We Think We Know What We Have Often Heard

We think we know what we have often heard. We tend to think we have progressed past what has frequently been said within our hearing. And yet, this is how the cancer of self-deception works. James tells us that those who hear without doing are self-deceived. And the more they hear, the more they think …

Literary “Realism” Mistaken for an Argument

“Authors, restrained by our laws against obscenity—rather silly laws, it may be—from using half a dozen monosyllables, felt as if they were martyrs of science, like Galileo. To the objection ‘This is obscene’ or “This is depraved’, or even to the more critically relevant objection ‘This is uninteresting’, the reply ‘This occurs in real life’ …

Longing for a Return to Sacrifice

“It was Nietzsche, after all, who had scoffed at the merely sane among the philosophers and who predicted that these timid remnants of philosophy’s bygone age would soon be shoved aside by the throng of ecstatic Dionysiac revelers with no qualms about delivering a coup de grace to the philosophic tradition. Nietzsche’s influence in this …