith answers.<\/p>\n . . . the secular vocabulary within which public discourse is constrained today is insufficient to convey our full set of normative convictions and commitments. We manage to debate normative matters anyway \u2014 but only by smuggling in notions that are formally inadmissible, and hence that cannot be openly acknowledged or adverted to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The notions we must smuggle in, according to Smith, include \u201cnotions about a purposive cosmos, or a teleological nature stocked with Aristotelian \u2018final causes\u2019 or a providential design,\u201d all banished from secular discourse because they stipulate truth and value in advance rather than waiting for them to be revealed by the outcomes of rational calculation. But if secular discourse needs notions like these to have a direction \u2014 to even get started \u2014 \u201cwe have little choice except to smuggle [them] into the conversations \u2014 to introduce them incognito under some sort of secular disguise.\u201d<\/p>\n And how do we do that? Well, one way is to invoke secular concepts like freedom and equality \u2014 concepts sufficiently general to escape the taint of partisan or religious affiliation \u2014 and claim that your argument follows from them. But, Smith points out (following Peter Westen and others), freedom and equality \u2014 and we might add justice, fairness and impartiality \u2014 are empty abstractions. Nothing follows from them until we have answered questions like \u201cfairness in relation to what standard?\u201d or \u201cequality with respect to what measures?\u201d \u2014 for only then will they have content enough to guide deliberation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n more<\/a> (and yet more of me here<\/a>, a familiar link to longtime readers)<\/p>\n
For trying to change the system from within\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n