Today my mailman ( or should I say "postal worker' or 'letter carrier', lest I offend) brought me this book by James V. Schall. I once went to a philosophy conference just to meet him, and several other authors who I had read.
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Mind-Joys-Tr ... 94&sr=1-22 :
From the
Introduction:
"There is a radience to being.
Chesterton once said, in a memorable phrase of which I am inordinately fond, that there is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only uninterested people. Nothing is so unimportant that it is not worth knowing. Everything reveals something. Our minds cannot fully exhaust the reality contained in even the smallest existing thing.
It is a perversion of both mind and heart to think that somehow what is is not also given to us. I am bold enough to maintain, with Belloc, that even while walking, we can and do encounter the things that are. There is a "metaphysics" in the privilege of walking this green earth."
THE LIFE OF THE MIND - On the joys and Travails of Thinking
Re: THE LIFE OF THE MIND - On the joys and Travails of Thinking
Chapter 1. (pp. 1-6)
Is about Sertillanges' book, The Intellectual Life.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Life ... 422&sr=1-1
"Anything that is is fascinating. Chesterton, whose own intellectual life seems as vibrant as anyone in modern times, remarked that there are no such things as uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people. This is one of those truths which is so obvious that we can hardly bear it, since it forces us to look first to ourselves for the cause of our boredom. A large part of this "uninterestedness" happens precisely because we have never learned how or why to see what is there. Sertillanges teaches us to examine our lives. He does not neglect to mention that moral faults, both serious and light ones, can in fact hinder or prevent us from having the freedom from ourselves that enables us to see what is not ourselves, to see what is." ( Bold is my emphasis)
_____________________
Is about Sertillanges' book, The Intellectual Life.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Life ... 422&sr=1-1
"Anything that is is fascinating. Chesterton, whose own intellectual life seems as vibrant as anyone in modern times, remarked that there are no such things as uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people. This is one of those truths which is so obvious that we can hardly bear it, since it forces us to look first to ourselves for the cause of our boredom. A large part of this "uninterestedness" happens precisely because we have never learned how or why to see what is there. Sertillanges teaches us to examine our lives. He does not neglect to mention that moral faults, both serious and light ones, can in fact hinder or prevent us from having the freedom from ourselves that enables us to see what is not ourselves, to see what is." ( Bold is my emphasis)
_____________________
tbieter wrote:Today my mailman ( or should I say "postal worker' or 'letter carrier', lest I offend) brought me this book by James V. Schall. I once went to a philosophy conference just to meet him, and several other authors who I had read.
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Mind-Joys-Tr ... 94&sr=1-22 :
From the
Introduction:
"There is a radience to being.
Chesterton once said, in a memorable phrase of which I am inordinately fond, that there is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only uninterested people. Nothing is so unimportant that it is not worth knowing. Everything reveals something. Our minds cannot fully exhaust the reality contained in even the smallest existing thing.
It is a perversion of both mind and heart to think that somehow what is is not also given to us. I am bold enough to maintain, with Belloc, that even while walking, we can and do encounter the things that are. There is a "metaphysics" in the privilege of walking this green earth."
Re: THE LIFE OF THE MIND - On the joys and Travails of Thinking
Tom, you ROCK my BOOKSHELF. Thanks, Dude. 
Re: THE LIFE OF THE MIND - On the joys and Travails of Thinking
Chapter 2 - Books And The Intellectual Life.
