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Post by assisi on Dec 16, 2022 17:31:42 GMT
I didn't say that it's better to be a systematic thinker rather than an intuitive one. The lunatics described in ORTHODOXY are systematic thinkers, but they're mad because they start from a delusional standpoint - they lack common sense. Any serious thinker will combine both to some extent; compare Newman's sudden realisation that his position as an Anglican was similar to that of heretics condemned by his heroes of the Early Church and his subsequent struggle to think through the matter and realise that he was not under a delusion. The point that I was making was not about GKC but about my own mistake. For the record, an intuitive thinker is someone who grasps the essential points at issue after surveying the situation; this is what Gilson meant when he said GKC understood Aquinas better than scholars who had spent a lifetime studying him. One of Hollis's points is that GKC's great central insight, suddenly grasped as a student and from which all else flows, is the essential goodness of existence - of Being. This is the key to Christianity per se. Contrast GkC's insight into WB Yeats - whom he knew quite well as a young man - that Yeats had adopted the Eastern view that all is illusion, and realised its implications to an extent that many of his admirers did not. Nietzsche is a bad example because he disbelieved in reason, which by its nature is shared, and believed truth is created and imposed by the will. St Francis of Assisi might be a better example. I see Chesterton's view of maniacs in Orthodoxy as those who deal solely in reason. He says 'insanity....it is reason without root, reason in the void'. He later says in the same essay that 'Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity'. In other words we need both Faith (mystery) and Reason to be healthy and sane; either of these two indulged exclusively, in the absence of the other, is defective.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 29, 2023 16:30:04 GMT
Another way of putting it might be the distinction between Platonism (the Forms are the true reality and matter is an illusion) and Aristotleanism (the forms find expression in matter). This is why Aristotleanism is known as common sense philosophy.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 29, 2023 22:58:03 GMT
Have just been reading Chesterton's 1919 book IRISH IMPRESSIONS. It is based on a 1918 visit to Dublin and Belfast to back up a last-minute recruiting campaign, and strikes me as a bit lightweight and journalistic, though it does have the famous anecdote of the Belfast mother telling her child to stay away from a puddle because "there are wee popes there". A few thoughts: (1) Chesterton's contacts are with Redmondites and some literati rather than sinn Feiners (though he does describe a debate with the Labour leader Thomas Johnson on socialism v. distributism, very respectful on both sides). He recurs repeatedly to the tragic fate of Tom Kettle. (2) Chesterton's view on Ireland as showing the superiority of peasant proprietorship over big capital makes sad reading, partly because of his overidealisation of the life of the small farmer, with which he was completely unacquainted, and partly because the laissez-faire views which he sees as completely outmoded have made such a big comeback with what may charitably be called mixed results. It is interesting that Chesterton who was born in 1874 recalls in his childhood/youth encountering many people who took it for granted that the land simply belonged to the landlord and if they didn't like it they could leave. (3) Chesterton's view of British Catholic history is very rosy (though he didn't become a Catholic until 1922). He takes it that Protestantism was fatally damaged by the Factory Acts and Newman's APOLOGIA, and the trend towards Catholic revival is unstoppable. Again, this makes sad reading now. (4) For much of the book Ireland serves as a backdrop to other hobbyhorses such as the Marconi case (he actually claims that if the Home Rulers had toppled the Asquith government over the scandal they would have received Home Rule from a grateful British people; they would have received an unionist government and could have whistled for HR); the view that WW1 was a religious conflict in which no compromise was possible or desirable, combined with lamentations that British folly had driven Irish nationalism to the wrong side; the Bolsheviks as Jews and embodiment of the formless hordes of Asia against the defining and protecting borderlines of Europe (and a sadly misplaced confidence in the ability of the Russian peasantry to stand up to the Bolsheviks), etc
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Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 31, 2023 17:03:39 GMT
Have just been reading Chesterton's 1919 book IRISH IMPRESSIONS. It is based on a 1918 visit to Dublin and Belfast to back up a last-minute recruiting campaign, and strikes me as a bit lightweight and journalistic, though it does have the famous anecdote of the Belfast mother telling her child to stay away from a puddle because "there are wee popes there". A few thoughts: (1) Chesterton's contacts are with Redmondites and some literati rather than sinn Feiners (though he does describe a debate with the Labour leader Thomas Johnson on socialism v. distributism, very respectful on both sides). He recurs repeatedly to the tragic fate of Tom Kettle. (2) Chesterton's view on Ireland as showing the superiority of peasant proprietorship over big capital makes sad reading, partly because of his overidealisation of the life of the small farmer, with which he was completely unacquainted, and partly because the laissez-faire views which he sees as completely outmoded have made such a big comeback with what may charitably be called mixed results. It is interesting that Chesterton who was born in 1874 recalls in his childhood/youth encountering many people who took it for granted that the land simply belonged to the landlord and if they didn't like it they could leave. (3) Chesterton's view of British Catholic history is very rosy (though he didn't become a Catholic until 1922). He takes it that Protestantism was fatally damaged by the Factory Acts and Newman's APOLOGIA, and the trend towards Catholic revival is unstoppable. Again, this makes sad reading now. (4) For much of the book Ireland serves as a backdrop to other hobbyhorses such as the Marconi case (he actually claims that if the Home Rulers had toppled the Asquith government over the scandal they would have received Home Rule from a grateful British people; they would have received an unionist government and could have whistled for HR); the view that WW1 was a religious conflict in which no compromise was possible or desirable, combined with lamentations that British folly had driven Irish nationalism to the wrong side; the Bolsheviks as Jews and embodiment of the formless hordes of Asia against the defining and protecting borderlines of Europe (and a sadly misplaced confidence in the ability of the Russian peasantry to stand up to the Bolsheviks), etc Indeed, it's hard for all of us to escape our hobbyhorses.
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