Tag Archives: modernism

Technology Bad for Thomists?

Should Thomists shun technology? At his blog, Thomist philosopher Edward Feser wrestles with the question of whether technology–playing with Promethean fire–is a good thing, and I think it’s telling that, by the end of his essay, his question shifts away from the … Continue reading

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Paul Wallace Claims Fundamentalism, Gnu Atheism, and Modernism Are All Doomed

In a blog post at RD Magazine titled, “Atheism is Doomed,” Paul Wallace draws a curious equivalence between fundamentalism and atheism for which he provides no evidence: [T]he sound and fury of contemporary religious fundamentalism is the last desperation of a dying worldview. It … Continue reading

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A Great Quote on Theory Sludge

This quote comes from Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, writing in the New York Times Book Review recently: The study of literature as an art form, of its techniques for delighting and instructing, has been replaced by an amalgam of bad epistemology … Continue reading

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A Fanciful Map of “Bohemia” (1896)

Amusing: The philosopher Thomas Nagel: Most people take life as they find it, and try to make something of the possibilities that are offered by their personal and social circumstances, avoiding catastrophe or failure, pursuing happiness, and working to realize … Continue reading

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Weight Watchers Meets the Book of Revelation—and Denis Dutton

In the New York Times today, philosopher Denis Dutton meditates on our cultural fondness for the apocalyptic: We wallow in the idea that one day everything might change in, as St. Paul put it, the “twinkling of an eye” — … Continue reading

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U.S. Holocaust Museum Rifleman James W. von Brunn: Portrait of the Artist as a Nostalgic Fascist?

U.S. Holocaust Museum rifleman, James W. von Brunn, is not only like Adolf Hitler in that he wrote a long and paranoid Antisemitic screed. Brunn is also a painter devoted to the recovery of “realism” in art (as Hitler was). Below is one of Brunn’s paintings … Continue reading

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EXISTENTIALIST CHRISTIANITY IN THE 21st CENTURY: Four Things That Every Honest Christian Must Face, Sooner or Later

It seems to me that every honest Christian living in the 21st century must, sooner or later, come up against four “truths”—and a question that must then be digested. Here are the four truths: There is no hell The Bible is … Continue reading

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The Dumbing Down of Christianity: Where are Christianity’s Contemporary Flannery O’Connors? And Why Hasn’t Christianity Been Able to Assimilate Modernism, Particularly the Implications of Evolution, Auschwitz, and Contemporary Biblical Archeology?

In the Times of London today, Andrew Sullivan has an interesting essay on “the broader crises facing established religion in the West”: the serious dumbing down of Protestant and Catholic religion and its failure to absorb the implications of Modernism. Sullivan … Continue reading

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T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

A beautiful filmic rendering of T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:

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Form Follows Whose Function?: Reflections on Brasilia and the Career of Architect Oscar Niemeyer

The career of Oscar Niemeyer (the architect who almost singlehandedly designed all of Brasilia) is discussed in a fascinating Atlantic article titled, A Vision in Concrete (July/August 2008). It opens thus: It was a heroic and inhuman scheme. From 1956 to … Continue reading

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