Bram Rawlings > Recent Status Updates

Finished the chapter on Robert Owen and New Harmony. 19th century America just keeps getting weirder and weirder the more I learn about it.

Every now and then, when I feel I’m becoming too conservative, I’ll read books like this. The value is that it reminds me of my blind spots. It’s also an exercise in interpreting an author charitably.

But so far it’s a lot of strawmanning. He’s reacting to a Christianity that he grew up with but I did not.

If I stay motivated, I’m gonna write a book review and submit it somewhere. Asking everyone on here to hold me accountable

Reading on the plane to ATL

Unfortunately he defends infralapsarianism

Now reading the Lattimore translation

“For a wish for friendship arises swiftly, but friendship itself does not.” Didn’t expect Aristotle to hit me in the gut like that

I forgot I read a good chunk of this two months ago

“If any object is lovable so far as it is beautiful and good, as Dionysus remarks… surely God, who is the very essence of beauty and goodness, cannot be gazed at without love. Therefore perfect vision is followed by perfect love.”

Also, I need to chew more on Aquinas’s argument that divine simplicity makes possible the union of our intellect with the divine essence apart from any mediation.

Started with the last section, “Hope and Prayer”

Read “The Acharnians”