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Philosophy

Northrop Frye on Symbol as Image

Northrop Frye on Symbol as Image

The third phase of Frye's phases of literal symbolism is the formal phase. This will be Frye's briefest section in the second essay, but don't let it fool you. Frye is making a synthesis out of the prior two phases, the literal and descriptive

Providence

Suddenly I understand the Carrington Event.

Saint Thomas and the Common Good

In Catholic Social Teaching and Catholic political philosophy, the common good is a key concept. But, it often seems to us moderns like an impossibly gassy abstraction. Yesterday, I came across a nice summary of St. Thomas Aquinas’ teachings on the common good, which I think can help. See’s

Lysistrata as a Comedy

One of the things that I love about Twitter is that if you are prudent about who you follow, you can find some of the most remarkable information about history, archaeology, literature, and other complex topics, often posted pseudonymously. Case in point, this thread on Lysistrata by Aristophanes Skinner Box.

Linkfest 2021-11-19: Common Good

The Post-Liberal Order: Big Mac Alasdair MacIntyre is a favored philosopher here at With Both Hands. I really enjoyed this account of MacIntyre’s talk “Human Dignity: A Puzzling and Possibly Dangerous Idea?“ I had always found dignity a bit vacuous of a concept, but I hadn’t realized just

Sanity by Neovictorian Book Review

Sanity by Neovictorian [Amazon link] is an esoteric and non-linear bit of applied psychology and self-cultivation. There is a story in here, an adventure story even, but it requires a bit of mental juggling to see. And that is very much not the main thrust of the book. It is

The Long View 2008-03-30: Horror Shows

Unlike John J. Reilly, I do have a beef with Objectivists, and Rand in particular, but then again as a teenager I fell under their spell for a brief period, so it natural that I would. I have nothing against Objectivists, and Rand seemed to me a colorful public character,