Before we dismantle this imposing structure, let’s step back a moment and admire its elegant lines.” Thus Alex Tourigny, my teacher of philosophical psychology forty years ago, was wont to mark the pause before the crusher. His version of the crusher was a deadly “reduction to first . . . . Continue Reading »
Although the twentieth century was often proclaimed by the church to be the “Age of the Laity,” it remains true that most Catholic discourse is still taken up with the words of popes, bishops, priests, and sisters. Nonetheless, as in the nineteenth century so in the twentieth, a number of lay . . . . Continue Reading »
The Emergence of Jewish Theology in Americaby robert g. goldyindiana university press, 149 pages, $25 Judaism was born in the Fertile Crescent when a young Semite, deeply troubled by his own sense of incompleteness and guilt, answered God’s call, and in so doing started a chosen people that would . . . . Continue Reading »
Perhaps no English poem was more frequently cited during France’s 1989 Bicentennial year than William Wordsworth’s Prelude, in Book XI of which one finds “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very Heaven!” Anyone unfamiliar with the poet’s biography might reasonably . . . . Continue Reading »
The Political Meaning of Christianity: An Interpretation by glenn tinder louisiana state university press, 257pages, $29.95 I seek God! I seek God,” wails the madman. “Whither is God?” “We have killed him,” cries the crowd, “you and I. All of us are his murderers . . . God is dead. . . . . Continue Reading »
Innocence and Experience by stuart hampshire harvard university press, 195 pages, $20 Stuart Hampshire begins his new book by pointing out that “there are a thousand or more themes that might be pursued under the heading of moral and political philosophy.” In Innocence and Experience, . . . . Continue Reading »
Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit by peter bien princeton university press, 318 pages, $29.95 By the time he died in 1957, the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis had established himself as one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. His extension of the Homerian epic. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity by charles taylor harvard university press, 601 pages, $29.95 To describe Sources of the Self as a learned book would be a little like describing Michael Jordan as a skilled basketball player: accurate, but hardly adequate to the . . . . Continue Reading »
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