Can Ideas Be Bad?
As forms of intelligibility, ideas disclose thought—as questions, doors to the understanding, to awakening, to “spiritual light.” In this respect all ideas are good. Can there then…
The Problem of Meaning in Human Agency or Art
Does art mean anything? Let us be precise from the outset about terms. Art stands traditionally as a counterpart of nature.[1] When Shakespeare has Hamlet spell out…
Vermeer’s “Woman Holding a Balance”: Allegory of Judgment
Johannes Vermeer’s two foremost allegories—that of the Catholic Faith and that of the Art of Painting—help us understand the painter’s “Woman Holding a Balance” (hereafter, WHB), inviting…
Art and Pluralism
Our pluralistic societies celebrate the arts in their open-ended diversity. We celebrate the manifold forms of expression making up the wealth of a world that has domesticated…
Man, God, and Machine
“Logic is to be conceived […] as the realm [Reich] of pure thought. This realm is truth as it is without veil and absolutely. It can therefore…
Has Science Evolved into Technology?
Has science evolved into technology? This question deserves unpacking. “Science” here refers to a modern variant of rationalism, the “autonomous” one that Edmund Husserl bashed as a…
The Essence of Technology
“Men first sense what is necessary; then they attend to what is useful; afterwards, they notice what is comfortable; further on, they take delight in pleasure; thereafter,…
Satan Out of the Box: The Meaning of Labor, Today
“As long as you abide within my discourse, you are my students; and you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” —John 8.32…
True Painting and the Problem of Imitation
There is a categorical rift between classical and modern (progressive or avant-garde) painting, for modern painting as such ceases to be “imitation of nature” in the classical…
The Scientific Reconstruction of Dante
Scholarship is at times not unlike the stock market. - Teodolinda Barolini Teodolinda Barolini’s Dante’s Multitudes is a must-read for any student of literary criticism who…
Beyond Modern Theatrics: Restoring the Dignity of Painting and Music
The seventeenth century French querelle des anciens et des modernes suggests that the dawn of the modern world is marked by the rise of a new theatre. …
Meditations on Luke 14: The Essence of Freedom Revisited
Luke 14 invites us to appreciate emptiness as necessary condition for receiving the divine gift of the eternal life of the mind. Ascent to the eternal is…
The Third Adam and the Modern “Higher” Self
The modern world is defined by the rise of a new self that is neither mind, nor body, nor a function of either, but an autonomous entity…
What Lies Beyond the Surface of Things?
Human fallenness, as the final scene of Fellini’s labyrinthian Satyricon confirms (relentlessly exploring the grotesque facets of Plato’s Cave), entails loss of being, our reduction to the…
An Introduction to Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia”
Sir Thomas More’s Platonism transpires most vividly from his humbling message that the establishment of justice on earth would require the abolition of humanity. Not that certain…