11. 1994 The Vanderbilt Agrarians, I’ll take my Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition [1930]
The delay in writing this piece on life-changing book #11 is that I wanted to go back and skim and the book for concrete ideas and have found it hard to do so. Instead, I will try to describe in broad strokes a vision of the world that has blossomed and ramified from the roots laid by the book. Continue reading
The Drunk Ex-Pastors podcast has evidently become quite a sensation Continue reading
9. 1982. Robert Louis Dabney. Defense of Virginia Continue reading
8. 1981. Cornelius van Til. Introduction to Systematic Theology Continue reading
Ladies, please skip this section. I feel it is necessary Continue reading
Some of his fan base may be unaware that C. S. Lewis believed in Purgatory Continue reading
The sabbath principle is explained using the analogy of a beautiful park. Continue reading
Some people think music a primitive art because it has only a few notes and rhythms. But it is only simple on the surface; its substance on the other hand, which makes it possible to interpret this manifest content, has all the infinite complexity that’s suggested in the external forms of other arts and that music conceals. Continue reading
Let us suppose that the following identity statement is true Continue reading
There is a lot of discussion in conservative circles of Continue reading
The topic addressed in this little book is important, asking such questions as what is law? where did it come from? what are the dynamics Continue reading
This essay by Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was published in 1892 in the journal Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, pp. 25-50. Dealing with the “philosophy of language,” it discusses the distinction that should be made between the sense and reference (hence: the title of the essay) of linguistic expressions.
It will be helpful to have the essay in hand to follow our discussion with maximum profit. It is available in more than one English-translation editions. Our discussion here covers the pages corresponding to pp. 25-31 of the original.
The following is the first installment of an article on the philosophy of Gottlob Frege. Students of philosophy may find here something of interest.
The attached audio (or better: use this 16 kbps compressed version) is our beginning of a close reading of the early Wittgenstein. Continue reading
Everyone expects me to say “Predestination” or something. But that’s so far down the list that I’ll forget to even mention it.
There are three things that prevent me from becoming a Methodist. Continue reading
A. J. Ayer’s view of ethical judgments, often dubbed “emotivism,” is that ethical statements are neither true nor false and therefore are without significance. Behind this stance is his empiricism. In order for a statement to be meaningful, it must lend itself to some sort of verification. Without any possible means of verification statements fail to have to express anything. But Ayer does distinguish ethical judgment from other meaningless talk such that of speculative metaphysics or theology in that the former have at least a semblance of meaning since they display the attitude of the speaker toward certain types of actions. When one says, for example, “treason is wicked,” he is, on Ayers view, not uttering a statement with any cognitive content, but is, displaying his strong disapproval of treasonous behavior. Continue reading
Perhaps the title is something of a stretch, but Wittgenstein does make numerous comments that fit within an agrarian outlook. Along with his distrust of science, his attitude towards culture, aesthetics, tradition, religion and life share much in common with Virgil, the Old South, the Inklings, the Vanderbilt agrarians, and to a certain extent, Jefferson. Continue reading
Cretians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies
One of the few benefits of living in an era of insanity is that it makes the peddlers of the most prosaic and obvious truths appear like sages. The banality I will defend here is that almost every stereotype you have ever heard is true. Continue reading
The book entitled The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God expounds Gordon H. Clark’s view of science. The book proceeds by historical survey, and the three chapter divisions divide the history into the ancients, the Newtonians, and the 20th century. Roughly speaking, this corresponds to views of science that we could call rationalist, empirical-determinist, and empirical-indeterminist. Each of these is shown to come up short of the standard Clark has set for what science needs to accomplish Continue reading
Utilitarianism is famous for its many flaws (e.g. committing the naturalistic fallacy, positing a simplistic psychological theory, failing to come to terms with ethical distinctions). All these, and more, have been dealt with extensively elsewhere. Here I merely wish to show that if one of J. S. Mill’s arguments succeeds, then Utilitarianism fails. Continue reading
One of our correspondents raised a question about the ethics of nudity in movies in connection with a remark I made in reviewing Dreamlife of Angels. In trying to pen some preliminary thoughts, I soon realized that the topic deserved a thread of its own, both because more needs to be said than is appropriate in a little “comment†box, and also to provide a better stage for our readers to offer additional suggestions on how to address this topic. Here are a few random thoughts to prime the pump: Continue reading
In the comments section to a previous post, somebody asked if Continue reading
The old man sitting next to me at the performance of Continue reading
The relation of God and time has been a study of renewed interest Continue reading
This book (see bibliog. at end) is a discussion of the philosophy of time, with specific attention to the question of the relation between God and time. Continue reading