Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

 

As a reader, I feel that film adaptations of novels can be good but are often inferior to the written works for two reasons. First, given the film’s shorter length, the novel must be condensed and so we lose much of the story. Second, characters are not as well developed because we do not have access to their inner thoughts and motivations as we do in written works. Nevertheless, when movies use their visual and audio capabilities to good effect, they can possess an artistic power greater than that of the written word. A Haunting in Venice, the third of Kenneth Branagh’s adaptations of Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot, is an example of a film being superior to the novel. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night four of us met to discuss the first chapter of G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. The discussion ranged freely from anarchy, chaos and order in the arts to Chesterton’s use of colors and atmosphere, and the possible importance of the dream or nightmare motif to the novel. However, those topics, important and fascinating as they may be, are not what I want to write about here. Rather, the evening revealed something crucial about human nature. Read the rest of this entry »

I am almost **.5 years old, and my students are in their teens.  Some of their parents are younger than my sons.  In my post “On Aging” (https://www.billisley.com/2023/01/on-aging/#more-4730) I mentioned discussing the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard with them. That experience resulted in a conjunction of theological truth with the spiritual life, being a lifelong learner, and the high and dread calling of the teacher. Read the rest of this entry »

No one has said, or at least should have said, that aging is easy. Read the rest of this entry »

I was glad to see that Simone Biles was able to compete again in the Olympics and win a bronze medal on the balance beam.  She is an outstanding gymnast who has advanced the sport/art with new moves and a high level of execution.  Unfortunately, because of her very public withdrawal from some of the events for reasons of “mental health,” she has been subjected to some extremely harsh criticism.

The reactions both of her critics and defenders have been mostly superficial. What happened to Simone Biles is the result of the confluence of four currents in modern American society: the role of sports, the financial impact of sponsors, the ubiquitous presence of social media and its baleful influence on the self, which was already trapped in the hopelessly contradictory reality of mass society and the exaltation of its individual expression. Read the rest of this entry »

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