Philosophy

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

From the Notebooks Christian Studies in Skepticism Significant: "Living in history, we experience only the present, the immediate. This is as it should be; it simplifies decision and directs action (for in this world only ignorance give us the freedom necessary to act)." Romano Guardini, The Lord, p.

C.S. Lewis was a very good debater. He wasn't as viciously clever as Belloc, nor as disarmingly effective as Chesterton, but he was good. They say he never lost a debate while at Oxford. Until he ran into Elizabeth Anscombe [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._E.

On Camus I've long enjoyed Albert Camus [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus]. I was forced to read The Stranger in high school, and enjoyed it so much that I went on a local radio station to talk about it. In my early thirties, I read The

From the Notebooks In the Introduction to his 1951 book, The Human Revolt (a/k/a The Rebel), Camus said about suicide: “[F]rom this act of self-destruction itself a value arises which, perhaps, might have made it worth while to live.” In other words, Camus asked, Why would you

From the Notebooks If it's possible to love a fictional philosophical character, I've loved one for many years. It's Sören Kierkegaard's “knight of faith," [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_of_faith] which he describes in the pioneering work of

Willmoore and More This article reminds me of Willmoore Kendall's observation that, contrary to the theory of America's open society, it was more of an American tradition to run a person out of town on a rail: America's history of religious intolerance [http://www.

From the Notebooks I've long loathed the term "wage slave." If you're getting paid and you have the option of terminating your employment, you're not a slave. Granted, the term "option" can be tricky to apply, but for starters, if