Apologies

I regret the lack of posts lately. As of last Thursday, I'm a full-time member of the workforce and have significantly less time to devote to quality writing as a result. Not to worry, though. I haven't given up. It's just a matter of figuring out how to work the writing into the new schedule. That being said, I will undoubtedly be forced to decrease the frequency with which new posts are published from (roughly) daily to, perhaps, several posts per week.

I hope you will all continue to support and participate in this little community of ideas by reading and commenting. As always, don't forget to send any ideas or suggestions to improve the blog to popsophiafeedback@gmail.com. Fresh perspectives are always welcome. In the meantime, and feel free to check out some older content you may not have had time to read before by consulting the archive at the bottom of the sidebar.

What's In A Name?

You may have noticed I'm a pretty big fan of C.S. Lewis. It's because like few others in history, Lewis was able to take sometimes complex and distant philosophical and theological principles and demonstrate them in the simplest, most accessible ways. This is one of the goals of this blog.

If the traditional, capital "P", Philosophy of Western Civilization (that of Aristotle, Boethius, Aquinas, and the rest) is right, while its ideas may be abstract, lofty, and hard to understand, those very principles undergird and inform all of existence, and are thus evidenced in everything around us all the time. In this way, Aristotle says, though it may be hard to come to an understanding of these first, most fundamental principles, once understood, they seem self-evident.

The name "PopSophia" is meant to reference two things. First, if there can be "pop psychology," then certainly there can be "pop philosophy." In other words, the content of this blog isn't meant to be particularly elevated or scholarly. It's meant to be accessible, because that is where philosophy is most compelling and really matters, on the ground, not in ivory towers.

Second, as intimated in the banner, the blog aims to showcase the wisdom that appears in pop culture. Rather than dealing in abstracts, we look at philosophical principles as they occur in the real world. Contemporary literature, film, music, and television can't help but take positions on important issues of truth and nature. This blog is here to facilitate discussion of these issues.

As always, it is you, the readers, who will make or break this blog in the end, by choosing to contribute to that discussion or not. As stated in the inaugural post, this blog is meant to be a community, a forum for ideas. In order to fulfill that mission, someone other than myself must participate. PopSophia isn't meant to be a lecture, but a conversation. Please join in. It is my sincere hope that you have found and will continue to find the odd post mildly interesting. Let the rest of us know. Feedback, good or bad, is always welcome.

Like PopSophia On Facebook

Greetings readers.

Just thought I'd make sure everybody knows about PopSophia'a Facebook page. If you haven't already, head on over and hit the Like button. Insodoing, you'll let all your Facebook friends know you're a fan and help get the word out. Plus, the feed gets forwarded to the page, so you'll always know when a new post goes up.

Thanks for reading. Be sure to send feedback to the e-mail (popsophiafeedback@gmail.com) and leave comments on content that interests you!

The Nightly Exchange Between The Wife And I

Courtesy of The Anchoress.

A Traditional Temple

You may remember from the Inaugural Post that an analogy was drawn between this blog and the forum of an ancient Roman town. It was always the case that in this forum stood a Temple (usually to Jupiter) which cooperated with the other important buildings present in the forum in cultivating the good of the community. To complete the analogy, then, we must erect our own source of ethos and duty. I suggest that this be an ongoing deference to Tradition.

Temple of Vesta - Taken by the Mrs.

Tradition is something of a naughty word, isn't it? Our post-Modern ears are trained to burn at the mere mention of it. Now, it is altogether mistaken to be of the opinion that simply because a thing or idea is old it is necessarily better. Many things that are old are good, like farming. Many things that are old are bad, for example, the oldest profession on earth. Likewise, many new things are good, such as, air conditioning. Many new things are bad. That being said, even though it has taken somewhat of a beating lately, we are the inheritors of a great and wondrous Tradition, the product of millenia of intelligent men and women—a Tradition which would not have survived to this day were it of no value whatsoever. Over time old ideas were honed and perfected. Many didn't make the cut. Many may yet prove to be false. A distinction must be drawn between those elements of our Western heritage which are essential, and those which are not—those which are open to alteration, and those which are absolutely fundamental to the Occidental mode of understanding the Truth.

Tradition includes within itself the potential for continual development. Paragraph 23 of the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium says “that sound tradition may be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress.” BUT (that was a big “but”) this development must grow naturally out of that which came before. Speaking to the ongoing development of the Liturgy, the Council wrote that “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.” Pope Benedict calls this the “heremeneutic of continuity;” that is, the right way to interpret the past, in light of the present, looking toward the future. This is set in opposition to a “hermeneutic of rupture,” in which the past is offhandedly discounted as the folly of ignorants.

