Eric Scheske

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Philosophy

Gilson

"The human mind feels shy before a reality of which it can form no proper concept." Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy. Too many Christians, of course, know no such shyness. Bible and this morning's newspaper in hand, they have all the facts and knowledge they need

Voegelin and Pressure

Voegelin with a Nock Kicker History, said Voegelin, is "the perpetual task to regain the order under God from the pressure of mundane existence." That's the science of history? Heck, it's the science of everyday life. Just as Plato noted that society is man

More Gilson and God and Philosophy

"Just as science can play havoc with metaphysics, metaphysics can play havoc with science." Gilson There is a natural antipathy between the two. Gilson goes on to point out that metaphysics stifled science for centuries, just as science today stifles metaphysics. Empiricism is the belief that only those

Socrates

And Taleb "Socrates required of astronomy, if it was to be true science, that it should show why it was best that the sun and moon should be as they are." Santayana (emphasis in original). I suspect Nassim Taleb would have fun with that passage. Not with Santayana

God and Philosophy

I try to be judicious in my book annotations, but every so often, I find a book that has more passages underlined than not. Schumacher's A Guide for the Perplexed probably holds my library record in this regard, but Etienne Gilson's God and Philosophy isn'

Wednesday

Miscellaneous Rambling "Alteration between centralized and decentralized power is one of the cyclical rhythms of history, as if men tired alternately of immoderate liberty and excessive order." Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage. So where would we place the United States on this pendulum? Swinging hard toward excessive order,

Wednesday

Family Guy I've been reading some Nock. Albert Jay Nock, one of the premier American essayists of the early twentieth century and one of the founders of modern conservative/libertarian thought. A weighty man, that Nock. But also a disturbing man. In a 1964 biography, Robert M. Crunden

Thursday

Nockian Corner I mentioned last week that I was in the process of comparing the political theories of Orestes Brownson and Albert Jay Nock. Someone could, with disturbing insight, ask, "Why bother?" My answer is simple: I'm smitten with Nock, but I'm more smitten

Tuesday

The Philosophical Life A rambling little piece Alex is a Freshman at the University of Michigan. He's taking "Introduction to Philosophy," and he's really digging it. I guess he went in with one advantage: a father who encouraged him to take the subject seriously,

Tuesday

From the Notebooks Allegations of Brownson's inconsistencies in later years are often misplaced. Recent biographer R.A. Herrera, for instance, alleges that Brownson's view on the democratic revolution that was picking up speed in the mid-nineteenth century flip-flopped. Herrera criticizes Brownson for saying, in 1856, that