Just a graf from a longer, but useful, essay:
...In the modern world, we’re supposed to know that thinking about death is morbid. Bellarmine, the heir to both pagan and Christian wisdom, knew differently: “what folly can be imagined greater than to neglect that Art, on which depend our highest and eternal interests; whilst on the other hand we learn with great labor, and practice with no less ardor, other almost innumerable arts, in order either to preserve or to increase perishable things?”...
Bet you didn't know this, either:
...This is not solely a Christian concern, by the way. Classical scholars have come to realize how much several schools of ancient philosophy were really something like spiritual direction. In the Phaedo, Plato reports Socrates as saying “those who do philosophy right are preparing to die.”...
And all this time we were told that Economics is 'the dismal science.'
Are you really ready?
Bet you didn't know this, either...
ReplyDeleteYou'd lose that bet with me, Dad. :)