Pickstock, same article, arguing that the linguistic turn requires Cratylism: “If the signifier is arbitrary, then the stable element of language is excarnated and language is reduced to thought after all, because its essence consists in a series of abstract relations, combined according to a . . . . Continue Reading »
Pickstock again, same article. She examines Socrates’ use of etymologies, and argues that this is not a crude effort to take words back to some fixed starting point. Rather, Socrates “analyzes words by supplementing, removing, exchanging or bending letters or syllables according to . . . . Continue Reading »
In an article on the Cratylus in the current issue of Modern Theology , Catherine Pickstock asks whether Socrates/Plato is/are Cratylists, whether they believe that words are linked, perhaps onomatopoetically, to the things they signify, or if they argue for a purely conventional understanding of . . . . Continue Reading »
Ong still: To see, things must be in front of us. And we can only see the surfaces that are turned to us. Sight is sequential, giving us one thing after another. It is “nonsimultaneous”: “The actuality around me accessible to sight, although it is also simultaneously on hand, can . . . . Continue Reading »
Ong again: He notes that some critters (ants, fish) have a social organization of sorts without sound, but argues that for animals that emit sounds, sound signals establish social relations. This is due to the reciprocal character of sound: “Sounds which I produce tend to evoke responses from . . . . Continue Reading »
Ong explores how the various senses handle the distinction between inside and outside. Sight “presents surfaces,” depending on reflected light. We can see inside a body only by opening it up. Sight of an interior has to be invasive, surgical; that invasion can be healthy, but it often . . . . Continue Reading »
Along the way in her lively critique of Jenson’s “Story Thomism,” Francesca Murphy ( God Is Not a Story: Realism Revisited ) notes that she has not spent much time refuting irrationalists and postmoderns, and explains why: “no one enjoying our technological world is a . . . . Continue Reading »
In the second book of Thomas Elyot’s mirror of magistrates, his 1531 The boke named the gouvernour , Elyot treats the vice of ingratitude, which he describes as “the most damnable vice and most against justice.” Elyot places gratitude and ingratitude in the context of friendship, . . . . Continue Reading »
Arnold Pacey argues that the meaning of a particular technology or skill depends not only on conformity with rules but on sensation and on social meaning. For instance, “A cook who does not enjoy the colors, textures, and scents of food in different stages of preparation never becomes skilled . . . . Continue Reading »
Grant poses some challenging questions for those who argue that technology is neutral in the sense that it does not impose on us how it should be used. He points to the automobile: Weren’t we free to use it in any old way, or refuse? Grant finds that kind of naivete delusional, and . . . . Continue Reading »
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