Category: de umbris idæarum
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Stars and Dust
This is a continuation of the line of thought found in an earlier post. In On the Human Condition, St. Basil writes: If you like, after your contemplation of the soul be attentive also to the structure of the body and marvel at how appropriate a dwelling for the rational soul the sovereign Fashioner has created. […]
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The Appeal of the Sea
On this topic, seamen always repeat the same thing. Thus, in one of his last essays, Conrad confessed: “The monotony of the sea is easier to bear than the boredom of the shore.” And earlier on, in a short story (which, paradoxically, is a masterpiece of disturbing and suspenseful ambiguity), he described the feeling of […]
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Intersections of Athletics and Virtue
Summer always inspires me to think deeply about ultimate. This year, that’s resulted in reading a lot of military strategy (about which I’ll hopefully have something to say soon) and re-reading Timothy Gallwey’s classic, The Inner Game of Tennis. Inner Game is probably my favorite book on coaching and teaching, and I’ve long attempted (and often failed) to implement […]
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Loneliness on the Edge of the World
A passage in J.A. Baker’s obsessive, wonderful little book, The Peregrine, brought together a number of threads which have been tossing around my head lately. He writes, describing his home in the south of England “out there at the edges of things,” Farms are well ordered, prosperous, but a fragrance of neglect still lingers, like a ghost […]
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Josef Pieper, A Brief Reading on the Virtues of the Human Heart
I’m not a fan of most modern philosophy. No one ever seems to just come out and say what they mean, instead burying their points in a mass of verbiage so difficult to penetrate that when you do, it’s inevitably a disappointment. More, they seem to have forgotten the fundamental duty of philosophy, to inform how […]
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whither can I flee from thy presence?
Reading in the Psalms yesterday, I was struck by the resonances between Psalm 138 and Anselm’s project in the Proslogion and Cur Deus Homo. My read of Anselm here is shaped heavily by Burcht Pranger’s interpretation of the saint’s thought. Not coincidentally, I recently attended a lecture by Prof. Pranger on Anselm, thus these ideas were percolating […]
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Virtually all errors in thought are the result of a misunderstanding or failure to appreciate the significance of the Incarnation. Alternatively: Reality is fundamentally Incarnational, and a failure to recognize this will always lead to error. Modern thought denies the Incarnation (generally by refusing to admit the union of material and spiritual, giving undue precedence […]
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An informal, dashed off, certainly wrong history
First, God is removed from the world. Ironically, this stems from a pious impulse. The transcendence of God is stressed to the detriment of His immanence, and the ontological link between creation and creator is severed.* The universe is made a distinct sphere in which, in the absence of God, man becomes the measure of […]
Dan Yingst 