St. Teresa Benedicta, aka Edith Stein

And August continues its slough of saint-days in the Catholic Church. Today is another patron(ess) of philosophy: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD.

Born in Germany to a large Jewish family as Edith Stein, she grew into a brilliant student of philosophy and worked closely with Husserl. Husserl founded a particular school of phenomenology, which attempts to overcome the abyss of modern thought.

Like many of the members of Husserl's school of thought, Edith converted to Catholicism. Because she was Jewish, however, she was never allowed to teach at the university level in Germany. In her early forties, she entered the Carmel at Cologne. She and her sister, also a Carmelite and convert, fled to Holland early in the war but were arrested by the SS and sent to Auschwitz, where they died in the gas chambers.

Great reads from her life work:
The Science of the Cross (written from within Carmel just before her arrest)
Self-Portrait in Letters (letters to others from before her conversion until her arrest)
Essays on Woman (a series of lectures given in Germany before she entered Carmel)

"Learn from St. Thérèse to depend on God alone and serve Him with a wholly pure and detached heart. Then, like her, you will be able to say ‘I do not regret that I have given myself up to Love’." ~St. Edith Stein

The Philosophical Canon

Edward T. Oakes, SJ, has just posted a charming, witty, and insightful article on the First Things blog on the philosophical canon.

Among other fascinating questions he asks: How on earth did someone as verbally obtuse as Hegel get on to the "must read" list? Why is Descartes impossible to ignore while Cartesians are impossible to forgive? What qualifies an author or work as canon material? Why should we be familiar with the philosophical canon?

It's a fun read, though long, so get a cup of coffee first. But it is also especially appropriate for St. Dominic's day, since the latter half focuses on Thomism and the relationship of faith and reason. Enjoy.

St. Dominic, August 8

Today is the feast of St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers (OPs). Since I went to Catholic University and lived in Gibbons, across the street from the Dominican House of Studies, and since three good friends have entered the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia, and since St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican of great philosophical gravitas, I have been blessed to know and love a few of his sons and daughters. Here's a twitch of the veil/cowl to them all!

"To praise, to bless, to preach!"

Shout out to true feminism.

This article is quite disturbing, but gives a blinders-off look at what abortion does to women. Particularly unborn women.

Shedding a little light...

I ran into a blessed philosopher yesterday and confided my frustrations with the thesis on Pascal. After ruefully recounting my attempts at clarity, I asked, "There's no right answer, though, is there? I'm not looking for the right answer, am I?"

"No," she said, "there's no right answer. Your job is just to shed a little more light on the subject."

Of course, I went immediately into mystical raptures over this revelation of the end for which I create the thesis at all. To illuminate--not definitively disclose--the truth of Pascal's project. Thank heavens.

This also allays many of the frustrations one feels in teaching history. Last year, I led a seminar in early modern history for high school juniors and seniors. The books we were assigned by the school's curriculum were determined to present the "right answer" to all historical problems; that means they sought to explain away all the awkwardness of the Inquisition, the conquistadores, Galileo, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, etc. It was so easy and so nauseatingly comfortable to be able to say: "And that's why it all happened the way it did. And here's how we can justify the ways of God to man, and man to God."

But what is harder, in a way, to say is that the end for which we study history is not to find the definitive answers and justifications for "the good guys." The reason we read history is to shed light on, among other things, human nature, our own origins, and the rise and fall of human civilizations.

I also find history to be a particularly convincing lesson in original sin, but, again, it only sheds light on sin. History does not prove anything (such as, original sin) in the way the hard sciences can prove something (such as, the existence of microorganisms). It simply sheds a little more light on the truth of who we are, who God is, and where we are going.

Off again!

Once more, the Philosopher Mom is hitting the road. This time, slowly making their way south to the ATL and HOME!, the family will hit NY, PA, and VA.

Enjoy the dog days of summer. See you next week...

On Locke

The following is from the August 13 issue of National Review:

"Edward Feser is one of the best contemporary writers on philosophy, and his Locke (One World Publishers) is a lucid, short introduction to this architect of philosophical modernity. 'To understand Locke,' Feser writes, 'is to understand ourselves'--because the tensions within Lockeanism remain alive within, and indeed central to, today's intellectual life. John Locke was simultaneously committed to a political philosophy of natural rights and ... to nominalism: But how can rights be inherent in the human 'kind' if the very definition of a 'kind' is an arbitrary human invention? What Locke wants, according to Feser, is 'a natural law without nature, or at least without a "nature" that would have been recognizable to his medieval predecessors.... His basic philosophical commitments do in fact tend to undermine natural law and the conservative moral and political conclusions that follow from it.'"

This brief quote, by Auld Kirk, simply points out the importance of knowing where "the way we think" comes from. Modern political assumptions--about human rights, democracies, liberalism, tolerance-doctrine--are neither random appearances in history nor are they the final say in what's right and wrong politically. Get to know the sources of modernity--Locke, Machiavelli, Hobbes--and you'll get to know the world and, hopefully, truth a bit better.