The Best Conversation I've Heard on AI and Pedagogy Recommended: the work of Anastasia Berg

My latest post: what I learned from an excellent interview with Anastasia Berg.
How can we reach students who have never developed the capacities liberal education takes for granted?

Good. More please.

We're going to be tired of winning.
(It passed)

The Logic of the Itinerarium: Chapter 1b (§10-15) From Sense Powers to Self-Return

My latest:
"One who cannot see the vestiges of God 'in created things' is blind, deaf, and mute... By contrast, if one fully appropriates the implications of one’s senses and the world they contain, the natural culmination is doxology. 'Unlock your lips… lest the entire world rise up against you.'"

The Logic of the Itinerarium: Chapter 1a (§1-9) Ascending and Descending on Jacob's Ladder

The latest in my series on the Itinerarium, in which I discuss the problems raised by the work’s structure—clear as it might seem at first.

“The work seems to be zeroing in on an Incarnational center, finding in the hypostatic union the most wondrous site of sustained contradiction."

A new series begins...
"In opening Bonaventure’s Itinerarium, as in all the great classics of the genre, we find ourselves confronted not with the spiritual journey of a particular pilgrim but the universal odyssey of Soul."

Yes

That's just Opus Dei

Excellent, for sure. But accessible? Not sure... it's pretty dense! We're doing a reading group here at Assumption soon. It may also depend on which edition as they are substantively different.

I dreamed that I was back at Hillsdale College for an Honors Program annual retreat and they had Jamelle Bouie as one of the professors.

That was Jim Stephens and George Angell

Damn I forgot the Rhetorical Psychoanalysis of Paul

- an independent study on Balthasar's Barth book
- Interstellar Travel
- A course entirely about the movie My Dinner With Andre
- Epicureanism
- Weightlifting

screenshot of text from Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: "The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive - because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force."

bars

I'm the weird person who agrees with the second tweet here but not the first.

Welcome, it's a good age to be.

My latest: substacktools.com/sharex/0cKSx...

How Did We Get Here (From Plato)? The Speculative Aristotle: Part II

My latest post:
We get clear on Plato’s so-called “unwritten doctrines,” which Aristotle will revise and perfect.
We also learn how Plato’s commitment to idealism and the status of myth in his corpus.
open.substack.com/pub/awildlog...

The Speculative Aristotle Part I: Towards a Revisionary Reading

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Aristotle is a speculative thinker of the highest caliber. I reflect here on the obstacles that prevent us from appreciating the depth of his thinking

He need not be seen in theological, mystical, and speculative circles as Plato’s junior colleague.

Baby's first Know Your Enemy episode. Well, actually, we're wondering if he recognizes Sam and Matt's voices from in utero

Senator Kelly is correct.

Plus a Public Service Announcement:

KEY section of Department of Defense's Law of War Manual is 18.3.2.1.

The VERY rule on the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders gives as its paradigmatic example of what is "clearly illegal:
"orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."

If you are in Boston for AAR 2025, consider attending my paper in the Plato and Platonisms unit. That is, if Sarah has not given birth by then (it's just 3 days before the due date)!
Monday, November 24th 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM | Sheraton, Arnold Arboretum (Fifth Floor)

The Other Journal? IDK it's a bleak landscape

I have her book Babel and given my genre interests was hoping against my doubts it would be good. We will see, but this seems like a nay vote.

Good statement from the US conference of Catholic Bishops

The problem is that the Enlightenment, in its abstraction, is so allergic to dependence and mediation that it cannot pass through this initial moment.

I think that the goal of the Gospel of John is to overcome or sublate our relationship of dependence on God. Christ is a "vanishing mediator" upon whom we are initially dependent as something external but who wishes to become internal, at which point Enlightenment autonomy and independence occur.

BREAKING: Mark Wolf, appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, writes that he is resigning as a judge to have the freedom to speak out against the president's assault on the rule of law.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...