I just finished a very fast read-through (with permission to skip some sections) of Louis Menand's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 book The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. It's a 500-page book about one school of American philosophy. I picked it up used and have had it on the shelf for a few years, waiting until my teaching duties called for me to brush up on pragma...
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To follow up Fred Sanders' review of my book I have posted a short excerpt from Education for Human Flourishing published by IVP Academic.
The passage below describes the difference between rhetoric and knowledge, and how important it is for us to be able to distinguish between the two.
Rhetoric Versus Knowledge
It is easy to feel defeated and confused given daily cultur...
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When I was a little boy, I knew pious Christians driven a bit mad by their failure to follow reason. I also knew impious pagans sterile as great fact-grinding machines by their lack of care for metaphysical facts.
God created a world of spirit and a world of matter, a world of form and substance. This dualism frustrates any reduction just as the Trinity distresses those who ...
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For those interested in my reading this week and one question that motivates my studies this weekend, I have appended some brief notes on a section of Phaedrus (around 234d).
Rhetoric can be charming, but being charmed is dangerous for any person who wants to be free. This week I have been reflecting on ways to make my personal speech less likely to "charm" and more likely ...
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From time to time, professors here at Scriptorium Daily put something into book form rather than blog form. Below is the preface to my new book, When Athens Met Jerusalem: An Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought. It was a chance for an extended and unhurried reflection on the authors outside the Bible that have meant the most to me. So if you like the blog, I hope y...
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When I was a young man working for a home electronics firm, a pro-life commercial suddenly appeared on the televisions that formed one wall of the store.
The manger, who was white, began to swear. After so many years, I am still sickened by the ugliness of what he said. He was angry at those pro-life and religious fanatics making him pay for more welfare minority babies.
...
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John Toland (born 1670, died March 11, 1722) was a philosopher most famous for his book Christianity Not Mysterious (1696). In that book, Toland scores some good points against obscurantism and mystery-mongering, but he gets greedy about it, puts God into his Locke-box, and demands that the Deity can't reveal anything but what will submit itself to proof at the bar of enlighten...
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Elementary school is a rather treacherous place to learn to navigate as a child. The first time I ever read Calvin and Hobbes, I discovered a kindred spirit. Calvin's view of elementary school was akin to an intergalactic prison where the alien life forms torture you for what seems like their own pleasure—at times I resonated with that analysis.
Elementary school is one...
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Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room;
And Hermits are contented with their Cells;
And Students with their pensive Citadels:
Maids at the Wheel, the Weaver at his Loom,
Sit blithe and happy; Bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness Fells,
Will murmur by the hour in Foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no priso...
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Martin Buber (1878-1965) was a Jewish philosopher who did a great deal to put classic documents of Hasidic tradition into wider circulation. He is most famous for his 1923 book I and Thou.
I and Thou is a remarkable book, a masterpiece of simplicity and direct communication. I don't know if it will ever seem as important again as it did for a while in the 1960s, when $5 Sc...
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Just the other night I was doing something that all middle-aged university professors do on a regular basis – maintaining my Facebook! Yes, I have a presence on Facebook and, yes, on occasion I visit the site to see what all of my “friends” are doing. I originally created my Facebook presence simply because my colleague and fellow blogger Matt Jenson said that I should. I...
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The recalcitrant nature of human persons for scientific naturalism has been widely noticed. Thus, Berkeley philosopher John Searle recently observed, “There is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy….How do we fit in?....How can we square this self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that co...
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