miniZibaldone

Ours is a decidedly non-philosophical, even anti-philosophical, age. This is not to say that we lack “philosophers,” of a certain sort; indeed, we have only too many. There is probably no age in history that has as many “professional philosophers” as we do, with scores of new PhDs waiting to compete for every slot that opens in the philosophy departments of scores upon scores of colleges and universities. Outside of the academy, we have an even greater array of “professional thinkers” of every sort. There is the novel phenomenon of the “think tank,” an institution whose employees are not paid to produce any tangible goods, but simply . . . to think. There is the rapidly growing sector of “white collar” labor, made up of those who work with their minds rather than with their hands, as do the “blue collar” workers. This sector includes, not only those whose thinking remains tied to industry in some respect—advertisement, management, and so forth—but those in more “liberal” fields, such...

I know what you mean about being repulsed by the Church when you have only the Jansenist-Mechanical Catholic to judge it by. I think that the reason such Catholics are so repulsive is that they don't really have faith but a kind of false certainty. They operate by the slide rule and the Church for them is not the body of Christ but the poor man's insurance system. It's never hard for them to believe because actually they never think about it. Faith has to take in all the other possibilities it can. Anyhow, I don't think it's a matter of wanting miracles. The miracles seem in fact to be the great embarrassment to the modern man, a kind of scandal. If the miracles could be argued away and Christ reduced to the status of a teacher, domesticated and fallible, then there'd be no problem. Anyway, to discover the Church you have to set out by yourself. The French Catholic novelists were a hero to me in this—Bloy, Bernanos, Mauriac. In philosophy, Gilson, Maritain an...

The expression "postsecular" does more than give public recognition to religious fellowships in view of the functional contribution they make to the reproduction of motivations and attitudes that are societally desirable. The public awareness of a post-secular society also reflects a normative insight that has consequences for the political dealings of unbelieving citizens with believing citizens. In the postsecular society, there is an increasing consensus that certain phases of the "modernization of the public consciousness" involve the assimilation and the reflexive transformation of both religious and secular mentalities. If both sides agree to understand the secularization of society as a complementary learning process, then they will also have cognitive reasons to take seriously each other's contributions to controversial subjects in the public debate. —Jürgen Habermas

It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some thing if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea  would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, anyone can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. . . . If some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wron...

The blind man who goes out at night between one o'clock  and four with another blind friend. Because like that they are sure of not meeting anyone in the street. If they bump into a lamppost, they can laugh in comfort. They do. Whereas by day, other people's pity prevents them from laughing. "I ought to write," says the blind man. "But no one's interested. What interests people in a book are the signs of a sorrowful existence. And our lives are never like that."   To write, one must always remain just this side of the words (rather than go beyond them). In any case, no gossip. The "real" experience of loneliness is one of the least literary there is — a thousand miles away from the idea of loneliness that you get from books. Cf. the degradation involved in all forms of suffering. One must not give in to emptiness. Try to conquer and "fulfill." Time — don't waste it. —Albert Camus

One need think about the entire world, need worry about Christianity in Africa and Asia, and not only busy oneself with daily occasions of disobedience and errors. . . .Only what is great, what is total, and what brings everything together can help a man put up with the humiliation of care for and attention to details. If one bears within him or herself a sense of the world, then he or she can remain in jail for his or her whole life with the fantastic serenity of a cloistered monk. Yet, if one has not within him or herself the vastness that human nature demands, then tackling the daily fatigue in the name of an energy one is supposed to possess becomes a grueling and exhausting work. —Luigi Giussani

Men are not egoists. They are not able to be. Their misfortune is in not being capable of it. God is the only egoist. Man can only approach a certain shadow of love for himself when he knows how to see himself as God’s creature, loved by God, redeemed by God. Otherwise a man cannot love himself. —Simone Weil