Chesterton on the New Year

"The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

- G. K. Chesterton

I usually try to lift quotes from their original sources, but this one was so fitting, I had to use it.  Besides, it gives me another opportunity to talk about the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.  I found this sparkling Chesterton gem in the latest CCEL newsletter, in which director Harry Plantinga discusses the wealth of Chesterton's writings to be found online at the CCEL.  Having just read a terribly tragic novel, The Book of Sorrows (beautiful and truthful, but bitterly sad), I think I may take up a work by Chesterton.  No, he did not write fluff.  He wrote with tragedy in his head, but comedy in his heart.

Historic Pensacola

This is old news, unfortunately.  However, aged news becomes history, and history is what I peddle.  The University Press of Florida recently published Historic Pensacola, co-authored by history professor Jay Clune and archaeology professor Margo Stringfield of the University of West Florida.  Dr. Clune and Prof. Stringfield did a book-signing at the T. T. Wentworth Museum in downtown Pensacola a month or so ago, for which I hastily leapt in line.  Support local history!

Reitan: Is God a Delusion?

This book looks remarkable, not least because it came out of Stillwater, Oklahoma! (Reitan is an associate professor of philosophy at Oklahoma State University - a philosopher-cowboy?) Is God a Delusion, hot off the press from Wiley-Blackwell (a heady publisher if there ever was one), promises to be one of the more thoughtful responses to Richard Dawkins & Co.'s boorish broadsides against religious belief. Although it must be said that Dawkins will have to work much harder to match the withering vitriol and hellfire of a Chick tract. Christopher Hitchens, however, no mere novice when it comes to low-brow-blows, may find the goal attainable.

By the way, note Reitan's reference to Schleiermacher, early nineteenth-century German theologian and author of the classic work On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. Many credit Schleiermacher as the father of modern liberal theology. Does Reitan seek to make such a connection, grounding his critical response in Enlightenment thought, or is he simply making use of a catchy title? Since it may be a very long time before I get to Reitan's book, dear readers, perhaps you will have the opportunity to investigate this question more speedily.

Pensacola book sale

I picked up C. S. Lewis' On Stories (big surprise, I know), C. Vann Woodward's Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, Norman Sherry's The Life of Graham Greene, Volume I: 1904-1939 (unfortunately terminating before Greene's espionage work in World War II), and Thomas Merton's Disputed Questions - all for $4.50. Not bad!

Plantinga online at CCEL

Amazingly, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library has published Alvin Plantinga's daunting and much lauded (and debated) philosophical work Warranted Christian Belief online at their website. Why is this amazing? It was published very recently - in 2000 - by Oxford University Press. Kudos to OUP for granting permission and to CCEL for making this significant addition to their already substantial online library. I hope CCEL will make many more recently published works of esoteric theological/philosophical inquiries available to grad students and other paupers with internet access.

Critical writings on C. S. Lewis

I picked up a volume from the library of critical writing (both positive and negative) on C. S. Lewis. It's the first in Scolar Press' Critical Thought Series, which includes such postmodern icons as Foucault. The series editor, George Watson, a former colleague of Lewis, makes a provocative case in the introductory essay that Lewis was much more modern - or postmodern, rather - in his critical thinking than most people recognize or appreciate (and he notes that Lewis certainly would not appreciate such a categorization). Watson suggests that Lewis was perhaps twenty years ahead of his time in certain aspects in his critical theory, such as de-emphasizing authorial intent and taking a formalist approach to fantasy. Though Watson admits that Lewis could never be lumped together with the likes of Derrida, he stresses that Lewis was still well ahead of his time with certain ideas and made very important and often unacknowledged contributions to intellectual history and critical theory. He surmises that the reason a school of thought did not develop around Lewis is primarily due to his contrarian nature and his efforts to play the devil's advocate to modern thinkers. In the collection, Lewis comes in for high praise from such esteemed historians as A.J.P. Taylor and E.M.W. Tillyard. Quite incredible given the current mainstream scholarly opinion of Lewis. I think his contributions to intellectual history are due for a reconsideration.

[Note: I originally emailed this to a professor and thought afterwards that it might make a nice post.]

A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography

Blackwell is publishing A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography next month. The volume, edited by Aviezer Tucker of Queen's University, Belfast, promises to make an indispensable guide to the discipline (although it will require one to dispense with nearly $200). Here is the table of contents:

