from The Northern Lights

"A Cow Is Just a Cow”: George Grant and Eric Voegelin on the United States

Part Three of Four Parts

 

Elemental and Existential Representation

Our analysis of each thinker’s view of the United States is guided by Voegelin’s theory of representation, which, as noted above, Grant also found useful. Each political society understands itself in its own unique way and explains itself to itself in order to make its own particular existence intelligible. Voegelin identified three levels of representation:  elemental, existential, and transcendental. Elemental representation refers to the external existence of society, to the various agents that hold society together physically, including, for example, the laws, the institutions, the mechanics of voting, and geographical districts. (37)  Existential representation signifies an idea, spirit, or political culture that animates a society.

Chesterton (and the rest)

Toronto for Beginners Part II

by Max Arnott

Part 1 of Toronto for Beginners, covering the city layout, transportation and some of its attractions may be read HERE.

In the first part of our survey, we discussed the city of Toronto as a whole and mentioned some of the major points of interest—the sort of things that are found in guidebooks. This week, let's touch on bookstores and bars.

 

First though, a minor point regarding our telephone system: in Toronto you have to dial ten numbers, that is, include the area code. For example: 416-555-5555, not just 555-5555.

 

Looking for Books

As far as new books, Toronto is average. The big retail chain is Chapters-Indigo. There is a smaller local operation called Book City, with a three outlets, and a more eclectic selection. The Book City outlet on Bloor street (at 501 Bloor Street West). has a complete selection of Loeb Classical Texts. You can never have enough Loeb Classical Texts.

 

Modern Views of Plato's Silence

by James M. Rhodes

Part 1

This excerpt from Professor Rhodes's Eros, Wisdom and Silence: Plato's Erotic Dialogues is offered here with permission of Professor Rhodes and his publisher, the University of Missouri Press, from whom more information about the book may be obtained. This excerpt opens Chapter Two which will be presented here in its entirety. Chapter One was presented here previously and will remain available through the next four weeks.

Introduction

Plato directly and indirectly cautions his students that he does not commu­nicate with them straightforwardly. To repeat the warnings quoted previ­ously, Plato fiercely denies in his Seventh Letter that Dionysius II and other dubious individuals could have known that about which he is serious (περί ων εγώ σπουδάζω). They could not have understood it, "For there is no writing of mine about these things (περί αυτών), nor will there ever be. For it is in no way a spoken thing like other lessons (ρητόν γαρ σϋδαμώς εστίν ως άλλα μαθήματα)" (341cl-6). He remarks further that an effort to write or speak about these things to the many would not be good for human beings, "except for some few who are able to learn (άνευρεΐν) by them­selves with a little guidance." As for the rest, some would be filled "with a contempt that is not right and that is in no way harmonious, and others with lofty and empty hopes, as if they had learned some mysteries" (341e2-342al).

GUARDED BY MYSTERY -- Part 13

Meaning in a Postmodern Age

by David Walsh

Chapter 7 Cultural Transparence (continued)

[Editors' note: Professor Walsh and his publisher have given us permission to reproduce the entire meditation. We will keep available the two most recent preceding parts in addition to the current part. The book may be obtained directly from the Publisher.]

Art without Common Language

Perhaps the peculiar temptation to which art in the modern period is exposed arises from the unique position of the artist. Since the Renaissance artists have definitively shed their anonym­ity. Today they occupy positions of great social prominence and celebrity. They are exalted to a quasi-divine status because of what they do. No longer merely the servants of reality, they are also viewed as its creators. Men like Leonardo da Vinci were filled with the self-confidence that they possessed the means not only of imitating nature but of improving on it. It you look at his Madonna of the Rocks you will see what this means. No real-life Madonna ever had such translucent flesh and no stones ever contained such radiant depth.

 

That pattern of regarding artists not only as discoverers but as creators of meaning continues up to recent times. For many, art becomes a religion, and we hear sufficient discussion of the capacity of art to evoke a spiritual awakening. That whole pattern is of course no accident. The new centrality of art begins at precisely the time when the spiritual coherence of Western civilization is becoming dislodged. In a time of growing uncertainty art holds out the promise of an au­thoritative transparence.

from The Collected Works

Ethics, Machiavelli, and the Mystery of Existential Cruelty

Philosophically, the problem of Machiavelli’s ethics consists in nothing but the recognition of the elementary fact that the existence of man is burdened with conflicts of values. A spiritual morality will arrive at the Platonic insight that doing evil is worse than suffering evil. In practice, this insight can be made the governing rule of conduct only at the price of endangering, or making impossible, the realization of other values that also are given in human existence, such as one’s own existence, the existence of the community, and the civilizational values realized in community.

Since the existence of man is social, his actions are burdened with the responsibility for their effects on the values realized in the lives of other men. A statesman who does not answer an attack on his country with the order to shoot back will not be praised for the spiritual refinement of his morality in turning the other cheek, but he will justly be cursed for his criminal irresponsibility. Spiritual morality is a problem in human existence, precisely because there is a good deal more to human existence than spirit. All attacks on Machiavelli as the inventor or advocate of a "double morality" for private and public conduct, etc., can be dismissed as manifestations of philosophical ignorance.