Liberty is not the default state for a society. Looking at 16th century Italy in The Prince and the early years of the Roman Republic in Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli amply demonstrates liberty was indeed a very tenuous thing. Regardless of whether authority in a country is nominally lodged in a prince or the people, liberty is always at risk. How, then, can a society achieve liberty? Having achieved it, how can liberty be preserved? Enter Machiavelli, who explains that since liberty does … [Read more...] about Is Liberty a Means or an End?
Great Books
Diseased Politics and Politicized Disease
“Why do you assume you have the right to decide for someone else? Don’t you agree it’s a terrifying right, one that rarely leads to good? You should be careful. No one’s entitled to it, not even doctors.”“But doctors are entitled to that right—doctors above all,” exclaimed Dontsova with deep conviction. By now she was really angry. “Without that right there’d be no such thing as medicine!” Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote that in Cancer Ward, first published in 1968. On the surface, the … [Read more...] about Diseased Politics and Politicized Disease
A Sweet and Virtuous Soul
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,The bridal of the earth and sky;The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,For thou must die.Sweet rose, whose hue angry and braveBids the rash gazer wipe his eye;Thy root is ever in its grave,And thou must die.Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,A box where sweets compacted lie;My music shows ye have your closes,And all must die.Only a sweet and virtuous soul,Like season'd timber, never gives;But though the whole world turn to coal,Then chiefly lives. … [Read more...] about A Sweet and Virtuous Soul
If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem
“Between grief and nothing I will take grief.”“If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem to my chief joy.”“When he saw the River again he knew it at once. He should have; it was now ineradicably a part of his past, his life; it would be a part of what he would bequeath, if that were in store for him. But four weeks later it would look different from what it did now and did: he (the old man) had recovered from his debauch, back in banks … [Read more...] about If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem
Dante’s Road Trip: Paradise
After his travels through Hell and Purgatory, Dante arrives at Heaven. O you, eager to hear more,who have followed in your little barkmy ship that singing makes its way, turn back if you would see your shores again.Do not set forth upon the deep,for, losing sight of me, you would be lost. (Hollander's translation) After the brilliant and rather visceral discussions in the first two parts of The Divine Comedy, the reader eagerly anticipates what Date will do with heaven. But then, in yet … [Read more...] about Dante’s Road Trip: Paradise
Dante’s Road Trip: Purgatory
If you mention Dante, most people who recognize the name instantly associate him with Inferno. It is actually quite surprising how few people even know that Inferno is just the first part of a larger work, The Divine Comedy. (I know this because we had a dog named Dante, so I had many occasions to discover that when people heard the name of the dog, they instantly mentioned Inferno, having no idea there was more to Dante. Proof by anecdote!) Dante tours Hell in part 1, but then in part 2 … [Read more...] about Dante’s Road Trip: Purgatory