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December 2009

December 17, 2009

Self and Person

Robert Sokolowski ( Phenomenology of the Human Person ) finds contemporary talk about “the self”...

December 02, 2009

Erotic knowledge

Augustine said that knowing and willing were inseparable. Knowledge is “a thing discovered,” and “discovery...

November 2009

November 11, 2009

Prodigal words revisited

A friend, Aaron Cummings, writes in response to my comments about Derrida and prodigal words:...

November 10, 2009

Antifoundationalism

In the second of his “theological orations,” Gregory Nazianzen catalogs the impenetrable mysteries of creation:...

November 09, 2009

Objects and subjects

How do we sense objects? Our instincts tell us that objects are just there, waiting...

October 2009

October 19, 2009

Hegel’s project

Hegel wants to rebut the Enlightenment dismissal of Christianity. He doesn’t do this by reaching...

October 19, 2009

Thought and context

Summarizing “logic and spirit” in Hegel, Rowan Williams describes the pressure toward relationality that is...

October 14, 2009

Hegel on desire

Peter Singer ( Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) ) gives a neat...

October 14, 2009

Courtly love

A web summary of Lacan’s negative account of desire says, “In constructing our fantasy-version of...

September 2009

September 25, 2009

Static Hellenism?

In his treatise Contra Gentiles , Athanasius reproduces an argument from the Phaedrus that provides...

September 21, 2009

Against Empiricism

Heidegger got it exactly right: “We never really first perceive a throng of sensations, e.g.,...

September 21, 2009

Hamann contra Hegel

Hegel arranges art, religion, and philosophy on a scale. Art, bound to sensuous external stuff,...

September 12, 2009

Effects and Causes

Can effects double as causes? Kant, still working with some form of final causality, thinks...

September 11, 2009

Thin souls

Augustine, of course, says that pride is the beginning of revolt and sin. A prideful...

September 11, 2009

Desiring order

In his early treatise de musica , Augustine arranges everything into a hierarchy: God and...

September 04, 2009

Dreamtime

My son had a dream last night. There was some mayhem and some police action,...

August 2009

August 31, 2009

Selfless power

David Hart notes, in a discussion of Derrida and Milbank on gift, that “absolute ‘selfless’...

August 28, 2009

Humean natural law

Baylor’s Alexander Pruss offers this nifty Aristotelian critique of Humean natural law: “The most basic...

August 15, 2009

Perichoretic linguistics

De Certeau suggests that Cusa’s Germanized Latin provides a linguistic illustration of his theory of...

August 15, 2009

Plato

In his treatise De Venatione Sapientiae , Nicholas of Cusa explained the Platonic doctrine of...

July 2009

July 30, 2009

Incest and meaning

From the introduction to Ellen Pollak’s Incest and the English Novel, 1684-1814 : According to...

June 2009

June 27, 2009

Truth and Error

It was an ancient axiom that truth comes before error. “The real thing always exists...

May 2009

May 12, 2009

Dangerous toys

Rose again, criticizing the postmodern assault on reason: “The decision by the intellectuals that reason...

May 12, 2009

Violence deeper than violence

Of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas, Gillian Rose wrote, “The separation in their work of the...

May 06, 2009

Non-universal Universality

Daniel Barber ( Modern Theology ) notes that “particularity cannot be reduced to universality. Therefore...

January 2009

January 17, 2009

Aquinas at Oxford

In the first volume of his history of ethics, Terence Irwin gievs a chapter to...

January 17, 2009

Zizek

With his rock star style and his intoxicating brew of high and pop culture, Zizek...

November 2008

November 23, 2008

Talked into talking

In his recent book on Austen Farrer ( Light in a Burning-Glass ), Robert Slocum...

November 04, 2008

Dark Sayings

Why does Hamann write so “darkly”? Betz suggests that in part “it should be seen...

November 04, 2008

Test of manhood

Lessing on Hamann: “His writings seem to be tests of manhood for those who claim...