Introductory Notes on Aquinas’s The Will of God
l’uomo nello stato bestiale ama solamente la sua salvezza (in his beastly state, man loves solely his salvation/safety)[1] In the “Of God’s Will” (De voluntate Dei) section…
Leo Strauss as Poet (A True Story)
Why would the story have been left untold? Because it was absurd? Or…because it did not fit the deep-seated expectations, the lingering prejudices of our times? The…
Law and Natural Right: On John 9’s Parable of the Blind Man
John 9 offers us the memorable “parable” of the blind saved by Jesus.[1] The savior teaches us that the saved man was blind from birth “so that…
Science and Religion Revisited: A Provocative Lesson for Today’s Christians
For decades, now, debates on “Science versus Religion” have remained by and large inconclusive.[1] Could this be due to the debates’ having been systematically framed conceptually by…
Philosophy and the Beyond
"The philosophies of this world are blind to true divinity—the living God”. This introductory proposition summarizes a traditional indictment of Christianity as represented most notably by Saint…
Knowledge and Evil
“I know not well how to retell how there I entered / so filled was I with slumber at that point […] And as he who […]…
Symbols in Painting
“The second fabling-talk [parlare], which corresponds to the Age of Heroes, the Egyptians indicated to have been fabled [parlato] through symbols; to which are to be retraced…
Introduction to Poetic Heroism
In the opening paragraphs of his renowned After Virtue (1981), Alasdair MacIntyre shares with us the vision of a world in which discourse has been disconnected from…
Saving Superman: A Daunting Lesson from Old Christianity
“The private life is dead”—thus spoke Strelnikov, Pasternak’s infamous prophet of a new “manhood,” in Doctor Zhivago. The private life is supposed to entail a selfishness to…
Caravaggio’s Light and the Essence of Christianity
Whence comes light in the paintings of Caravaggio? What is the nature of this light? What does it illuminate and why does it do so? Let us…
Preface to an Augustinian History of the United States (Introduced by a Reading of Dante)
In the first Canto of his Inferno, having projected himself into a dream of his own making, Dante is confronted with a she-wolf (lupa), ultimate incarnation of…
Yin-Yang, Buddha and Plato’s Cave at the Dawn of the Covid Age
At the dawn of the “Covid Age” the prospect of a quantum-like leap into an unprecedented consolidation of what is known as the Global Society is overtaking…
What is Really at Stake at the Dawn of the Corona Age?
2020 has been marked by the vivid resurgence of an ancient, fundamental disjuncture, even a conflict, between two discourses: one of love or desire for the Good,…
Rémi Brague’s Europe, la voie romaine
Europe, la voie romaine. Rémi Brague. Folio Essais. Paris: Gallimard, 1992. Reason defines men, not the other way around. Had such an Aristotelian-like proposal constituted the…