tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post4971436615262001619..comments2023-09-24T08:22:14.199+01:00Comments on Joseph Shaw's Philosophy Blog: Worries about ChestertonUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-71050071404976221752019-07-18T19:59:54.702+01:002019-07-18T19:59:54.702+01:00Regarding democracy, one ought to distinguish betw...Regarding democracy, one ought to distinguish between democracy as a foundation for governance and a way of selecting public servants. In the first case, it is an ideology based on false principles such as the social contract and the notion that sovereignty comes from the people thus implying that all authority does not ultimately come from God. Thomas J. Henniganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17629842557160726719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-24558731092899815442018-03-10T14:17:40.129+00:002018-03-10T14:17:40.129+00:00Chesterton doesn't tell us that God's comm...Chesterton doesn't tell us that God's commandments could be turned inside out: Thou shalt kill, thou shalt commit adultery, thou shalt have strange God's before me. <br /><br />He does tell us that God's commandments are a fruit of his Will. So what does that mean then? It means that God's commandments are at root acts of love which guide and give a spiritual impulse to his people. They oblige, but they oblige from within.<br /><br />Similarly when Chesterton tells us that it is something marvelous that the sun rises each morning, he is not denying the laws of nature, but he is telling us that there is something marvelous in the fact that there are laws of nature.<br /><br />In this he his being a good Thomist. He is not an Occasionalist.Carl Kuss, L.C.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10348528727574912301noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-79117651670248960572018-03-10T14:10:39.708+00:002018-03-10T14:10:39.708+00:00Chesterton's philosophy as enunciated in Ortho...Chesterton's philosophy as enunciated in Orthodoxy is a profound defense of the rationality of the faith. Still the faith is a gift, and not something I can give to you through my reasonings. The evidence is Revelation, whose witness is the prophets and the apostles. Chesterton is not one of those shallow apologists who attempts to prove the faith by merely rational means.<br /><br />One could compare Orthodoxy to that other great work of apologetics Newman's Grammar of Assent. I as speaking particularly of the powerful part at the end where he speaks of the witness of the martyrs, to which his philosophical analysis of assent is preamble. This is indeed powerful and full of the power of the Word of God.<br /><br />But Chesterton is also sublime and supernatural when he says "I have often fancied it was his mirth." This is also powerful and sublime.<br /><br />Carl Kuss, L.C.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10348528727574912301noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-88165075154721451682018-03-10T12:33:22.221+00:002018-03-10T12:33:22.221+00:00Democracy expresses the truth that political autho...Democracy expresses the truth that political authority is rooted in the people. This is what Chesterton means when he says that tradition is the democracy of the dead, that by paying attention to tradition we are respecting man's sovereignty, we are counting the vote of our forebears.<br /><br />Integralists believe that there is some contradiction between this sovereignty of man and the sovereignty of God.<br /><br />They believe that if political authority is rooted in God it cannot at the same time be rooted in man.<br /><br />But this integralist belief reflects a shallow anthropology, rather than the Christian anthropology whose witnesses are thinkers such as Aquinas, Chesterton, and St. John Paul II.Carl Kuss, L.C.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10348528727574912301noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-67413801574945592312017-09-24T03:12:13.571+01:002017-09-24T03:12:13.571+01:00Just so you know, I think your explanation of Rous...Just so you know, I think your explanation of Rousseau's idea of democracy misses the mark. Its hard for your argument to seem legitimate when your explanation of other thinkers arguments use subtle means of persuasion to make them look bad. If you want, read that paragraph again and see if you can find what i'm talking about. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10156915616039230411noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-48351590562802139542017-02-04T12:08:43.497+00:002017-02-04T12:08:43.497+00:00That's a truly terrible argument.