1. Introduction: Aviezer Tucker (Prague)
Part I Major Fields:
2. Philosophy of Historiography: Peter Kosso (Northern Arizona University)
3. Philosophy of History: Zdeněk Vašíček (Institute for Contemporary History, Prague)
4. Philosophical Issues in Natural History and Its Historiography: Carol E. Cleland (University of Colorado, Boulder)
5. Historians and Philosophy of Historiography: John Zammito (Rice University)
Part II: Basic Problems:
6. Historiographic Evidence and Confirmation: Mark Day (Nottingham-Trent University) and Gregory Radick (University of Leeds)
7. Causation in Historiography: Aviezer Tucker (Prague)
8. Historiographic Counterfactuals: Elazar Weinryb (Open University of Israel)
9. Historical Necessity and Contingency: Yemima Ben-Menahem (Hebrew University)
10. Explanation in Historiography: Graham Macdonald (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) and Cynthia Macdonald (Queen's University, Belfast)
11. Historiographic Understanding: Guiseppina D'Oro (Keele University)
12. Colligation: C. Behan McCullagh (La Trobe University)
13. The Laws of History: Stephan Berry (Berlin)
14. Historiographic Objectivity: Paul Newall (British Royal Navy)
15. Realism about the Past: Murray Murphey (University of Pennsylvania)
16. Anti-realism about the Past: Fabrice Pataut (Institut de l'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, Paris)
17. Narrative and Interpretation: F. R. Ankersmit (University of Groningen)
18. The Ontology of the Objects of Historiography: Lars Udehn (Stockholm University)
19. Origins: Common Causes in Historiographic Reasoning: Aviezer Tucker (Prague)
20. Phylogenetic Inference: Matt Haber (University of Utah)
21. Historicism: Robert D'Amico (University of Florida)
22. Ethics and the Writing of Historiography: Jonathan Gorman (Queen's University, Belfast)
23. Logical Fallacies of Historians: Paul Newall (British Royal Navy)
24. Historical Fallacies of Historians: Carlos Spoerhase (Humboldt University of Berlin) and Colin G. King (Humboldt University of Berlin)Part III: Philosophy and Sub-fields of Historiography:
25. Philosophy of History of Science: Nicholas Jardine (University of Cambridge)
26. Philosophies of Historiography and the Social Sciences: Harold Kincaid (University of Alabama, Birmingham)
27. The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory: Michael Ruse (Florida State University)
28. The Philosophy of Geology: Rob Inkpen (University of Portsmouth)
29. Philosophy of Archaeology: Ben Jeffares (Australia National University)
30. Reductionism: Historiography and Psychology: Cynthia Macdonald (Queen's University, Belfast) and Graham Macdonald (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
31. Historiography and Myth: Mary Lefkowitz (Wellesley College)
32. Historiography and Memory: Marie-Claire Lavabre (CNRS, France)
33. Historiographic Schools: Christopher Lloyd (University of New England)
Part IV: Classical Schools and Philosophers of Historiography and History:
34. Leopold Ranke: Thomas Gil (Technical University of Berlin)
35. Scientific Historiography: Chris Lorenz (VU University of Amsterdam)
36. Darwin: John S. Wilkins (University of Queensland)
37. Logical Empiricism and Logical Positivism: Krzysztof Brzechczyn (Adam Mickiewitz University/Institute of National Remembrance, Poland)
38. Jewish and Christian Philosophy of History: Samuel Moyn (Columbia University)
39. Muslim Philosophy of History: Zaid Ahmad (Universiti Putra, Malaysia)
40. Vico: Joseph Mali (Tel Aviv University)
41. Kant and Herder: Sharon Anderson-Gold (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
42. Hegel: Tom Rockmore (Duquesne University)
43. Neo-Kantianism: Charles Bambach (University of Dallas)
44. Marx: Tom Rockmore (Duquesne University)
45. Collingwood and Croce: Stein Helgeby (Melbourne)
46. Phenomenology: David Weberman (Central European University, Hungary)
47. Jan Patočka: Ivan Chvatik (Czech Academy of Science)
48. Hermeneutics: Rudolf A. Makkreel (Emory University)
49. Postmodernism: Beverley Southgate (University of Hertfordshire)
50. Philosophy of History at the End of the Cold War: Krishnan Kumar (University of Virginia)Index

Benton on the so-called "end of the book"

"The end of the book has, by now, been debunked. The electronic book is no substitute for the paperback, after all. Amazon's Kindle is apparently no more viable than the automated feeding system demonstrated in Chaplin's Modern Times. Besides, computer software and digital media change so fast that paper — for all its seeming fragility — remains the surest means of projecting a text into the distant future (except, perhaps, for clay tablets)."

-Thomas H. Benton, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Also, check out Mark Bauerlein's comments on the Kindle at The Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog.

Lewis on the reading of old books

Here begins a new series of provocative quotations from various readings.

"It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period."

- C. S. Lewis, "On the Reading of Old Books," God in the Dock

Book #9: Guards! Guards!

Guards! Guards! is the second Terry Pratchett Discworld novel to land on this blog. In this story, Pratchett introduces Sam Vimes and the rest of the intrepid Ankh-Morpork City Watch to readers. Those who have read other Discworld stories featuring Watch Commander Vimes, may be surprised at first by Vimes' trepidation. The Watch has fallen on hard times. It has been made nearly redundant by the regulation of crime through the creation of the Thieves Guild, and its few remaining watchmen are bullied by the city's tough residents. However, the arrival of Carrot, the 6'6" man raised by dwarves whose unswerving dedication to uphold the law and a madman's cunning plot to overthrow the city government by summoning a dragon bring the Vimes' latent heroism to the fore.

Book #8: Prince Caspian

I actually finished Prince Caspian about three months ago, just in time for the baleful movie adaptation. I attempted to write a withering comparative analysis of the book and the film to demonstrate the poverty of the film version, snatching what time I could on breaks at Starbucks and so forth, but other responsibilities claimed my time, and I never finished. Now that the film is all but forgotten, it seems rather silly to proceed with such an invective. So I will leave a quick post on the book itself.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to give the book form of Prince Caspian its full due in this post. I hope it will suffice to make one small but crucial point. This book is about war. According to Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia, its theme and mood are governed by the characteristics of Mars, the god of war, in accordance with medieval cosmology (another example of the subtle and erudite genius of Lewis). The Telmarines oppress the Narnians, and the Narnians rise up to cast off their oppression through force. However, such a reading (which is the version presented in the film) ignores Lewis' powerful subtext and the most important point in this book: it is not through force, power, and war that we are truly liberated, but through joy. A close reading of the story reveals that the Narnians are fighting for survival, not out of some sort of nationalistic or revolutionary fervor. However, as the battle rages, Aslan and the girls accompany Greek mythological figures Bacchus and Silenus, who represent joy, as they engage in a campaign of true liberation against the superstition, fear, and hatred which grip both the Telmarines and the Narnians, ultimately uniting both groups under a truce of love.

It is joy, not war, that truly liberates. Lewis, a wounded veteran of the trenches of World War I and witness to the ensuing spiritual atrophy across Europe, knew this lesson well.