exicarus

Heisenberg and Plato

Dan Sheffler — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:48:54 +0000

подаръциикона за подарък“I think on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are in fact not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato’s sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.”

—Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontier.

The Divine Mirror

Dan Sheffler — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:23:43 +0000

Откъде да купя икона“When someone looks into this Mirror, he sees his own form in the Form of forms, which the Mirror is. And he judges the form seen in the Mirror to be the image of his own form, because such would be the case with regard to a polished material mirror. However, the contrary thereof is true, because in the Mirror of eternity that which he sees is not an image but is the Truth, of which the beholder is the image.”

—Nicholas of Cusa

Modern Time

Dan Sheffler — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:12:55 +0000

“The modern age was the first to distinguish itself from all others by a time indicator: modo—‘now.’ Anxious to assert its superiority to past epochs, its culture exchanged the older claim of upholding a tradition for the one of surpassing it. A different sense of time directly followed the new sense of freedom. An unprecedented awareness grew that what humans accomplish in the transitoriness of time definitively changes the very nature of human life. History thereby suddenly acquired an existential significance that it had not possessed before. In a medieval cosmic play the human person clearly had the lead, but an all-knowing, unchanging God directed the play. The outcome remained predictable and hardly varied from one period to an other. Once the temporal actor with limited foresight became director, however, the outcome ceased to be certain and the passage of time took on a far more dramatic character. The new role assumed a tragic character insofar as humans must shape their own future, however inadequately equipped and poorly enlightened they may be.”

—Luis Dupré, Passage to Modernity

Political Animals

Dan Sheffler — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:05:14 +0000

“To call humans by nature political means not that a biological urge drives them to associate with their fellows, but that they reach perfection only in a self-chosen community.”

—Luis Dupré, Passage to Modernity

St. John of The Cross

Dan Sheffler — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:19:48 +0000

Художник

St. John of the Cross apparently sketched this after an ecstatic vision. Amazing that it is still preserved so well.

The Man Who Was Thursday

Dan Sheffler — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:12:44 +0000

“We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential idea of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people’s.”

The Greenness of the Grass

Dan Sheffler — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:37:23 +0000

СВЕТИ ГЕОРГИ

“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience”

Anselm’s Freedom

Dan Sheffler — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:38:46 +0000

“Creatures sin. To sin is to will what God wills what you should not will. Therefore, on Anselm’s understanding, free creatures introduce into the universe events which are against the will of God. Does Anselm’s view then diminish the divine nature? He does not state them explicitly, but there are at least two, mutually reinforcing responses to the charge. First, the entire system is God’s doing. If He chooses to qualify his absolute dominion by carving out a little space in creation for other free agents, it is His own choice and so it cannot be understood as some sort of external limitation on His power. Moreover, we might, as Aquinas proposed, judge the power of a cause by the nature of the effects it is able to produce. A created, primary agent, free in the libertarian sense, is a much more independent and powerful sort of thing than a secondary agent, free only in a compatibilist sense. That God makes the former rather than the latter is an indication of His power, not a limitation on it. True, He cannot absolutely control us, but that is exactly the point of created imagines dei who can act from themselves and participate in the divine aseity.”

—Katherin A. Rogers, Anselm on Freedom, 82.

Safety in Openness

Dan Sheffler — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:11:53 +0000

Богородица

“‘If you do that, wouldn’t you be good?’

‘No,’ said Cal. ‘I think bad.’

Will had never met anyone who spoke so nakedly. He was near to embarrassment because of the nakedness, and he knew how safe Cal was in his stripped honesty. ‘Only one more,’ he said, ‘and I won’t mind if you don’t answer it. I don’t think I would answer it. Here it is. Suppose you should get this money and give it to your father—would it cross your mind that you were trying to buy his love?’

‘Yes, sir. It would. And it would be true.’”

—John Steinbeck

Singular Struggle

Dan Sheffler — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:35:06 +0000

“The man who imagines he can conquer the demon of fornication by gluttony and by stuffing himself is quite like someone who quenches fire with oil. And the man who tries to put an end to this struggle by means of chastity only is like someone trying to escape from the sea by swimming with just one hand.”

—John Climacus

We make a grave mistake when we devote ourselves to overcoming just one particular sin and leave the others alone. Holiness is total.