The Calvinist International
The folks over at Sententiae Antiquae recently posted a passage worth reading from a letter of Benjamin Rush to Ashbel Green from 1807. Therein Rush says: No more Latin should be learned in these schools than is necessary to translate that language into English, and no more Greek than is necessary to read the Greek Testament. […]
I frequently make fun of “aesthetics.” I do so because the way in which the term is used in common parlance at the present hour is silly, and serves roughly as a synonym for “something that gives me the feels.” This is the refuge of not a few Tiber-jumpers. Some Protestants, on the other hand, […]
Several months ago, I wrote a brief post on beauty’s relation to cognition, rather than desire, in Thomas Aquinas. Aesthetics, that is, must have its relation to the rational and the real,1 rather than to some unspecified or underdeveloped sense of longing. Perhaps some confirmation is found in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, […]
I meant to get into the discussion of “how genius is made” as a part of my essay on Peter Leithart and the Protestants who can’t write, but I decided that it would take an already too-long essay down one more rabbit trail. Still, it’s worth considering, and an important new book on this topic […]
Perhaps it would have done Descartes some good to read Gregory of Nyssa. Perhaps not. Regardless, for Gregory, there is great mystery in the human intellect. Man lacks the ability to fully comprehend himself, though surely he comprehends what is necessary for cognition, for piety, and for the other virtues. The incomprehensibleness of the human […]
Many of us are predisposed, I think, to think of the nebulous concept “beauty” in appetitive terms. That is, it answers primarily to desire: the responsional relationship is between our longing and some aesthetic object. Indeed, in most (or, rather, nearly all) popular usage, the concept is drastically (and advantageously) underdetermined, such that it becomes merely […]
Prof. Scott Pryor notifies us of a fascinating article contending that contract law should reflect standards of beauty, and highlights some reflections from Herman Bavinck on the nature of beauty.