thoughts in and out of season
Liberal society says it leaves the question of ultimate goods up to its members. That’s not possible, since every choice implicitly defines what is worth choosing and thus what is good. Every society, like every human being, thus accepts a definition of the good that is as specific and comprehensive as its system of habitual … More ...
John Milbank has a nice clear article for popular consumption on the Church as an organic union of divine and human aspects. The piece goes into nominalism, voluntarism, William of Ockham and what not else, and explicitly says that the mixed and organic nature of the Church should serve as a guide to secular as … More ...
Melanie Phillips gives a pop version of objections to attempts by scientists and their hangers-on and popularizers to claim that something like modern natural science can explain everything.
The basic problem, I think, is that modern natural science achieves its amazing power through clarity and concentration, which means it achieves it through narrowness. It can’t … More ...
Islam continues to fascinate. Whatever the value of suggestions that it emphasizes will over reason and therefore leads to mere assertion and violence (I think there’s a lot to that view), it seems clear that discussions about it mostly generate more heat than light.
To my mind it seems important to discuss something as … More ...
A poster over at Right Reason has put together an argument for a classical liberal conception of tolerance that has apparently appealed to various independent thinkers alarmed by 20th century fanaticisms. It’s more sober than the usual praise of tolerance found today but still an attempt to get something—a reliable guide for conduct—out of nothing—a … More ...
La Rochefoucauld says that “he who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks.” The point applies more strongly as the effort becomes more comprehensive, so that a whole society that tries to live perfectly rationally will go stark staring mad. That is increasingly the case with our own society:
I don’t know much about the topic in its specific sense as a theory opposed to Darwinism. Some ideas associated with it do seem to make sense. It seems to me, for example, that mathematical analysis and basic physics and chemistry ought to set outer bounds on what random variation and natural selection can do, … More ...
A recent philosophy grad asks about the Euthyphro Dilemma (so called from the Platonic dialogue), and whether it shows that religion and morality are unrelated:
… More ...The dilemma is as follows: is good simply whatever God commands us to do, or is there some external standard of goodness that God must adhere to when he
There’s no special reason a scientist should have anything very comprehensive or profound to say about knowledge and reality, any more than a lawyer as such is likely to have deep thoughts on the nature of social order. A working professional needs an implicit theory that puts his work in a setting that enables him … More ...
Frequent commenter MD has posted an interesting account of the views of Jacques Lyotard, a prominent postmodernist, on knowledge in postindustrial society. It’s an interesting situation Lyotard describes, one that seems to me more hyper- than post- modern and industrial. The basic idea, I suppose, is that man is rational and social. It follows that … More ...