"We need to surround ourselves with books because we are and ought to be curious about reality, about what is. The universe is not of our making. Yet it is all right for us to be what we are, because the universe is potentially ours through our knowledge. In knowing, we become the other, become what we are not, as Aquinas taught. But in doing so, in coming to know, we do not change what it is that we know. We change ourselves. Our very intellectual being is intended to become what, in the beginning, we are not. This is the drama of the intellectual life, the life of the mind. We should spend our time on the highest things, Aristotle tells us, even though we may be able to grasp only a bit of them, even though it takes our whole lifetime (1177b31-1178a2)." p. 18
"One of the books that we must have in our library is Augustine's Confessions, a book that, perhaps better than any other, accounts for the restlessness we cannot help but feel in our own souls concerning why we are here and what we are about. We are not only supposed to wonder about the highest things, but we are restless until we find them. As a very gifted but undisciplined young man of eighteen or ninetine, Augustine tells us, he came across a dialogue of Cicero (the Hortensius, now lost) written half a millennium earlier (Confessions,III, 4). He read this dialogue and it changed his life. He decided to pursue the truth. However, it still took Augustine a long time to figure things out. The young Augustine is still greatly attractive to us because he literally tried everything." pp.19-20
________________________________
"We need to surround ourselves with books because we are and ought to be curious about reality, about what is. The universe is not of our making. Yet it is all right for us to be what we are, because the universe is potentially ours through our knowledge. In knowing, we become the other, become what we are not, as Aquinas taught. But in doing so, in coming to know, we do not change what it is that we know. We change ourselves. Our very intellectual being is intended to become what, in the beginning, we are not. This is the drama of the intellectual life, the life of the mind. We should spend our time on the highest things, Aristotle tells us, even though we may be able to grasp only a bit of them, even though it takes our whole lifetime (1177b31-1178a2)." p. 18
"One of the books that we must have in our library is Augustine's Confessions, a book that, perhaps better than any other, accounts for the restlessness we cannot help but feel in our own souls concerning why we are here and what we are about. We are not only supposed to wonder about the highest things, but we are restless until we find them. As a very gifted but undisciplined young man of eighteen or ninetine, Augustine tells us, he came across a dialogue of Cicero (the Hortensius, now lost) written half a millennium earlier (Confessions,III, 4). He read this dialogue and it changed his life. He decided to pursue the truth. However, it still took Augustine a long time to figure things out. The young Augustine is still greatly attractive to us because he literally tried everything." pp.19-20
________________________________
_______________________________tbieter wrote:
Chapter 1. (pp. 1-6)
Is about Sertillanges' book, The Intellectual Life.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Life ... 422&sr=1-1
"Anything that is is fascinating. Chesterton, whose own intellectual life seems as vibrant as anyone in modern times, remarked that there are no such things as uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people. This is one of those truths which is so obvious that we can hardly bear it, since it forces us to look first to ourselves for the cause of our boredom. A large part of this "uninterestedness" happens precisely because we have never learned how or why to see what is there. Sertillanges teaches us to examine our lives. He does not neglect to mention that moral faults, both serious and light ones, can in fact hinder or prevent us from having the freedom from ourselves that enables us to see what is not ourselves, to see what is." ( Bold is my emphasis)
_____________________
tbieter wrote:
Today my mailman ( or should I say "postal worker' or 'letter carrier', lest I offend) brought me this book by James V. Schall. I once went to a philosophy conference just to meet him, and several other authors who I had read.
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Mind-Joys-Tr ... 94&sr=1-22 :
From the
Introduction:
"There is a radience to being.
Chesterton once said, in a memorable phrase of which I am inordinately fond, that there is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only uninterested people. Nothing is so unimportant that it is not worth knowing. Everything reveals something. Our minds cannot fully exhaust the reality contained in even the smallest existing thing.
It is a perversion of both mind and heart to think that somehow what is is not also given to us. I am bold enough to maintain, with Belloc, that even while walking, we can and do encounter the things that are. There is a "metaphysics" in the privilege of walking this green earth."
