classics digests, reflections and reviews
On Harvesting the Mind My Tuscan farms have been lashed by hail; from my property in the Transpadane region I get news that the crops are very heavy but the prices rule equally low, and it is only my Laurentian estate that makes me any return. It is true that all my belongings there consist of but a house and a garden, yet it is the only property which brings […]
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君不见黄河之水天上来，奔流到海不复回。 君不见高堂明镜悲白发，朝如青丝暮成雪。 人生得意须尽欢，莫使金樽空对月。 天生我材必有用，千金散尽还复来。 Behold, waters of the Yellow River, coming down from heaven, running to the sea, never to return. Behold, and lament, white hair in the hall mirror, in the morning it is black like silk, in the evening turns to snow. When a man has full possession of his wits/wishes, he should rejoice to the utmost. Never let the golden chalice be empty, under the gaze of […]
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As a great humanist and artist, Tolstoy was deeply aware of and sympathetic to the prevailing feelings of the common people, although he was an eminent member of the Russian aristocracy. In these essays written between 1890 and 1910, the year of his death, the constant theme is the struggle between his conscience and pacifist convictions, and the society of violence from which he could not extricate himself, and for […]
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For those interested in the devotional practices of earliest Christians, in particular, whether, how and why they worshipped Jesus. this is a valuable read. Prof. Dunn, in dialogue with Profs. Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, presents the complexity and richness of New Testament Christology. Although answers provided by these scholars are far from satisfactory — partly because they all disagree with one another on certain points, it is very interesting […]
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(Mad) Scientist Manifesto Popular lectures are the easiest to listen to, but they are necessarily both superficial and misleading, since they have to be graded to the comprehension of an ignorant audience. Popular lecturers are in their nature parasitic. They exploit for fame or cash the work which has been done by their indigent and unknown brethren. One smallest new fact obtained in the laboratory, one brick built into the […]
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Psychoanalyzing Nietzsche Nietzsche seems to have a life-long obsession with Christianity, which he blames for the subversion of all noble values, and the corruption of the Western civilization. Underneath the facade of “noble” contempt for Christianity, however, I suspect Nietzsche is really blaming it for his own unhappiness. He sounds as if he would be happier with any other belief system, Darwinism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Epicureanism, Paganism, anything but Christianity, and […]
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The COVID-19 pandemic and government lockdown have turned my leisure reading to old -almost a century old- science fiction/dystopian/horror novels, such as The Island of Doctor Moreau, Dracula and 1984. Looking back, I noticed a pattern in my choices: all these novels make references to religion and God, and the destiny of man, both as an individual and as a species. Like Aldous Huxley, whose Brave New World is often […]
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