Thomas Aquinas: Talking the Trinity to Death?

I went through a good chunk of the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas the past two weeks.

There are many admirable sections in this pivotal work, such as his discussion of faith and reason. Many topics are treated in a clear and succinct manner, neither ignoring important objectives nor belaboring his points too much.

But when Aquinas starts discussing the Trinity, it’s a different matter. I remember thinking: “OK, now he’s done with the Trinity and he’ll move on to another topic.” But no, he went on. And I felt like that over and over again.

I’m sure Aquinas thought it necessary to address what he considered various misunderstandings and wrong descriptions of the Trinity, but to me it seemed like he was talking the whole concept of the Trinity to death.

Perhaps the Eastern Orthodox Church displayed more wisdom in this regard by stressing that the Trinity is a mystery that’s supposed to move us, not an invitation for endless definitions of how exactly the three Persons of the Trinity relate to each other and what words are appropriate to describe them.

Mistaken Beliefs in Shakespeare

For the past few months, I’ve been going through Shakespeare’s plays in a more systematic fashion. I’m done with all the comedies now, and it struck me just how often Shakespeare uses the plot devise of a mistaken belief.

Most of the time, the mistaken belief is a mistaken identity – not seldom of a woman disguising herself as a man and not being recognized by her lover.

Let’s briefly go through the fourteen comedies, though some of them could be classified as “drama with a happy ending” or “problem plays” rather than comedies. I’m following the order of William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, published by Gramercy Books:

1. In The Tempest, several people strand on an island and falsely believe each other dead – not knowing that the tempest and their fates were arranged by Prospero, who seeks to win back his rightful position as Duke of Milan. Another – and rather comic – mistaken belief is Prospero’s slave Caliban considering two drunkards as having come from the moon and hence treating them like gods.
2. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julia dresses up as a young man and followes her lover Proteus to Milan, where she becomes his page and discovers to her horror that Proteus has fallen in love with another woman.
3. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, the villain Sir John Falstaff is dressed up as an old witch to be smuggled out of a house in which he had tried to seduce a married woman. And her husband dresses up as someone else and meets Falstaff in order to find out what he is up to with his wife.
4. In the Twelfth Night, shipwrecked Viola masquerades as a page by the name of Cesario und serves the Duke Orsino, whom she is in love with. Orsino, though, is in love with Lady Olivia and tries to use Viola aka Cesario to win Olivia’s love – to no avail, because Olivia falls in love with Viola.
5. In Measure for Measure, there is no woman dressing up as a man, but Angelo’s betrothed Mariana does take the nun Isabella’s place with whom Angelo desires to have sex. He sleeps with his betrothed instead, all the while believing to enjoy Isabella. Also, the Duke of Vienna disguises himself as a monk for much of the play.
6. In Much Ado About Nothing, there are many (purposefully planted) mistaken beliefs, one of which is Claudio’s belief that his betrothed Hero had betrayed him with another man the night before their wedding day.

I’ll continue this in another post.

Bertrand Russell: Why Study Philosophy? (Or: How to Escape the Prison of This Life)

A few years ago, I read the first chapter of Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy. This week, I returned to it and finished the work.

Perhaps a more apt title for the book would be The Problems of Epistemology or even An Introduction to Epistemology, since Russell almost exclusively deals with the problems of our perception and knowledge of reality. (Epistemology is the study of the possibilities and limitations of human knowledge.)

My favorite part of the book, however, was the last chapter, in which Russell asks what value there is in philosophy. Here’s an excerpt:

[M]any men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible.

This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or primarily, because of the effect on the student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in general. Thus utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it. It is in these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must be primarily sought.

But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to determine the value of philosophy, we must first free our minds from the prejudices of what are wrongly called ‘practical’ men. The ‘practical’ man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind. If all men were well off, if poverty and disease had been reduced to their lowest possible point, there would still remain much to be done to produce a valuable society; and even in the existing world the goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and only those who are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time.

Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton’s great work was called ‘the mathematical principles of natural philosophy’. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.

This is, however, only a part of the truth concerning the uncertainty of philosophy. There are many questions—and among them those that are of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life—which, so far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a different order from what they are now. Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man? Such questions are asked by philosophy, and variously answered by various philosophers. But it would seem that, whether answers be otherwise discoverable or not, the answers suggested by philosophy are none of them demonstrably true. Yet, however slight may be the hope of discovering an answer, it is part of the business of philosophy to continue the consideration of such questions, to make us aware of their importance, to examine all the approaches to them, and to keep alive that speculative interest in the universe which is apt to be killed by confining ourselves to definitely ascertainable knowledge.

