classics digests, reflections and reviews
The Nature of Time It is ignorance to think time to be a measure or number of motion according to antecedent and subsequent, as Aristotle said, or what in motion is quantitative, as Speusippus did, or extension of motion and nothing else, as did some of the Stoics, defining it by an accident and not comprehending its essence and potency, Pythagoras, when asked what time is, answered, the soul of […]
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In Preface of Book I, Augustine writes, “I treat of [City of God] both as it exists in this world of time, a stranger among the ungodly, living by faith, and as it stands in the security of its everlasting seat.” Augustine’s conception of time underlies his view of history. In his Confessions, his writes that time exists only within the material world as God’s creation, which is subject to […]
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What is Time Time is merely a device by means of which we gradually see that which is in reality and which is ever the same. In order that the eye may see the entire globe, the latter must turn before the observing eye. Even the world revolves before the eyes of men in time. Time and space is the disintegration of the infinite for the convenience of finite creatures. […]
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The Meaning of Reality I’ve learned since childhood that reality is what exists independently of human perception and knowledge. We gain knowledge of reality if and only if our ideas correspond to it. Fantasy is that which has no correspondence in reality, and exists only in the mind of an individual. Unless he communicates his fantasy, others have no way of knowing it. George Berkeley shows a different way of […]
Read moreCreation in Seven Acts In my previous post “A Layman’s Interpretation of Genesis”, I made the point that the Days in Genesis 1 are defined, not by any physical entity, but by divine command. The Days, and time itself, are God’s creation. To give a further illustration, I’d liken the Creation account in Genesis 1 to a seven-act play, and the recurring phrase “there was evening and there was morning, […]
Read moreContraries as Principles All philosophers identify their principles with the contraries. They differ, however, from one another in that some assume contraries which are more knowable in the order of explanation, i.e. universal, others those more familiar to sense, i.e., particular. ‘The great and the small’, for example, belong to the former class, ‘the dense and the rare’ to the latter. In any one genus there is only one contrariety, […]
Read moreThe Dry Salvages Eliot weaves together almost seamlessly the teachings of Eastern and Western religions and philosophies in “The Dry Salvages”. First, there is a lesson from the Hindu scripture The Bhagavad Gita, “Do not think of the fruit of action. Fare forward”, which seems very similar to the deontological ethics of Kant and the ancient Stoics. We’re not to think of the fruit of action, for it is not […]
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