C.S. Lewis...That's a truly terrible argument. <br /><br />C.S. Lewis acknowledged the positive influence heterodox writers like the Universalist, George McDonald, had on him when he was an atheist; that doesn't mean they weren't heterodox. Thomas Merton was drawn towards the Faith by James Joyce's depiction of Catholic culture. Arnold Lunn's materialism was shaken by the Idealism of Prof Huxley ('Darwin's Bulldog').<br /><br />It all depends on where you are starting from.Joseph Shawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06587987442560784792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-10068203444361731762017-02-03T23:57:02.365+00:002017-02-03T23:57:02.365+00:00With the hope that we are not trying Joseph's ...With the hope that we are not trying Joseph's patience, let me add that since the matter seems now to be one of "proof is in the pudding," I have little hesitance to say that, since this work of Chesterton's was singularly influential in bringing people to Christ a century ago, including none other than the most influential C.S. Lewis, Chesterton's methodology seems to be vindicated thereby. Now, since people have grown dumber since his time, it may have now outlived its usefulness... but that is another argument. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08382202844125832748noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-65819783256609719012017-01-27T21:00:47.097+00:002017-01-27T21:00:47.097+00:00Colin,
Your comment makes me think of MacIntyre&#...Colin, <br />Your comment makes me think of MacIntyre's account of emotivism in After Virtue. According to MacIntyre, the theory of emotivism was a reaction to the (plainly false) non-natural moral intuitionism of G.E. Moore; but the emotivists, because of their historical ignorance, thought that their reaction to "moral utterance at [Moore's] Cambridge" actually constituted a reaction to "moral utterance as such." So in a way, emotivism was an understandable response to the "great silliness" of G.E. Moore and his followers. But if the emotivists can be applauded for seeing the falseness of Moore's theory, it remains that their own alternative theory was just as (or even more) obviously false. It failed to get to the real root of Moore's error. Moore's false theory called for a response, but the emotivist response was a dead-end, another false, unenlightening theory, rather than a bridge to truth (orthodoxy, Christian faith, or whatever). So the question is whether some of GKC's responses to certain problems are genuine bridges to better understanding or rather dead-ends, failures to understand the roots of certain typical modern errors.David McPikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04997702078077124822noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-61095181159736363942017-01-26T22:59:36.145+00:002017-01-26T22:59:36.145+00:00Well I'm glad I've give you something to t...Well I'm glad I've give you something to think about. If there is anything to my criticisms, Chesterton's bridge doesn't lead to the Faith, but to something else. Joseph Shawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06587987442560784792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28278152.post-42751322428256012862017-01-26T22:34:01.642+00:002017-01-26T22:34:01.642+00:00Hi Joseph,
A friend put me on to this post of you...Hi Joseph,<br /><br />A friend put me on to this post of yours because I am using Orthodoxy in a class I am teaching, basically Great Books in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition from the 17th century to today.<br /><br />Everything you said here is a worthwhile concern, but I must disagree with you, or at least disagree that these are serious flaws in Chesterton, because of two things:<br /><br />1) this is a work of apologetics, not as much as it is a commentary on the Creed, even though he does acknowledge that the Creed is his starting point.<br /><br />2) as apologetics, it is directed against certain tendencies in his own culture that he thinks are deleterious and that he wants to dissuade people from.<br /><br />You and I both know that he was an astute observer of the philosophical tendencies of his time. He was directing his exposition (his sales pitch, his reconsideration) of the Faith against materialists, against scientism, most of all. In this light we can say that he was making the case that it is okay, and even healthy and good, to acknowledge that there are important dimensions of life outside of the merely empirical. I don't take him to be trying to accomplish much more than that. <br /><br />What you say about democracy, etc., is all true in the literal sense, but I think you have to acknowledge the basic point he is trying to make: that God directly, and indirectly through the world, has given us a law to which we can become privy, that we don't have to superimpose a theoretical and unnatural doctrine (probably Marxism, which sought to dispense with the family, and everything else good in nature) upon human culture in order to save it from itself. <br /><br />In the end, he is not trying to close all the loopholes of Christianity, but to make a basic case for its reconsideration, which is what he realized he had to do.<br /><br />Thanks for making me think about these things.<br /><br />As it is I am quite happy that I chose Orthodoxy for my rather uninitiated students. It is a great bridging point between extreme secularism and Orthodoxy.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08382202844125832748noreply@blogger.com