Extremist Nation

President Obama has not demonstrated that he is a despot and I think it is very important to say so. Yesterday, I was reviewing my son’s logic lesson with him and we got going on the difference between statements that are contrary and those that are contradictory. My father used to tell me all the time that I [...]

The Art of Reading

The Teaching Company puts out many college level lecture series called The Great Courses. Over the last decade or more I’ve collected quite an exaltation of these larks (in the best sense of the word) and have enjoyed most of them immensely – from CS Lewis, to Modernism, to The Fundatmentals of Music, to The [...]

Coleridge on Naturalistic Materialists

Those blind omniscients, those almighty slaves, Untenanting creation of its God! Such men need discipline, not argument; they must be made better men before they can become wiser. Biographia Literaria, Chapter 7

Unartistic notes on Art

The essence of art is the just rule of the elements brought under the artist’s dominion. The most important thing is purity and simplicity. From that simplicity great insight can grow. A great work of art never loses its simplicity, but grows from a seed mighty enough to extend its harmony over great spaces of [...]

Art as Discipline; Self-Expression as Decadence

I have argued, and will argue, that art ought not to be a matter either of self-expression or of “impressing” the audience. This matters for many reasons, not least of which is the inevitable historical decline of any art that reduces itself to “expressionism” or “impressionism.” Believing that art is an expression of the human spirit, the [...]

April 19, 2010.

Mark it. Big day coming.

Numbers in Nature by the Numbers

Our friends over at Salvo posted this extraordinary demonstration of the beauties revealed when we see beyond the material world to the order supporting it. I’ve watched it four times so far (it’s short and relaxing) and every time I watch it I get a little closer to heaven.

A Genius on Genius

To find no contradiction in the union of the old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all his works with feelings as fresh as if all had then sprang forth at the first creative fiat, characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world and may help to unravel it. To [...]

Freedom, Mandates, and Financial Solvency (with an implied comment on the power of naming)

Rep Paul Ryan wrote a rather tepid response to the health funding and decision making  plan that President Obama passed into law yesterday. It was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Of all the parties in the discussion, Rep Ryan has presented the most clear alternative, so he’ll be interesting to watch over the next few [...]

Freedom, Aesthetic and Ethical

Human history and the human psyche reveal two conditions that we describe with the word freedom. They are, however, very different conditions. Aesthetic Freedom The first is what I will call, borrowing the word from Kierkegaard, “aesthetic freedom.” This is the freedom of the adolescent and is characterized by the right to avoid making choices. [...]