May we ask you to post some links to your articles detailing these breakthroughs? And many thanks for your inspiring writing; I have recently discovered this website and I visit often.
Kristor's a real treasure! I enjoy his comments at my blog, too.
This has pretty much been the defining intellectual year of my life. I think, in fact, that I may have reached the natural conclusion of all my personal intellectual development. Becoming a Catholic was the defining triumph, but embracing Christian reaction was important, too. Looking back on the early posts of my blog (started around March of 2011) I am amazed how far I came; the importance of God and religion simply didn't register to me, and I was deeply in thrall to modern presuppositions, though I was in recovery.
My biggest personal breakthrough was realizing that people hold nothing for me. Whereas trees, birds, animals, weather do. And the embracing comfort of the Divine, manifested through all of the above non-human entities.
21 December 2011 at 16:48
PhilR said...
The sheer explanatory power of the Aristotelian-Thomist synthesis, partly as explained by Ed Feser and others. Just beginning to unwrap that one!
I've typically done most of my hard thinking during the winter, and a progress report at this point seems premature. So I'll defer my answer until the spring.
Things that seem significant now might look utterly foolish or trivial by then. This wouldn't surprise me at all. Lord knows, I'm inclined to the foolish and the trivial.
21 December 2011 at 23:51
Anonymous said...
OK, technically I figured this out 4-5 years ago, but recent events have called it to mind: the 7 deadly sins are really, really bad for people. It causes smug chuckling among the enlightened to say so, but it remains true. Speaking as a pure materialist here. If nothing else, one can look at Roman Catholicism as a really successful set of ideas which derives its success via natural selection. There's a reason there aren't any ophites left.
24 December 2011 at 10:41
Anonymous said...
I'm relatively new to this particular game; before last January, I didn't have a stable enough situation to think much about anything, so just about everything I've done is from this year. Most importantly, I went from being a 'constitutional conservative' with a tendency toward things like Front Porch Republic to... whatever I am now, which is at least out of the liberal paradigm.
24 December 2011 at 15:07
Catherine said...
4. Understanding Christianity as the completion of paganism and the reality of animism - especially from considering the medieval universe as set-out by C.S Lewis.
This was a big one for me - and reading this blog was a huge part of it. Thank you!
This was also the year that I finally understood Charles Williams (mostly...)
24 December 2011 at 18:57
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Some things that spring to mind (all are linked):
1. Properly engaging with the ideas of Rupert Sheldrake - accepting the metaphysical value of morphic fields and morphic resonance.
2. Relating morphic fields to the nature and activities of angels.
3. Understanding the relationship between Time and Eternity as set out in Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy. Consequently, understanding the retrospective effects of prayer and the way that prayers for the dead can be conceptualized.
4. Understanding Christianity as the completion of paganism and the reality of animism - especially from considering the medieval universe as set-out by C.S Lewis.
*
All of the above were helped, behind the scenes, by e-mail interchanges with a new penfriend of 2011 - commenter Kristor.
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Any other lists of personal breakthroughs 2011 from commenters?
"Personal intellectual breakthroughs of 2011"
9 Comments -
May we ask you to post some links to your articles detailing these breakthroughs? And many thanks for your inspiring writing; I have recently discovered this website and I visit often.
21 December 2011 at 16:04
Kristor's a real treasure! I enjoy his comments at my blog, too.
This has pretty much been the defining intellectual year of my life. I think, in fact, that I may have reached the natural conclusion of all my personal intellectual development. Becoming a Catholic was the defining triumph, but embracing Christian reaction was important, too. Looking back on the early posts of my blog (started around March of 2011) I am amazed how far I came; the importance of God and religion simply didn't register to me, and I was deeply in thrall to modern presuppositions, though I was in recovery.
21 December 2011 at 16:30
My biggest personal breakthrough was realizing that people hold nothing for me. Whereas trees, birds, animals, weather do. And the embracing comfort of the Divine, manifested through all of the above non-human entities.
21 December 2011 at 16:48
The sheer explanatory power of the Aristotelian-Thomist synthesis, partly as explained by Ed Feser and others. Just beginning to unwrap that one!
21 December 2011 at 18:53
I've typically done most of my hard thinking during the winter, and a progress report at this point seems premature. So I'll defer my answer until the spring.
Things that seem significant now might look utterly foolish or trivial by then. This wouldn't surprise me at all. Lord knows, I'm inclined to the foolish and the trivial.
21 December 2011 at 23:51
OK, technically I figured this out 4-5 years ago, but recent events have called it to mind: the 7 deadly sins are really, really bad for people. It causes smug chuckling among the enlightened to say so, but it remains true. Speaking as a pure materialist here. If nothing else, one can look at Roman Catholicism as a really successful set of ideas which derives its success via natural selection. There's a reason there aren't any ophites left.
24 December 2011 at 10:41
I'm relatively new to this particular game; before last January, I didn't have a stable enough situation to think much about anything, so just about everything I've done is from this year. Most importantly, I went from being a 'constitutional conservative' with a tendency toward things like Front Porch Republic to... whatever I am now, which is at least out of the liberal paradigm.
24 December 2011 at 15:07
4. Understanding Christianity as the completion of paganism and the reality of animism - especially from considering the medieval universe as set-out by C.S Lewis.
This was a big one for me - and reading this blog was a huge part of it. Thank you!
24 December 2011 at 18:38
Thanks Catherine.
This was also the year that I finally understood Charles Williams (mostly...)
24 December 2011 at 18:57