David assembles the leaders of Israel for Solomon’s coronation (1 Chronicles 28–29; cf. 29:22), and, even more importantly, to encourage them to contribute skill, energy, and material to the temple, King Yahweh’s fortress. Judged by terminology used elsewhere in the Old Testament, his descriptions of the temple are eccentric. Initially, he describes his own desire to build the temple as a “house of rest for the ark of the covenant of Yahweh and the footstool of our God” (28:2). The... Read more
In a fascinating article on “the structure of significant lives,” Norman Fiering summarizes Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s description of the development of Freud and the psychoanalytic movement. Each involves a different sort of time, and a different “grammar”—a different verbal mood and a different declension for Freud and his followers. Like other significant intellectual and cultural innovations, Freud began with an inspiration, which arose from a mentor’s chance comment about the relation of neurosis to “genitals.” The comment came to Freud as... Read more
At the end of 1 Chronicles, David delivers a series of speeches to the qahal (assembly) of Israel, the officers and princes of his court and bureaucracy (on 1 Chronicles 28–29 generally, see here). The qahal consists of the “princes” (sar is used 6x) and warriors (gibborim). The speech is structured chiastically: A. Hear (shema), v. 2a B. In my heart to build, v. 2b C. God said, You shall not build, v. 3 D. Yahweh chose David and Solomon,... Read more
According to John Milbank (“Politics of time”), “libertarianism insists that the future lies with the isolated ‘reflective’ individual manipulating a plethora of life-choices” but also “claims that civil society is sound and that new forms of community are emerging: sport associations, women’s support networks, single-issue groups, etc.” Milbank is not impressed: “all of these, however worthy or unworthy, are rather evidence of lack of community.” They fail to meet what Milbank argues are key features of genuine community: difference, and,... Read more
My youngest son, Smith, is reading through the Bible this year. He’s getting bogged down in Leviticus. I tell him, Leviticus is my life. I’ve studied Leviticus more intensely and over a longer stretch of time than any other book of the Bible, and it’s shaped by understanding of everything—atonement, the church, worship, sacrificial living, God. He says, All I can see are rules that we don’t have to keep anymore. I say, Yes, but that’s interesting in itself, isn’t... Read more
Charles Rosen celebrated Chopin’s birth in June 2010 with a NYRB essay on the composer. Rosen observed that until the twentieth century, Chopin was often treated as a minor figure: “Chopin’s concentration on the genres of salon music considered trivial—nocturnes, mazurkas, waltzes—placed him among the miniaturists. Critics could not grant unqualified approval to his often unconventional forms, and to the disconcertingly modern chromatic harmony of his last pieces. These compositions, they felt, were the morbid work of a sick, dying... Read more
Thomas Nagel reviews Daniel Dennett’s latest, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, in the NYRB. It’s a wild ride. Reality, real reality, is the matter-in-process that science describes, Dennett argues. Dennett is famously, insanely consistent in his materialism. Nagel writes, “Bach’s or Picasso’s creative genius, and our conscious experience of hearing Bach’s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto or seeing Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror, all arose by a sequence of physical events beginning with the chemical composition of the earth’s surface before... Read more
“Western history is not, John Milbank argues, an evolutionary progress away from religion and toward human freedom and control.” It should instead be seen as “the history of a tremendous revolt against either particularism or the cult of universalizable power, in the name of the transcendent Good.” This revolt comes to expression in the “axial” religions (prophetic Judaism, Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Confucianism) and their modern heirs—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. If these are, as Milbank argues, “expressions of this revolt,” then... Read more
John Milbank writes, “Since life passes and is only mediated through memory and desire, every concrete instance of life is always also something other than itself, part of a larger, dimly-imagined reality, disclosed only partially.” Thus, “a ceaseless passing and a ceaseless dying is the very condition of life, which allows its dynamic and its development. This further suggests that only an impossible, embalmed, absolute finite life (as sought by spatialization) would be perfectly dead. Whereas, by contrast, what lives... Read more
Robert Carle suggests that “sensible refugee policy will balance two competing realities: first, it is a moral duty for a wealthy country like the United States to help displaced and suffering people; and second, not everyone who wants to immigrate to the United States can come to live here.” We might have found ourselves in the middle of a debate about these two competing realities, in an effort to find a sensible policy. We aren’t, and Carle blames Trump: Our... Read more
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