Jorge Luis Borges cited the classification of animals from a fictional Chinese dictionary, and Foucault used that list to demonstrate the relativity of classification systems. Augustine beat them both to it. Faustus wants to distinguish neatly between sects and schisms, and concludes that . . . . Continue Reading »
My friends and fellow bloggers are talking about metaphysics. So, I will jump in. Matt Milliner announces, “Attempts to overcome metaphysics [have] been shown to be themselves irrepressibly metaphysical.” Matt Anderson insists:Either a natural order exists, or we impose it. Either . . . . Continue Reading »
The question of the existence of truth has been in debate for centuries and the subject will not be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. Of course there is an answer, and reformed theologians all know what the answer is. That’s why we don’t argue too much about it. But I . . . . Continue Reading »
By his own admission, Rick Ostrander’s Why College Matters to God: A Student’s Introduction to The Christian College Experience contains little that is new, but it is a very deft introduction to the Christian view of things (organized around the time-honored creation-fall-redemption . . . . Continue Reading »
If you are skeptical about postmodern thought, I encourage you to check out “The Church and Postmodern Series” by Baker Academic, which “features high-profile theorists in continental philosophy and contemporary theology writing for a broad, nonspecialist audience interested in the . . . . Continue Reading »
In the aforementioned book, Burrus several times cites Nancy Jay’s ( Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity ) arresting observation that “birth by itself can never provide sure evidence” of paternity, yet evidence of paternity provides the . . . . Continue Reading »
Godzich again, explaining that Foucault remained immured in the very hegemonic discourse that he assaulted: “Foucault conceived of himself as the surveyor of these very hegemonic modes of cognition, as someone who would describe their systematicity and their hold. Though he labeled the . . . . Continue Reading »
In his introduction to Michel de Certeau’s Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Theory and History of Literature) , Wlad Godzich gives as concise a summary of Levinas as you are likely to find: “Against a notion of the truth as the instrument of a mastery being exercised by the knower . . . . Continue Reading »
Atheist philosophy Quentin Smith notes in a 2001 article that the theistic arguments of Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Alston, and others opened the door for God to return to philosophy. Plantinga’s work in particular made it “apparent to the philosophical profession that realist . . . . Continue Reading »
My colleague Jonathan McIntosh points to the Aristotelian source for Thomas’s views on touch: “we have a more precise sense of taste because it is a certain type of touch, and that is the most precise sense a human being has. For in the other sense, the human being is left behind by . . . . Continue Reading »
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