“As an orthodox Puritan, Bradstreet could not adumbrate the French symbolists by arguing that her words created meaning; the meaning of the sensible world was in the things of the sensible world themselves. It had been put there by god before all time; it was seen and uttered by the poet. To follow the latter …
And Which Explains Why Some People Still Like Heidegger
“To react against the modern is in many ways to revert to the primitive, the barbaric. The fascism of the 1930s was never a conservative movement (despite Marxist propaganda), but it was a reaction against the objectivity, rationalism, and alienation of the ‘modern world,’ a reaction structurally parallel to that of the postmodernists. Fascism, like …
Redemptive Catharsis
“Like a bolt of lightning, the scapegoat mechanism suddenly frees all men without being answerable to anyone except perhaps to the victim himself, who is likely to become an idol after his disappearance” (Girard, Job, p. 75).
And In Their Case, Badly Told
“When postmodernists say that life is a story, they do not mean, as the Christians did, that a story can be true; they mean that truth is only a story” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 130).
Cathartic Sin
“If our translation is correct, Job is describing in this passage the beneficial effect of his unjust persecution on his own community. I know of no other text where that effect is so bluntly articulated (17:6-9). It is the same as the tragic effect, the Aristotelian catharsis, but this is not a theatrical representation, and …
It’s Just That We Don’t Have a Screen That Big At Home
“Ironically, concerts today usually feature giant video screens so that fans can see the live performance up close by means of TV! Reality and reproduction are thus, in the postmodernist way, hopelessly confused” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 105).
Taking Time to Brood
“Great men are too popular to succumb immediately to the intrigues that proliferate around them. Mimetic rivalry broods a long time in the shadows” (Girard, Job, p. 54).
A Local Deal
The Moscow School Board voted yesterday to hold an election in March to increase their supplemental levy by $1.97 million. Now there are a number of questions that normally swirl around levy issues. (Is the money used wisely? Why is MSD more expensive than other districts? Voters who pursue other education options being less inclined …
Art is Whatever an Artist Can Get Away With
“The significance of the work of art often inheres not in the work itself, but in the chutzpah of the artist” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 101).
And Why Their Modern Successors Hate It When a Man Defends Himself
“Job is quite a different question. Job is unthinkable for the Greeks and their modern successors. Imagine an unyielding Oedipus who scoffs at fate, and especially at parricide and incest; who persists in treating oracles as sinister traps for scapegoats, which is what they unquestionably are. He would have the whole world against him — …