Many philosophers, it is true, have held that philosophy could establish the truth of certain answers to such fundamental questions. They have supposed that what is of most importance in religious beliefs could be proved by strict demonstration to be true. In order to judge of such attempts, it is necessary to take a survey of human knowledge, and to form an opinion as to its methods and its limitations. On such a subject it would be unwise to pronounce dogmatically; but if the investigations of our previous chapters have not led us astray, we shall be compelled to renounce the hope of finding philosophical proofs of religious beliefs. We cannot, therefore, include as part of the value of philosophy any definite set of answers to such questions. Hence, once more, the value of philosophy must not depend upon any supposed body of definitely ascertainable knowledge to be acquired by those who study it.

The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters, that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.

Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy has a value—perhaps its chief value—through the greatness of the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive man is shut up within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleagured fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife.

Reading Einstein: Why Philosophy is Easier than (Some) Science

OK, I’ve read Einstein’s Relativity: The Special and General Theory now (or rather listened to it over at the wonderful site librivox.org), but I must say that I found other people’s summaries of Einstein’s thoughts more helpful than Einstein himself.

Could it be that others are more gifted in explaining Einstein than he was in explaining himself? Or is it simply that I am a bit obtuse when it comes to science – at least on the  microcosmical and macrocosmical level?

Maybe something of both. I certainly find philosophy much easier than the details of cosmology. Sure, there are rather difficult philosophers like Hegel and Kant, but for the most part philosophy isn’t hard to grasp at all. The reason, I think, is that philosophy is purely human. Everything in philosophy springs from the human mind – from reason and imagination. There is nothing in philosophy that is foreign to human nature. As a human of average intelligence and basic education, most philosophy should therefore pose no great problem.

With modern science, it’s another matter. Here we actually gather data that is foreign to our experience and intellectual capabilities – data about atoms and the speed of light and the relativity of time and the possible curvature of space. We then use a language that we do not employ in everyday life – namely mathematical, completely abstract language – to express this data and form theories about it.

No wonder it’s so difficult. It’s like a visitation of aliens who look completely unlike any terrestrial being, aliens whose sensory organs are not even all in the same dimensions as ours. We might be able to detect the existence of such beings and learn many things about them, but would we ever truly understand them? Probably not.

It’s the same with Einstein’s theories: I can intellectually assent to them; I can try to understand them. But I don’t think I have the capacity to ever truly grasp them. And I doubt any member of the human species does.

Aristotle’s *Politics* – Still Relevant Today

I just finished Aristotle’s Politics, and, considering that it’s more than 2,300 years old, the book is still amazingly relevant. Sure, the modern reader will wince at Aristotle’s defense of slavery, and I’m not exactly thrilled that Aristotle is a critic of private education and a staunch defender of public schooling. Nor will he seem liberal enough to most people today when it comes to censorship in art and music.

But even so, the Politics anticipates many topics that some falsely consider exclusively modern: freedom and democracy, communism and ownership, justice and equality, family structure and over-population, the dangers of an economy built on credit, the relation between urban and rural life, etc etc.

I’ve also found a neat graphic on Wikipedia about the Politics. It really only captures a few sections of the book, but it’s a useful visual nonetheless. Just realize that there’s more to Aristotle’s Politics than this (click to enlarge):

Prometheus: Bad Rep for Zeus (Yea for Humanity, Nay for the Gods)

I just re-read Prometheus Bound – that classic play from the 5th century BC traditionally attributed to the Greek playwright Aeschylus – and I was again struck by just how badly Zeus comes off.

Whoever the real author was, he clearly didn’t think too highly of the father of the gods. In fact, I wonder if he actually believed in Zeus, because the play certainly wouldn’t have put him into very good standing with the divine despot. The author treats Zeus much more like a fictional character whom he feels free to portray in a negative light.

All the sympathies of the audience lie with the tragic hero Prometheus who – unlike Zeus – actually cares for humanity. It’s safe to say that the author of the play also cared much more for humanity than for the gods.

Is Fantasy Just Wish-Fulfillment?

Is Fantasy just wish-fullfilment? C.S. Lewis had this to say about the question:

A liberal use of the marvellous, the mythical, and the fantastical in a story is, as far as it goes, an argument against the charge of wish-fulfilment.

