Post Secularism

  • Honor as a Destructive Recognition Fantasy

    The word 'honor' has mostly positive connotations for us–it's a good thing to be a man of honor, or to give one's word of honor. But I've always thought there was something fishy about honor and the honor culture from which it originates–it seemed to be too concerned with reputation and public perception rather than

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  • Man Up

    [This is an encore post from March 2005. I put it up because it relates to what I've writing about Humanity 3.0, and might provoke further discussion about it along a different track. Check the comments for a further elaboration on this idea.] Last week I put up an excerpt of an interview with Stephen Ducat in

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  • The Logos

    From Wallace Stevens' 'Like a Primitive Orb' We do not prove the existence of the poem. It is something seen and known in lesser poems.It is the huge, high harmony that soundsA little and a little, suddenlyBy means of a separate sense. It is and itIs not and, therefore, is. In the instant of speech,The breadth

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  • On the ‘Sensus Communis’

    Of this Word's being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word, they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and show how

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  • The Hypertrophied Eye (encore)

    Protestantism is the expression of faith that resulted from changes in consciousness effected by the spread of literacy after Gutenberg. Catholicism is the expression of a faith shaped by a consciousness formed in traditions and customs that have its roots in oral culture. A literate consciousness is one that hears the Word while reading alone.

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  • Corpus Christi: A Holy Week Meditation

    Palm Sunday, 2014 I'm finding that I have less and less in common with most Catholics I know–particularly the ones in the management class–because they have become so Protestantized. By that I mean, to stereotype somewhat, overly literal, overly moralistic, and lacking anything that remotely resembles a sacramental sensibility. We Americans whether churched or unchurched,

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  • Deconstructing God

    I was amused this morning to read this interview in the NYT Stone in which the stolid Gary Guting tries to pin down the slithery John Caputo regarding Derrida's religionless religion. The Deconstructionist project is simply one of radical hermeneutic openness that is suspicious of any limiting interpretation, and so that's the game Caputo plays

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  • Conservative Anti-Capitalism

    The contemporary GOP has been able until recently to unite both traditional, family-values, 2nd Amendment conservatives with laissez-faire capitalists because the former don't seem to realize that the latter are the main cause of undermining everything they hold dear. The latter of course don't agree with the former on issues like abortion and gay rights,

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  • Brooks on ‘A Secular Age’

    Brooks's column this morning tries to summarize Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. There's nothing particularly striking in it to quote, but if you're not familiar with the book, the column will give you an overview of its concerns, which are the concerns of this blog. The basic question for the book, Taylor says, is "Why

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  • Cultural Drift

    Or is it metaphysical drift? Or is it a kind of spiritual decay that leads to cultural decadence? Drift is what the cultural right is revolting against, and that drift is a problem that the cultural left just doesn't get or care about?  Should it? How far can the culture go in de-linking itself from

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