Re: THE LIFE OF THE MIND - On the joys and Travails of Thinking
Chapter III - Artes Liberales - The Liberal Arts
Discussing the Crito:
"Philosophy exists in conversation" p. 24
"Yet, for Socrates to be Socrates the philosopher, he would need to engage in conversation, in dialectic. Such dialectic required someone genuinely interested in the highest things." p. 25
"Any adequate concept of "liberal arts" and "liberal education" would, to be intellectually complete and honest, have to attend to the Greek and Roman classical traditions, to the Hebrew and Christian revelation, to the patristic and medieval experience, and finally to modern claims, especially those arising from science and politics, even when they claim to be "autonomous." Students who read Plato, Aristotle, St. Paul, and Augustine often are struck to find themselves brought more up-to-date, in a way, than when they read the New York Times or the latest textbook.The former sources possess a freedom and an intelligence that the latter somehow lack." p. 27
"Likewise, it is not surprising that Augustine's major work is titled The City of God, both because the Psalms speak of such a city (numbers 46 and 87) and because Plato wrote The Republic. We cannot read Augustine without, at the same time, reading the Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrews, and the Christians. Augustine was a man of "liberal learning," who even wrote a dialogue featuring his own son titled De Magistro ("On the Teacher"). Augustine still teaches us, but only if we let him." p. 31
"Education , moreover, was not a "thing." The word educere means to bring forth, or to complete something already begun by the very fact that one is a human being. We do not "make ourselves" to be human beings, as Aristotle constantly affirmed, though we do make ourselves to be good or bad human beings, complete or incomplete human beings. Yet, the freedom to become bad or evil is itself a kind of slavery, since it deflects us from our proper end. This is why the path to freedom in the classical tradition has always been pictured as one consisting of acquiring virtues and avoiding vices." pp. 32-33
"Universities are perhaps useful as a place for the preparation of elite students who will, by a kind of aristocratic heritage, gain control of certain professions and offices in the economy and in politics. But they do not provide a genuine "liberal education." Not merely are the classics and revelation considered to be inadmissible as norms or canons for the education at all, but the sciences themselves never know what they might be in the future. The conclusion of this observation is not that there is no place for liberal learning, but that its place may not always, or even usually, be found in academic institutions." pp. 38-39
________________________________
Discussing the Crito:
"Philosophy exists in conversation" p. 24
"Yet, for Socrates to be Socrates the philosopher, he would need to engage in conversation, in dialectic. Such dialectic required someone genuinely interested in the highest things." p. 25
"Any adequate concept of "liberal arts" and "liberal education" would, to be intellectually complete and honest, have to attend to the Greek and Roman classical traditions, to the Hebrew and Christian revelation, to the patristic and medieval experience, and finally to modern claims, especially those arising from science and politics, even when they claim to be "autonomous." Students who read Plato, Aristotle, St. Paul, and Augustine often are struck to find themselves brought more up-to-date, in a way, than when they read the New York Times or the latest textbook.The former sources possess a freedom and an intelligence that the latter somehow lack." p. 27
"Likewise, it is not surprising that Augustine's major work is titled The City of God, both because the Psalms speak of such a city (numbers 46 and 87) and because Plato wrote The Republic. We cannot read Augustine without, at the same time, reading the Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrews, and the Christians. Augustine was a man of "liberal learning," who even wrote a dialogue featuring his own son titled De Magistro ("On the Teacher"). Augustine still teaches us, but only if we let him." p. 31
"Education , moreover, was not a "thing." The word educere means to bring forth, or to complete something already begun by the very fact that one is a human being. We do not "make ourselves" to be human beings, as Aristotle constantly affirmed, though we do make ourselves to be good or bad human beings, complete or incomplete human beings. Yet, the freedom to become bad or evil is itself a kind of slavery, since it deflects us from our proper end. This is why the path to freedom in the classical tradition has always been pictured as one consisting of acquiring virtues and avoiding vices." pp. 32-33
"Universities are perhaps useful as a place for the preparation of elite students who will, by a kind of aristocratic heritage, gain control of certain professions and offices in the economy and in politics. But they do not provide a genuine "liberal education." Not merely are the classics and revelation considered to be inadmissible as norms or canons for the education at all, but the sciences themselves never know what they might be in the future. The conclusion of this observation is not that there is no place for liberal learning, but that its place may not always, or even usually, be found in academic institutions." pp. 38-39
________________________________
tbieter wrote:Chapter 2 - Books And The Intellectual Life.