The Freudian fantasy exists to give us the nearest substitute it can for real gratification; naturally it makes itself as lifelike as possible. It had to be unreal as regards the main issue—for we are not really famous men, millionaires or Don Juans—and to make up for this it will be scrupulously “real” everywhere else.

Does not all experience confirm this? A man who is really hungry does not dream of honey-dew and elfin bread, but of steak and kidney puddings: a man really lustful does not dream of Titania or Helen, but of real, prosaic, flesh and blood. Other things being equal, a story in which the hero meets Titania and is entertained with fairies’ food is much less likely to be a fantasy than “a nice love-story” of which the scene is London, the dialogue idiomatic, and the episodes probable.

On these grounds I wish to emend the Freudian theory of literature into something like this. There are two activities of the imagination, one free, and the other enslaved to the wishes of its owner for whom it has to provide imaginary gratifications. Both may be the starting-point for works of art. The former or “free” activity continues in the works it produces and passes from the status of dream to that of art by a process which may legitimately be called “elaboration”: incoherencies are tidied up, banalities removed, private values and associations replaced, proportion, relief, and temperance are introduced.

But the other, or servile kind is not “elaborated” into a work of art: it is a motive power which starts the activity and is withdrawn when once the engine is running, or a scaffolding which is knocked away when the building is complete. Finally, the characteristic products of free imagination belong to what may be roughly called the fantastic, or mythical, or improbable type of literature: those of fantasy, of the wish-fulfilling imagination, to what may, in a very lose sense be called the realistic type. I say “characteristic products” because the principle doubtless admits of innumerable exceptions.

*The Gobblestone School*: Sample Chapter

Chapter 1 – The Horrible Gobblestone

“Did you say something, Simon? I couldn’t hear you. Speak up!” Mrs. Gobblestone roared from the front of the class. “Mouse, Simon. The text says mouse, not moose! … There was a period at the end of that sentence, Simon. You read it as if the sentence had just continued on. … Stop stuttering, for goodness’ sake! … There you go again—stuttering! Stop it! I can’t stand it! You’re an embarrassment to this class, Simon! I’m very glad I’m not your parent.”

Although Simon agreed with Mrs. Gobble-stone’s last statement, the rest of her tirade did rather upset him. The frightening effect was undoubtedly aided by Mrs. Gobblestone’s voice, which sounded as if she smoked about a thousand cigarettes a day. If you never saw her face but only heard her voice, you would never guess she was a woman. Never seeing her face would of course be very fortunate, for her fiery-red curls, knobby nose, tomb-green eyes, and lipstick-smeared mouth are said to have reappeared in her students’ nightmares for years.

As a result of the dragon voice constantly interrupting Simon whenever he read out loud in school, he began to sweat and shake as soon as Mrs. Gobblestone called his name for reading. “Simon!” Her grating voice pronouncing his name felt like Caesar calling prisoners into the Coliseum, where lions would pounce on the prisoners and tear them to pieces.

Well, actually Simon had no idea what it felt like to be torn to pieces by lions; very few people do. But he could not imagine that being torn to pieces would feel any worse than reading to Mrs. Gobblestone. And who would not mumble and stutter and read monotonously and try to get the task over with as quickly as possible, when standing in front of snarling lions? Simon certainly did, because he was a reasonable and intelligent boy. Only someone too dull to notice the hostilities would have been able to read well in Mrs. Gobblestone’s presence.

Thus Mrs. Gobblestone went home each day and complained to her husband, “I wonder where our dear Germany will end up, Oswald. The young people of today can’t even read, and as much as I encourage them to improve, they never do. And their writing is completely unintelligible.” And she would shake her fiery-red locks and scratch her too-large nose. “I tell them as much, too—tell them that they need to print explanations next to their scrawls, if they expect me to decipher what they’ve written. But their writing only becomes worse as time goes by. The youth of today! Spoiled and brainless, I’m telling you!”

Her husband Oswald, who was a short bald man with thick glasses, would squint up at her and nod, “Yes, darling, yes. The youth of today. It is horrible.” He would never say more, because he feared his wife as much as her students did.

As did the teachers. They all moved around her like animals fearful of a voracious beast. She was, after all, the principal of the Engels Elementary School in the big harbor city of Hamburg, Germany, and it was unofficially called the “Gobblestone School.”

