There was a certain inevitability in existentialism’s decline, but at least the early existentialists were serious. I count four stages in the philosophy's devolution.
My new book, Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics, is coming out from Cambridge University Press on April 30, and you can preorder right here.
Why doesn’t the social witness of the Church have more influence than it does? With respect, I suggest that perhaps one reason is that sometimes those who represent the Church speak as though they don’t believe her social doctrine.
Sorry, no new post until next week. In the meantime, some readers might enjoy perusing old posts in the castle archives.
What did Macbeth say say when he saw Birnam Wood advancing on Dunsinane?
“Cheese it! The copse!”
People of my age often say "Kids are so much smarter these days than we were. They know so many things that we didn’t."
They do know more “things,” just because they have the new media. But that sort of knowledge is all breadth, with no depth.
Imagine trying to see one thing closely with lights strobing and flashbulbs popping in every square inch of the visual field.
I don’t think much of David Hume’s philosophy, but he was an astute observer of government. If he was right in his famous 1742 essay “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science,” then the prospects of applying the sort of science he had in mind to our own country should be rather dimmer now than formerly.