Modernity’s reduction of time to clock-time is not socially or psychically healthy. As Rosenstock-Huessy puts it: “We need the intersecting of many rhythms of time. Our stomach and our consciousness respond to a 24-hour rhythm. Our faith and our hopes respond to centuries. Our noble passions like the love of husband and wife, of veterans, of sects, rule time spans of 25, 30, or 40 years. The 24-hour day and the week, the month and the year, should not becloud... Read more
Enlightenment secularism is committed to “freedom” as its overarching value. In an address on “Freedom and Truth” (published in The Essential Pope Benedict XVI), Benedict XVI describes the Enlightenment as a “will to emancipation” (citing Kant’s sapere aude). Kant’s plea for philosophical freedom has political dimensions. According to the Enlightenment, critical reason will free us from the burdens of authority (341). Ultimately, the Enlightenment’s dream of freedom is Marxist, the dream that we can desire anything and also have the opportunity... Read more
The Lord’s Supper is the world in miniature; it has cosmic significance. Read more
John of Salisbury, the 12th-century political thinker, called Orosius, author of Seven Books of HIstories against the Pagans, a “disciple of the great Augustine.” It’s true. According to Francis Oakley (Empty Bottles of Gentilism), Orosius “had studied with Augustine from 414 to 415, and he himself tells us that it was Augustine who had asked him to undertake the writing of the Seven Books. . . . When he finished the work in 417, it was to Augustine that he... Read more
Elizabeth Digeser (Making of a Christian Empire) observes that the Roman emperor Diocletian came to the purple with a disadvantage: He was a usurper. He needed to secure his power, lest another usurp his place. His strategy was to distribute power to a Tetrarchy, and to claim divine right for his rule. He started right away with the latter process, emphasizing the approval of the gods in the accession: “Diocletian’s mints claimed that he was under Jupiter’s care (Juppiter conservator Augusti). Other... Read more
Thomas argues (ST I, 28, 2) that since “everything which is not the divine essence is a creature” and “relation really belongs to god,” it follows that relation is identical to essence. More fully: “whatever has an accidental existence in creatures, when considered as transferred to God has a substantial existence; for there is no accident in God; since all in Him is His essence. So, in so far as relation has an accidental existence in creatures, relation really existing... Read more
Peter Schjeldahl claims that Auguste Rodin “or his hand, as his mind’s executive—wrenched figurative sculpture from millennia of tradition and sent it tumbling into modernity.” He admits that There’s a stubborn tinge of vulgarity about Rodin, inseparable from his strength.” Yet even when we are put off by vulgarity, “your gaze is going to stop, again, and widen at the sight of one or another work of his. What does it is a touch that thinks.” The vulgarity is related to... Read more
“The doctrine of the Trinity is only possible as a piece of baffled theology,” writes Joseph Ratzinger (Introduction to Christianity, 122). This is true in a sheer historical sense: “Every one of the big basic concepts in the doctrine of the Trinity was condemned at one time or another; they were all adopted only after the frustration of a condemnation; they are accepted only inasmuch as they are at the same time branded as unusuable and admitted simply as poor... Read more
Reviewing two new translations of the Iliad (by Peter Green and Barry Powell), Hayden Pelliccia explores some of the challenges of translating Homer. It starts from the very beginning. Homer writes (in Greek word order): “Wrath sing, goddess, Peleus-son Achilles’, baneful, which hurled.” What’s an English translator to do? Pelliccia summarizes the options: “The very first line of the Iliad forces any English-language translator to decide immediately and to declare conspicuously whether he would rather be caught betraying his poet or his own... Read more
The responses to the Nobel selection of Kazuo Ishiguro for the 2017 literature prize drew mixed, underwhelmed responses. Someone wrote that he wasn’t awarded the prize for any recent books. The Paris Review, though, posted an old interview to celebrate. As readers of Ishiguro’s novels would expect, the author comes off as gentle, self-deprecating, thoughtful. When the interviewer asks about the origins of his best-known novel, The Remains of the Day, the author answers: “It started with a joke that my... Read more
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