For Simon, this Monday morning had started out no worse than all other Monday mornings. As usual, he was sitting on an uncomfortable chair, trying to read out loud from a textbook placed on the much-too-high desk in front of him, while he was being shredded to pieces by the snarls from the front. Nothing unusual. This was what school was about. It prepared him to become a functional citizen later on who had managed the Art of the Pecking Order, which is the most important art form in our time.

But, oh, how different the Gobblestone School was from taking a book to bed at home and discovering what lay hidden between its covers! The reading was best at nighttime, when the weather outside was dark and rainy—occasionally interrupted, if Simon was really lucky, by lightning and thunder—and when all the lights were turned off, except for a little reading lamp.

Simon liked to read. Very much so. He had missed many a meal and many a night of sleep because his mother had not been able to pry him away from some gigantic tome. But he did not like to read at school, on this uncomfortable chair, underneath these horribly bright lights, and at this desk, which was so high that it had apparently been donated by a giant. He didn’t like the kind of texts they were reading, either.

“And when the mouse went into the house,” he was reading right now. How boring! No, more than boring: ridiculous! Didn’t they know that Simon had already read dozens, hundreds, gazillions of novels?

It was hard to believe, but this morning things actually got worse than the usual Monday mornings.

And strange.

Mrs. Gobblestone was just interrupting Simon’s reading again with her thunderous voice when he felt something like a heat wave hit him from her direction. He looked up and thought he glimpsed the last flickers of a fire escaping her mouth.

“What do you think you’re staring at, boy?” Mrs. Gobblestone bellowed. “My face is not a computer screen! Put your nose back in your book, Simon! In your book!”

“Y-yes, Madam,” Simon stuttered and continued to read, thinking that a computer screen would have been a welcome change from her face.

A few seconds later, his eye again caught a bright flickering close to Mrs. Gobblestone’s head. This caused him to halt his reading, a move which brought on another tirade from the direction of the teacher’s desk.

“Simon! What the devil are you looking at?” Mrs. Gobblestone’s throaty voice roared through the classroom and reverberated against the walls.

This time, Simon knew there was no mistake. Fire had actually come out of Mrs. Gobblestone’s mouth. She had breathed fire. But that wasn’t all. Her teeth seemed different, too, with longer and sharper points than before. He could not help staring open-mouthed at the altered Mrs. Gobblestone, who now raised both of her arms in the air and threw another insult in Simon’s direction. And as she did so, her fingers suddenly sprouted long, curvy claws, and the hairs on her arms bristled visibly like those of a frightened cat.

What was going on? Simon blinked a few times to make sure this was really happening. His eyes were not deceiving him. Mrs. Gobblestone was clearly undergoing some sort of transformation, and unfortunately not a favorable one. This was really unnecessary, her being so horrible already. Simon began to whimper and draw back, unsuccessfully trying to find shelter in his uncomfortable chair.

There! Mrs. Gobblestone’s skin had changed color and was now a bright red. And her nose! Where was her nose? The nostrils were still there—very big, and heaving up and down like those of a running horse—but the rest of her nose had entirely disappeared. And her eyes! Oh no! Her awful eyes had grown in size beyond any reasonable proportion. And what was that? Something moved behind Mrs. Gobblestone’s large bottom, something that looked like a tail. Yes, Mrs. Gobblestone had a tail—a pointy tail with a spiky end, swinging back and forth like a weapon.

Simon’s chair screeched as he pushed back across the floor, and then he tipped over. For a moment, his arms flung about in the air. Then the chair fell over on him with a loud bang, and Simon bashed the side of his head against the hard floor. His glasses shattered and the classroom grew hazy, like paint in too much water.

ORDER THE BOOK HERE!

Now Available! *The Gobblestone School: A Tale Inspired by the German Criminalization of Homeschooling*

Imagine a school turning into a dark fortress. Imagine all its teachers and students becoming a swarm of monkeys, witches, dinosaurs, and robots. Imagine the principal herself changing into a red, fire-spitting dragon.

Simon and Emily do not have to imagine such things, because in their school all of this really happens. The two children try to get behind the reason for the transformation and embark on a dangerous journey. Will they be able to break the wicked spell over their school? And will they manage to get their parents out of prison?

A satirical tale that brims with imagination and celebrates free education.

Order it now at Amazon!

Painting the Cover of *The Gobblestone School*

This is what the cover of my new book The Gobblestone School looked like after I had just painted it. As you can see, I did the whole cover background – front, back, and spine – as one picture (click on the image to enlarge):