Doug Bruns

Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’

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Thursday Grace Notes

In Books, Death, Philosophy, The Examined Life, The infinity of ideas, Thinkers, Wisdom on April 29, 2010 at 1:20 pm

There is a phrase that caught my eye in a book I’m reading: “…the search for lives lived as art.” It comes from the biography of the Renaissance writer, artist, and builder, Leo Battista Alberti, by Anthony Grafton. Grafton is commenting on the observation of a previous Alberti biographer, Jacob Burckhardt. The full passage reads: “Burckhardt saw the full aesthetic development of personality as the Renaissance’s highest creative work; the search for lives lived as art, rather than a precise analysis of texts.” Lives lived as art–I love that.

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-A SHORT HISTORY OF AN IDEA-

Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you. ~ Confucius (551 – 479BC)

Do not do to others that which angers you, when done to you. ~ Isocrates (Greek philosopher, 436 – 338 BC)

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. ~ Jesus Christ (Luke 6:31)

Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you. ~ Muhammad (570 – 632)

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At dinner with friends last night, we were talking about the passage of time and that it has been six months since our friends got their new dog. “Six months!” I blurted out. Then, perhaps because of an excess of wine, I remarked: “Six months closer to death.” I was met with blank stares and gaping mouths. Note to self: Just because I think it’s an important concept, does not mean I can stomp all over the conversation. And on that note: “Death is not an event in life.” ~ Wittgenstein

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And lastly, I’ve been going through some old journals and found this passage from December, 1980: “The solution to the problems of modernity are usually thought to be: God, democracy, socialism, sex, art, family, economic growth. But these in fact are the problems, not the solution.” I still wrestle with this problem, “the solution to the problems of modernity,” and am disappointed that in thirty years I’ve made no progress.

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Truth?

In Philosophy, Religion, The Examined Life, Thinkers, Truth on February 7, 2010 at 5:51 pm

“Ye shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

“I have never believed in the power of truth in itself.”

Quote number one, a first-century desert prophet. Number two, a twentieth-century French philosopher. Both quotes were directed to a people subjugated, living in an occupied country, itching for insurrection. (The second quote was written in an essay to a “German Friend” in July 1943. To put it in context, Camus continued: “But it is at least worth knowing that when expressed forcefully truth wins out over falsehood.”)

But what of truth? Or is that Truth? As a philosopher professor drilled into us, Define your terms. What is t/Truth? Socrates held truth a thing to be pursued, not discovered. I like that idea. It takes it off the mount and puts it in the streets. But then he was convicted of “corrupting the youth” and sentenced to death. (My, how we protect our children.) Will the pursuit of truth get a person killed? Some hold (those without all the suffocating theological tendrils, in particular) that the desert prophet died in pursuit of Socratic motivation, the pursuit of truth. But I think, more likely, he was too close to preaching insurrection. It was politics; but another forty years would pass before it would come to pass: the insurrection. That lead only to the diaspora, not freedom.

But knowing the Truth and being free on account of that knowledge is a very inviting prospect to a people living in bondage. Not to go too far astray, the juxtaposition of these two ideas I find elegant in their opposition. One, knowledge of t/Truth as salvation. The other t/Truth as impotence without force. I look to history for reconciliation. How else would one possibly proceed?