Category: Religion
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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May 26, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Last week’s blog (https://hmu.edu/2023-5-19-reading-rabelais-part-i/) used Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel as the foundation to connect with contemporary works. Today’s blog continues in the same vein, connecting the old with the new. As I said before, however, Rabelais is not easy reading. The language feels …
January 13, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Readers of Euripides might suspect that he disliked gods and heroes. For example, The Bacchae makes Dionysus appear like a megalomaniac. Hippolytus presents Aphrodite as a ruthless gamer. And in Heracles, the great hero returns from war only to brutally murder his family. …
July 29, 2022 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s blog. As I understand it, more than two hundred and fifty translations of the Tao te Ching exist. Looking for a chance to study language, poetry, and translation, I decided to compare a handful of versions of the Tao. Though there are a number …
July 22, 2022 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Last week, we discussed C.S. Lewis’s “Meditation in a Toolshed” and the beginning of St. Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogium. Though different in both tone and purpose, these pieces fit very well together in discussion. Proslogium begins with an explanation of its title, which …
July 15, 2022 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. In studying up on St. Anselm of Canterbury for the July Quarterly Discussion, I keep thinking of the song “Sigh No More” by Mumford & Sons. The song repeats the idea that the heart cries out to be pure, to be what it …
March 4, 2022 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Literature is full of blind prophets. Today’s blog opens the door to better understanding this often-used literary device. Characters who display temporary or permanent blindness represent a number of possibilities in literature. They might be able to see more than the average person, …
November 19, 2021 Thanks to A. Calhoun, a 2021 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post. Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism is the work of a great reconciler. These figures appear when some new body of knowledge, when some great insight or edifice of thought must be reconciled with the Christian Tradition. …
October 9, 2020 Thanks to Taiwo Olanrewaju-Lasisi, a 2020 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post. Ancient philosophies and concepts in humanities, especially regarding ethical values and moral principles, have served as a primitive herald and landmark on which many ethics in the field are built upon. Justice, fairness, integrity, honesty, individual freedom and liberty, …
December 6, 2019 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Augustine explores both healthy and unhealthy curiosity in The Confessions. He writes: “We can easily distinguish between the motives of pleasure and curiosity. When the senses demand pleasure, they look for objects of visual beauty, harmonious sounds, fragrant perfumes, and things that are …
May 31, 2019 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, intellectualism is defined as a “devotion to the exercise of intellect or to intellectual pursuits.” Max Weber coined the term in the early 1900s, in which he stresses the importance of “technical means and calculation.” What exactly is …
