Austin Hall Library

No Blogging in the Eternal City

Due to a heavy work schedule, I have recently been sporadic in posting to the blog. Hopefully, that will improve in the near future, but not the very near future.

I leave in an hour for ten days in Rome, and, for several reasons, I will not be taking a computer. But, I will be taking a camera, notebook, and a hand-held tape recorder, in order to remember the sites and pictures. Scheduled to return late on October 10, I should be ready to post some updates by the next day.

I am hopeful this trip will prove a strong motivation to get back on track with my reading schedule. Stay tuned.

From the Local Newspaper

I have been very busy in the great State of Texas lately. Unfortunately, however, I have had little time to read anything in recent days, except the local newspaper. But, boring the local paper is not!

This picture of four local college students with their trophy made the front page yesterday. The monster in the photo weighed eight-hundred, eighty (880) pounds, and was almost fourteen feet long. The bold young men caught the big guy in a nearby river and had to get a tractor to drag it from the water. Then the guys went dove hunting to celebrate.

Only in Texas.

The Importance of Place

I previously posted the following quote here: ". . . one need go no further than one's 'own dwelling or to a secluded corner of his own garden, or any other place where, by means of such accompaniments as suit retirement--books, flowers, music, meditation, prayer--a man may refresh his spirit and wash the dust from his soul, whether his retirement be for half an hour a day, or to a retreat for a week once a year, or, if he be so minded and his situation permits, for such proportion of his time as shall best prosper him upon his spiritual quest.'"

It seems appropriate to mention, after yesterday's post, that the "importance of place" is a significant theme in the intellectual/contemplative life. One doesn't need much of a space for one's place; it just needs to be one's own (View this photo).

Beauty and Boredom

In his excellent book, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet, Thomas Dubay has a perceptive chapter titled, "Alive to Beauty." When I first read this chapter, I believe it was the first time I ever reflected on the connection between being keenly alive and an appreciation of beauty. Dubay states that "normal people love life," but notes that "a moment's reflection makes clear that there is in the human family a continuum from the keenly alive and responsive individual to the colorless, insensitive, and uninspired one." At one end of the spectrum are those who experience beauty intensely, and at the other are those who are bored with life and all that they see. Of the latter, Dubay says they are "incapable of being thrilled."

Dubay, following Thomas Aquinas, makes the case that beauty is related to truth and that it is  objective. But, it is his insight that boredom is the result of excess and overindulgence that first gripped me when I read this book. He states, "[t]o be listless, dull, bored, and lifeless is not only a miserable condition, it is an illness, a fact obvious to anyone who is intellectually alive. To respond to reality and to appreciate it are normal; not to respond is abnormal." Thus, to be a normal human is to have a capacity to appreciate objective beauty. The loss of such capacity is the result of something a person does. According to Dubay, "the chief cause of jadedness is a satiaton, a surfeit born of a hedonistic immersion in sensual gratifications, together with avarice and pride. A lifestyle of selfish egoism and continuing dissipation progressively deadens an excitement with reality born of innocence and solid virtue, self-denial, and genuine love." In other words, while a life of creature comforts is not intrinsically evil, it is a threat to intellectual life and an aid to boredom.

Dubay's The Evidential Power of Beauty is a great book--the kind filled with scores of paragraphs you must pause and reflect on. It has long been a favorite of mine on the subject of aesthetics and truth. Another powerful and challenging read on the subject is David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Hart's book is a deep and virtually complete treatment of "theological aesthetics" that is a potent rejoinder to postmodernism. On a much lighter, but positively delightful, note, there is Robert Barron's Heaven in Stone and Glass: Experiencing the Spirituality of the Great Cathedrals. It is a meditation on the architecture and mystical space created by Gothic cathedrals. After reading this book, I saw the great cathedrals in an entirely different light. Their architectural forms and lines came alive with deeper meaning. Read this book and then visit a medieval Gothic cathedral for a sense of the connection between objective beauty and truth.

Which are Right, Cannibals or Saints?

A recent comment by a friend on a post here prompted my thoughts about historicism and the work of two significant modern thinkers. Simply stated, "historicism" is the claim that truth changes with time. It is the philosophy behind the idea that everyone, every culture, and every era comes up with its own "truth." As James Schall pointedly states, "[n]o objectively definable difference can be established between what the cannibals do and what the saints do." The sole criterion of what is good or true is the subjective conscience.

Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin both made the point about historicism that it leads to "cultural pluralism" and, ultimately, to relativism. If the standard measure for right and wrong is subjective conscience, then there can be no "common good." A common good is the recognition that there are many objective goods worth bringing into effect for the good of people as a whole. Inability to establish on rational, objective grounds the difference between the beliefs of cannibals and saints undermines social order and is a disturbing sign of cultural decline.

Is There Danger in The Colbert Report?

While admitting to occasionally enjoying the witticisms of Stephen Colbert, I must admit that this article makes some good points. The following quote captures the conclusion of the article, but the insight that many students these days get their news from television comedy shows is particularly troubling.

"In this current state education resembles what the ancient Greeks would clearly call tragedy: a downward progression, or fall from a once elevated, more exalted position."

Schall's Latest

Fr. James Schall's latest book, The Sum Total of Human Happiness, is available at Amazon. I previously posted on other excellent works by Schall here. This latest book is an insightful treatment of what it means to be fully human. Being fully human is about much more than biology and Schall wastes no time in getting to its sum total.

The focus of Schall is delight in the things that are. The title of this book comes from Samuel Johnson, who stated that the "sum total of human happiness" is not simply the "one necessary thing," but all things, including the unnecessary ones, the ones that include ourselves.

Human Dignity and Acts Freely Chosen

After having seen the poignant movie The Elephant Man on DVD, I purchased it so that I would have in my possession the rare evidence that modern media could produce works that highlight and elevate human dignity instead of those that highlight acts freely chosen that undermine it.

If you have not seen this movie, you should. Directed by a virtual neophyte (David Lynch), this deeply moving film tells the true story of Joseph Merrick, a Victorian-era man better known as The Elephant Man, due to his grotesque physical deformity. The book by Ashley Montague, upon which the film was closely based, tells the story of a human being reduced to an existence as a side-show freak and slave of a carnival barker.

The story of Joseph Merrick is immediately recognized as a sad one. But, it is much more than that. It is a tribute to human dignity. It is a reminder than humans do not receive their dignity from their outward and unchangeable appearance. It comes from elsewhere. First, it is intrinsic, natural, inalienable, and an endowment from the Creator by virtue of having been made in His image. Second, and also intrinsic, but the result of an achievement, human dignity comes from the acts one freely chooses. Finally, there is a human dignity, also intrinsic, that is a gift that surpasses man's nature and is the result of being a member of the divine family. Joseph Merrick possessed all three forms of human dignity despite the ridicule he endured for his outward appearance.

It is not possible ever to lose the first form of human dignity. Humans have intrinsic dignity simply by virtue of bearing the Creator's image. That recognition should form the basis of all human interaction. The third form of human dignity, is a gratuitous gift of divine life, offered to all, received by some. But the second form, so evident in the story of Joseph Merrick, is the dignity we are called upon to give to ourselves (with the help of God's grace) by freely choosing to shape our choices and actions in accord with truth, regardless of how difficult life and choice might be.

Mother Teresa and Nothingness

There is widespread interest these days in the life and work of Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa, due, in part, to recently published private letters that contain references to her often severe "dark nights of the soul." In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of "the throwaway of society." Malcolm Muggeridge introduced Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity to this country in his book Something Beautiful for God. One of the earliest and best works on Mother Teresa, Muggeridge's book is a reflection on his own encounters with her. For those interested in the book that addresses the private letters, released on September 4, 2007, it is titled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.

A very abbreviated, but moving, account of Mother Teresa's life can be enjoyed on DVD. It is titled Mother Teresa, and highlights an excellent performance by Olivia Hussey in the title role.

Note the following unpretentious, no nonsense, excerpts from a Time Magazine interview with Mother Teresa in 1989:

Time: Does the fact that you are a woman make your message more understandable?

Mother Teresa: I never think like that.

Time: Humble as you are, it must be an extraordinary thing to be a vehicle of God's grace in the world.

Mother Teresa: But it is His work. I think God wants to show His greatness by using nothingness.

Time: You are nothingness?

Mother Teresa: I'm very sure of that.

The Answer to Modernity's Attack Upon Memory

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