James and Warrington

die sprachliche Geste

Daniel — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:05:41 +0000

Die Sprache ist die Geste des Verstandes.
Eine einfache Sprache ist nicht unbedingt
der Ausdruck eines einfachen Verstandes.

Sprache ist nicht nur das Erfassen von Wirklichkeit,
sondern vor allem auch die Kommunikation eben dieser.
Eine klare Sprache, wenn sie zugleich wahre Sprache ist,
hat das klare Vermitteln von Wirklichkeit zum Ziel.

Ein komplexer Sachverhalt
erfordert nicht zwingend eine komplexe Sprache.
Im Gegenteil: besonders der komplexe Gegenstand
bedarf des klaren Blickes.

modern nakedness

Daniel — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:33:33 +0000

Most of the time most people don’t look very good with their clothes off, which is why a nude beach can be so depressing. We need the decent drapery of life. The decorative impulse humanizes life.

The modernist fantasy of life taken raw and unadorned is just that - a fantasy. It toggles back and forth between two sides of the same self-invented, post-traditional ego: megalomania and banality.

who would have thought?

Daniel — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:27:53 +0000

… the Gospel, that imperishable guide of true wisdom. When reason completes her speculations, she finds that her conclusions coincide with this guide. When, moreover, reason has covered her entire course, much that she sought still remains in darkness; she needs new light and fresh instruction, and draws both from the Gospel.

- Immanuel [God is with us] Kant

C. McCarthy:

Daniel — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:38:25 +0000

“I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.”

A critic noted the novelist’s “stubborn refusal to bend his writing to the literary and intellectual demands of our era.”

learning

Daniel — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:36:00 +0000

Aquinas wrote a brief three-point introduction to the Summa explaining to students just why they often found it difficult to learn and to come to a clear knowledge of the truth.

The three reasons for the difficulty of learning are:

i) the baffling multiplicity of useless questions and arguments

ii) the frequent repetition of these questions causes confusion and boredom in minds of the students

iii) the things that we want to know are not treated according to the order of the discipline but only according to what is required for explaining some book or dispute

Aquinas thought that even the most obscure problem could be spelled out “briefly and lucidly”.

knowing the difference

Daniel — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:58:49 +0000

We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit.
He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason.

There are some who offend against these three rules, either by affirming everything as demonstrative, from want of knowing what demonstration is; or by doubting everything, from want of knowing where to submit; or by submitting in everything, from want of knowing where they must judge.

- Blaise Pascal

the communicating community

Daniel — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:14:59 +0000

Eric Voegelin, in his book on Plato, says that after the death of Socrates in Athens, philosophy (the search for truth about reality) fled from the city to the Academy.

We now live in a time evidently when truth is fleeing the Academy a.k.a. the University.

This is the situation the intellectually curious students, the potential philosophers, find themselves facing. The obvious question: where are we to find a community of philosophers, a community of those who seek the truth, if not in the city or the Academy?

jargon vs. argument

Daniel — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:01:04 +0000

“… At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.

But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” of “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional” or “ruthless”…”

- C.S. Lewis

R.I.P. Father Neuhaus

Daniel — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:55:53 +0000

Today
marks the one year anniversary
of Father Richard J. Neuhaus’ death.

young birds

Daniel — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:18:03 +0000

There is much to be said for being no longer young; it is just as well to be past the age when one expects or desires to attract the other sex. It’s natural enough in our species, as in others, that the young birds should show off their plumage - in the mating season.

But the trouble in the modern world is that there’s a tendency to rush all the birds on to that age as soon as possible and then keep them there as late as possible, thus losing all the real value of the other parts of life in a senseless, pitiful attempt to prolong what, after all, is neither its wisest, its happiest, or most innocent period.

I suspect merely commercial motives are behind it all:
for it is at the showing-off age, in the mating season,
that birds of both sexes have least sales-resistance!

- Mr. Lewis