Let’s look at a couple of concrete examples of how this hermeneutic of continuity might be put into practice. The Western world once thought that there was a vein in the human body running directly from the fourth finger to the heart. To this day we tip our caps to this old belief when we wear our wedding rings on that very finger. Over time, more study of human anatomy revealed this to be false. It was, though, really pretty arbitrary whether or not that vein existed. I suppose there might have been some clan whose tribal worship revolved around that imaginary vein, and it might have mattered quite a lot to them. But, looking at the subject objectively it really doesn’t matter that much.

There are things that our Tradition teaches us which are not so incidental. From at least the time of Aristotle onwards Western Tradtion (both Classical and Christian) has taught us that there is a God who is Being itself that caused (and continues to cause) all that is to be. This is undeniable fact, proved according to the dictates of reason itself over and over again by countless philosophers and theologians through the ages. As such, and by virtue of the subject matter itself, the question of the existence of God strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human, for that matter, to be, human or not. This is an element of our Tradition which is absolutely fundamental. At the very least, it is one which one may be by no means cast off without considerable deliberation and investigation.

Nevertheless, it is possible to be an open-minded Traditionalist. By all means, open your mind, explore new ideas and new civilizations, boldly go where no man has gone before. But, as G.K. Chesterton said, “the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” St. Augustine put it slightly less brusquely: “In essentials, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.”

All of this is to say, we ought, as a minimum, to respect and revere the ideas and beliefs of our ancestors. We may doubt and question them insofar as there is room to do so, all the while understanding that to disagree with the consensus of our forebears is a risky proposition. It would frighten me to do so. In other words, if Tradition and I found ourselves butting heads, I would double-check my math before going any further.

You might have noticed this post turned out to be an excuse to discuss the nature and import of Tradition. Oops.

Inaugural Post

There was a time I considered the personal blog to be something of an exercise in egotism. Or, as Gabriel Marcel termed it in his work Homo Viator, “reflection.” As a person self-absorbed, “I treat the other person merely as a means of resonance or an amplifier, I tend to consider him as a sort of apparatus which I can, or think I can, manipulate, or of which I can dispose at will.” The way in which this phenomenon can play out in one’s everyday life is evinced masterfully by one Madame Bovary. The very idea that one could consider one’s own thoughts and ramblings as being of any interest to anyone else seemed inherantly self-important, others becoming objects serving only to “reflect” our own image of ourselves back towards us.

Roman Forum - Taken by the Mrs.

That being said, I now consider the truth of the matter to be that, while this is in fact true for those blogs at one end of the spectrum, at the other stand a good many which are anything but self-indulgent. My experience guest-posting a couple of times on a friend’s blog taught me that the endeavor to maintain a successful blog sinks or swims not chiefly on the blogger and how interesting he is (or thinks he is), but on his readers. This is testament to the fact that a blog can be more than a megaphone for an overconfident blogger. It can be a means of community—a forum in which persons come to interact with one another, share their thoughts and experiences with each other respectfully and to mutual benefit. In other words, a conversation writ large, the blogger himself serving only as moderator. More than that, as with any converstaion, it is through the sharing of these ideas that a sharing of one’s very personhood may occur, so that what might be mere communication may perhaps become true communion; that is, an intersubjective co-union of unique persons who view each other as just that. This quality of ego-centrism which I once attributed to blogging as essential, turns out to be only accidental. The difference is whether or not the blogger “become[s] preoccupied about the effect [he wants] to produce on the other person,” or sees the blog as a means to the true and meaningful interaction of persons. Pope Benedict himself said that “if used wisely, [new communications technologies] can contribute to the satisfaction of the desire for meaning, truth and unity which remain the most profound aspirations of each human being.” It is precisely in communion (even that which a blog might foster) that this search for Truth is to be undertaken, never by one man thinking to himself and locked in a stove-heated room.

It is in the spirit of mutual enrichment and above all communion that I inaugurate this blog. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (a.k.a. the single greatest linguistic resource known to Man), our word “inaugurate” stems ultimately from the Latin augur. In Ancient Rome, augurs were important priests responsible for divining the will of the gods from the movements and activity of birds. Amongst their other duties, whenever a new town was to be founded, an augur would stand in the center of the town-to-be and lay out the main east-west road (called the Decumanus) and north-south road (called the Cardo). (See Dino Marcantonio's fantastic post related to this topic.) at the intersection of which would stand the local forum, complete with miniature replica of the Temple of Jupiter at Rome. On that model, let us say that our chief thoroughfares will be more-or-less intelligent, thought-provoking content on the one hand, and the resolution to discuss that content with dignity and respect on the other. At the intersection of these two principles will stand the blog itself—the forum which develops out of that intersection and serves as the heart of our little community.

Hopefully you will have gleaned to what extent the life of this blog rests in your hands. Please remember to pass the word to others who might like to join the discussion. Also, you should know that not every post will be quite so serious as this one. Particularly those about Star Trek. There will be a lot of those.