When Moses objects that he cannot speak, Yahweh assigns his “brother Aaron” to be his spokesman and prophet (Exodus 4:14; 7:1-2). The next time Aaron is identified as Moses’ brother is in Exodus 28, where he is given the garments of glory and beauty to approach Yahweh, and the phrase “Aaron your brother” appears again in Leviticus 16:2. In all these cases, Aaron as brother functions as mediator, the one who approaches the master, whether Pharaoh or Yahweh. Read more
Greek art, Hegel says, brings art to its summit. This presents a difficulty: The greatest sensuous artistic form occurs within a polytheistic, inadequate religion. In Jean-Marie Schaeffer’s summary, Hegel resolves this by pointing to the very brokenness of the bodily form of Christ in Christian art: “in Christian art, Christ is not represented with an ideal body, as the Greek gods are; his body is no longer the adequate expression of interiority but merely his mortal shell (it can thus... Read more
Heidegger got it exactly right: “We never really first perceive a throng of sensations, e.g., tones and noises, in the appearance of things . . . rather we hear the storm whistling in the chimney, we hear the three-motored plane, we hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen. Much closer to use than all sensations are the things themselves. We hear the door shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensations or even mere sounds. In order... Read more
Collingwood: “The reason why gramophone music is so unsatisfactory to any one accustomed to real music is not because the mechanical reproduction is bad – that would be easily compensated by the hearer’s imagination – but because the performers and the audience are out of touch. The audience is not collaborating; it is only overhearing.” Read more
A few selections from Hegel, “Oldest System Programme of German Idealism” (1796; name given by Franz Rosenzweig in 1913); from Simon Critchley, Very Short Introduction to Continental Philosophy (Oxford, 2001) “I should like to give wings again to our physics which is progressing slowly and laboriously via experiments. Thus – if philosophy gives the Ideas and experience the data we can finally achieve the grand physics which I expect from later epochs. It does not appear that our present physics... Read more
Hegel arranges art, religion, and philosophy on a scale. Art, bound to sensuous external stuff, is the lowest self-expression of Geist , religion’s representation ( Vorstellung ) climbs a bit higher, but the peak comes with the pure, transparent, total conceptual clarity achieved in philosophy. Only: Even philosophy has to use language; and language, as Hamann insisted, is a perfect hypostatic union of sensible and intelligible. From Hamann’s perspective, Hegel is just as much a gnostic and an enthusiast as... Read more
Charles Taylor writes that for Hegel “Europe had to go through the Reformation before the rational law-state could be built. The Catholic variant of Christianity was not yet purified of its intrication with external forms, with sacraments and priestly power. Thus the Catholic church is led to fight the state for earthly supremacy instead of accepting that the earthly realization of the Christian community is in the state. Hence Catholic countries remain unpropitious ground for the modern state . .... Read more
1 Peter 1:1: Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered. Peter here uses the word “diaspora,” which in Jewish writing of the first century refers to the scattering of Jews after the Babylonian exile. This is one of the many ways that Peter identifies his readers as the true Israel . They are the elect, the ones sprinkled by blood, and later the holy nation and royal priesthood. In all these ways, Peter tells... Read more
Trinity season seems to be an anomaly in the church year. The other seasons mark and celebrate what God has done for us. Advent and Christmas celebrate the incarnation of the Son, Epiphany marks His revelation to the Gentiles, Lent is a time for remembering His sufferings and death; Easter is a memorial of Jesus’ resurrection, Ascension of His exaltation, Pentecost of the coronation gift of the Sprit. Then we come to Trinity season during which we celebrate . .... Read more
RG Collingwood has a whale of a time excoriating individualistic conceptions of art. He recognizes a theological motif behind the post-romantic notion of the isolated artistic genius: “Individualism conceives a man as if he were God, a self-contained and self-sufficient creative power whose only task is to be himself and exhibit his nature in whatever works are appropriate to it.” He also notes that such an individualistic notion of art is profoundly ahistorical. Many artists have borrowed quite directly from... Read more
Leithart
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