"We need to surround ourselves with books because we are and ought to be curious about reality, about what is. The universe is not of our making. Yet it is all right for us to be what we are, because the universe is potentially ours through our knowledge. In knowing, we become the other, become what we are not, as Aquinas taught. But in doing so, in coming to know, we do not change what it is that we know. We change ourselves. Our very intellectual being is intended to become what, in the beginning, we are not. This is the drama of the intellectual life, the life of the mind. We should spend our time on the highest things, Aristotle tells us, even though we may be able to grasp only a bit of them, even though it takes our whole lifetime (1177b31-1178a2)." p. 18
"One of the books that we must have in our library is Augustine's Confessions, a book that, perhaps better than any other, accounts for the restlessness we cannot help but feel in our own souls concerning why we are here and what we are about. We are not only supposed to wonder about the highest things, but we are restless until we find them. As a very gifted but undisciplined young man of eighteen or ninetine, Augustine tells us, he came across a dialogue of Cicero (the Hortensius, now lost) written half a millennium earlier (Confessions,III, 4). He read this dialogue and it changed his life. He decided to pursue the truth. However, it still took Augustine a long time to figure things out. The young Augustine is still greatly attractive to us because he literally tried everything." pp.19-20
________________________________
_______________________________tbieter wrote:
Chapter 1. (pp. 1-6)
Is about Sertillanges' book, The Intellectual Life.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Life ... 422&sr=1-1
"Anything that is is fascinating. Chesterton, whose own intellectual life seems as vibrant as anyone in modern times, remarked that there are no such things as uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people. This is one of those truths which is so obvious that we can hardly bear it, since it forces us to look first to ourselves for the cause of our boredom. A large part of this "uninterestedness" happens precisely because we have never learned how or why to see what is there. Sertillanges teaches us to examine our lives. He does not neglect to mention that moral faults, both serious and light ones, can in fact hinder or prevent us from having the freedom from ourselves that enables us to see what is not ourselves, to see what is." ( Bold is my emphasis)
_____________________
tbieter wrote:
Today my mailman ( or should I say "postal worker' or 'letter carrier', lest I offend) brought me this book by James V. Schall. I once went to a philosophy conference just to meet him, and several other authors who I had read.
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Mind-Joys-Tr ... 94&sr=1-22 :
From the
Introduction:
"There is a radience to being.
Chesterton once said, in a memorable phrase of which I am inordinately fond, that there is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only uninterested people. Nothing is so unimportant that it is not worth knowing. Everything reveals something. Our minds cannot fully exhaust the reality contained in even the smallest existing thing.
It is a perversion of both mind and heart to think that somehow what is is not also given to us. I am bold enough to maintain, with Belloc, that even while walking, we can and do encounter the things that are. There is a "metaphysics" in the privilege of walking this green earth."
Re: THE LIFE OF THE MIND - On the joys and Travails of Thinking
Chapter IV - On Taking Care of One's Own Wisdom.
There is no joy without challenge.
There is no joy without actually seeking for, and possessing, the highest things - among which, in some degree, we already live.
As Wendell Berry said, "life is always dealing with permanence."
"Aliis laetus, sapiens sibi"
"The proper operation of man as man is to understand."
"Every man is to take of his qwn wisdom."
There is no joy without challenge.
There is no joy without actually seeking for, and possessing, the highest things - among which, in some degree, we already live.
As Wendell Berry said, "life is always dealing with permanence."
"Aliis laetus, sapiens sibi"
"The proper operation of man as man is to understand."
"Every man is to take of his qwn wisdom."
Re: THE LIFE OF THE MIND - On the joys and Travails of Thinking
However, understanding is not always joyful, as psychiatrists will tell you.
That is why so many people try to escape unpleasant truths (about themselves) and live in denial. This is a mechanism which serves their protection. Otherwise they might commit suicide.
That is why so many people try to escape unpleasant truths (about themselves) and live in denial. This is a mechanism which serves their protection. Otherwise they might commit suicide.