There is an advantage to asking silly questions: they never have simple answers. How we solve the problem of suffering is a prime example, for the question is almost impossible to interpret. But as I sat in the corner of a packed lecture hall, listening to the idle clatter of a philosophical combat that veeredContinue reading “Proceedings of the Pain Debate”
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Smatterings of the Philosopher’s Stone – Chapter 2, part 5: Religio Medici, I
When I came to writing this chapter, I had in my mind’s eye swathes of lofty exposition on Platonism and its heir Hermeticism; and I looked forward to it, and I was all the more sure because such good scholars have approached Browne with excellent histories of that philosophy. Only, the idea never left myContinue reading “Smatterings of the Philosopher’s Stone – Chapter 2, part 5: Religio Medici, I”
Smatterings of the Philosopher’s Stone – Chapter 2, part 4 – Broadmindedness
In the nineteenth section of Religio Medici we find the physician in a striking pose. It is so ludicrous, yet so thoroughly representative, that we feel as though we might at last have found the secret double spring of his sanity and his insanity. He appears before us as an exhaustive scholar, an inexpert layman,Continue reading “Smatterings of the Philosopher’s Stone – Chapter 2, part 4 – Broadmindedness”
Smatterings of the Philosopher’s Stone – Chapter 2, part 3: On Protestants and the Peace of the Church
The wonder of it is that, being a man of his time, the humble physician can call it ‘uncharitable to fall upon those popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs at the Bishop of Rome,’ or say that, not forgetting the ‘general charity he owes to humanity,’ he rather pities than hates ‘Turks, infidels’ and (most malignedContinue reading “Smatterings of the Philosopher’s Stone – Chapter 2, part 3: On Protestants and the Peace of the Church”
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