Klik på en miniature for at gå til Google Books
Indlæser... The Common Mind: Politics, Society and Christian Humanism from Thomas More to Russell Kirk (udgave 2013)af Andre Gushurst-Moore
Work InformationThe Common Mind: Politics, Society and Christian Humanism from Thomas More to Russell Kirk af Andre Gushurst-Moore
Ingen Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
This book traces the theme of the sensus communis, inherited from the medievals, through the lives and writings of twelve literary figures in the modern age, ranging from Thomas More and Jonathan Swift to C. S. Lewis and Russell Kirk. It is this quality, argues the author, which, like natural law, serves as the bedrock of orthodoxy, of social and political order, and which, by its presence or absence, determines the nature of every society. The book is an altogether uncommon achievement: a rich, multivalent reading of our present cultural condition through a brilliant procession of literary portraits; and a critical work in the ongoing effort to recover a unity of life, of understanding, of principles--in short, a common mind. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsIngen
Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)261Religions Christian church and church work Church and the world; Social theology and interreligious relations and attitudesLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
Er det dig?Bliv LibraryThing-forfatter. |
In each essay, the thoughtful reader is introduced to new and erudite insights about key figures who have contributed to the common mind tradition, or Christian humanism. The commentaries on Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Russell Kirk deserve special commendation. Instead of a rather normative survey of Swift the satirist, the faith-based and enduring insights of the writer, and his “underlying religious assumptions,” and “distrust of intellectualism, rationalism and enthusiasm” are brilliantly outlined by Gushurst-Moore (p. 46). Swift, as a contributor to the larger patrimony of the common mind and advocate of self-restraint, becomes comprehensible, including the Swift “who anticipates Burke in asserting that if liberty is anything to be valued at all, it exists as a consequence of authority rather than in spite of it” (p. 60). In a similar vein, the essay on Johnson forces a reconsideration of the writer as a more thoroughgoing defender of the inherited tradition. The essays on Burke and Russell Kirk extol their respective contributions to Christian humanism. In effect, the essay on Burke refutes the arguments promoted by Robin by demonstrating that Burke was a defender of “traditional Christian humanism” (p. 82) premised upon a proper conception of the natural law. With Russell Kirk, Gushurst-Moore’s exegesis concentrates upon the thinker’s underappreciated fiction as a defense of the common mind.
Overall, Gushurst-Moore has advanced our understanding of Burke and the inherited tradition. The only weaknesses that would deserve emendation concern his criticisms of Luther, with an emphasis upon Luther’s view of transubstantiation (p. 33), and Gushurst-Moore’s neglect of important Protestant contributors to Christian humanism beyond T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis. In the first instance, his characterization of Luther (pp. 26, 28, 33, 34, and 37) is contradicted by recent scholarship. A closer examination of Luther’s sacramental theology suggests that while he criticized the prevailing view of transubstantiation, he always believed in a real presence, and later Lutheran confessional statements also demonstrate support for an eucharistic theology that proximates transubstantiation. Second, the addition of essays on the eminent Protestant philosophers of the common mind like Lynn Harold Hough and Bernard Iddings Bell would have enhanced the volume by presenting a more complete survey of 20th century contributors to Christian humanism.