Published by DWM at 04/27/2009
It should be obvious that we must think of infinity here as other than an infinite succession or series. We must think of qualitative inexhaustibility rather than quantitative accumulation and summation. In a sense, such qualitative inexhaustibility is more than humans can think. And yet we can truthfully point to manifestations or images of such inexhaustibility in our human habitation of the middle. We divine it in the greatness of an unsurpassable artist, in the incalculable nobility of ethical heroism, in the measureless profundity of religious holiness. We praise its creative power when we celebrate being itself as agapeic.
-William Desmond, Being and the Between
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Published by DWM at 12/31/2008
“How does it stand with philosophy, if we are open to the ultimate claim that being religious may make on us? I am not countering philosophical reason with an opposing irrationalistic fideism. My purpose is to pose a question to philosophical thinking at certain limits. While I will make assertions and even suggestions about the direction the question points us, the main difficulty is to hear this question, for some of our characteristic ways of thinking deafen us to it. How deafen? We philosophers think we have already heard and answered the question. My argument will be that there is another question that has not been heard, or only rarrely or sporadically, and that this further question solicits a new origination of philosophy: a post-philosophical reverence that yet is philosophical through and through; a reverence that perhaps some philosophers once knew, maybe sometimes in a taken for granted way, when religious reverence was also taken for granted.”
William Desmond, “Religion and the Poverty of Philosophy,” in Philosophy and Religion in German Idealism (2004).
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Published by DWM at 08/19/2008
Hey everyone,
Cynthia posted the 7th essay in the Augustine Blog Conference yesterday, entitled “Quando Tu and The Nuptial Creation: St. Augustine’s Enduring Influence on Contemporary Ecclesiology”, written by Mary Moorman, to which I was asked to write a response that will be published on Wednesday, I believe. Please head on over to Per Caritatem and check out the proceedings of this excellent collaborative event.
UPDATE: you can read my commentary here.
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Published by DWM at 08/01/2008
As I prepare for PMR in October, I’ve been reading more Boethius. Brendan from the Well At The World’s End recommended Pieper’s Scholasticism as he has a bit on Boethius as a transitional figure – between Rome and Goth, Ancient and Medieval. What I’ve read so far fits my description of the Consolation as a mediating text – prose and poetry, Philosophy and Theology, spirit and body. As I’m working through this now, I thought I’d include a portion of the text below to see if any of you had thoughts you’d like to share.
From Josef Pieper, Scholasticism
The most important of Boethius’ books, the one that indubitably belongs to the world of literature, was one that never planned to write. This work, the only which has been generally mentioned and remembered in connection with the name of its author, is likewise one which is in now way linked with anything in his previous writings. For the book was forced upon Boethius in terrible fashion….
It was as a prisoner awaiting death that he wrote his book, The Consolation of Philosophy. This book revealed a wholly new Boethius– so unlike the Boethius of the theological tracts that for a long time me could scarcely believe that these were written by the same Boethius. (We have spoken of the double role which Boethius must have seemed to play in the eyes of his contemporaries: his personality must have seemed an ambiguous one. This fact had strange reverberations: on the one had it has been asserted down to the most recent times that Boethius was not a Christian at all; and on the other hand he has enjoyed the reputation of being a virtual martyr who suffered death for his faith. Both these hypotheses have been proved false; but it seems highly significant that they ever could have been reasonably entertained.) Continue reading ‘Boethius, Transitional Metaxology’
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Published by DWM at 07/07/2008
Hey you all,
Cynthia has posted the last installment in my Boethius series if you care to read it in all it’s irresponsible-scholarly-grandeur!
Dan
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Published by DWM at 05/01/2008
…the enchantment of her song left me spellbound. I was absorbed and wanted to go on listening. After a moment I spoke to her.‘You are the greatest comfort for exhausted spirits. By the weight of your tenets and the delightfulness of your singing you have so refreshed me that I now think myself capable of facing the blows of Fortune. You were talking of cures that were rather sharp. The thought of them no longer makes me shudder; in fact I’m so eager to hear more, I fervently beg you for them.’
‘I knew it,’ she replied.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, III.1.1-10
She can be a real tart… sometimes.
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Published by DWM at 10/15/2007
Oh, and by the way, October 15th appears to be an important day:
F. Nietzsche:
born Oct. 15, 1844, Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
M. Foucault:
born October 15, 1926 , Poitiers, France
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