Fortifying the Intellectual Life
I recently read Zena Hitz's book, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton, 2020). I highly recommend it....
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- Aug 26, 2020
- 2 min
How Much Can I Love My Hat?
Sometimes I think that a saint is someone who is capable of loving a hat more than I currently love anything. You get to a strange...
- Aug 17, 2020
- 2 min
Divine Ideas
When I hear the words "creation" and even "creationism," I don't usually think of the old debates about "creation vs evolution." Instead...
- Jun 10, 2020
- 5 min
Joy, Discipline, and Sacrifice
Sometimes the good life demands sacrifice. It is written, Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends....
- Jun 1, 2020
- 4 min
Rightly Ordered Loves and Intensity of Feeling
What it means for a virtue to regulate an appetite has nothing to do with diminishing appetite as such. It has to do with ordering an...
- May 25, 2020
- 4 min
Disability and Medieval Philosophy?
Yes. My friend, Scott Williams, has put together an excellent book bringing the academic field of disability studies into dialogue with...
- May 20, 2020
- 1 min
One Wine is Left in the Broken Bowl
What is left for the cold grey soul That moans like a wounded dove? One wine is left in the broken bowl 'Tis, to love, and love, and...
- May 20, 2020
- 1 min
What Forms Will Your Loves Call Forth?
Here is an audio file of some commentary I gave on Charles Williams' novel, The Place of the Lion. I originally recorded this for my...
- May 11, 2020
- 3 min
Conformity to the Real
Philosophy is an activity and all activities aim at the good. What good does Philosophy aim at? Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding. These...
- Apr 16, 2020
- 1 min
What it is Like to do Philosophy
What is it like to do philosophy? Here is an image. Imagine a rock on a calm sandy beach. The waves slowly wash up, caressing the rock,...
- Apr 9, 2020
- 3 min
Practicing Gratitude
By the practice of gratitude I mean a lot more than observing all rules of etiquette about when and how to express gratitude to another...
- Apr 7, 2020
- 4 min
Sheltering Courageously
The Scythians fight by flying. This is what Socrates tells us, anyway, in Plato’s Laches. He asks Laches himself what courage is, and...
- May 15, 2019
- 1 min
Duns Scotus on Natural Law and Divine Freedom
I have a new paper out today, "A Most Mitigated Friar: Scotus on Natural Law and Divine Freedom." It shows how Scotus reconciles the...
- Feb 25, 2019
- 2 min
(I'm) Down with Immortality
Bernard Williams has a famous paper, "The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality." I've been studying the paper and...