Who Are We? The Mystery of “The Self”

By |2019-07-10T23:22:52-05:00October 5th, 2017|Categories: Culture, Family, George Stanciu, Nature, Philosophy, Religion, St. John's College|

Every person we meet in ordinary, daily affairs is part human and part divine, a storytelling self, often confused, dislikable, and in pain, but always transient; and a mysterious self, deathless, an image of God, worthy of unconditional love… The Buddha, at the age of thirty-five, preached his first sermon to five ascetics, his old [...]

The Divine Element Within

By |2021-05-18T12:15:03-05:00June 26th, 2017|Categories: Art, Existence of God, Featured, George Stanciu, Intelligence, Music, Poetry, Reason, Religion, Science, St. John's College, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|

In Modernity, the capacity for effortless knowing is denied, ignored, or misunderstood. As a result, the origin of all knowledge is taken as unaided human effort and activity. The Two Modes of the Mind If we lack a word for an experience, we obviously cannot talk to others about it, and the experience, no matter [...]

The Best Moments of Human Life

By |2021-05-18T12:48:02-05:00May 30th, 2017|Categories: Culture, Family, Featured, George Stanciu, Philosophy, St. John's College, Time|

We find joy when we lose the self in activity, in those good things that are outside ourselves: making art, doing science, playing sports, educating the young, or caring for the old and disabled. Joy is nature’s way of telling us that we are fulfilling our nature. Even a cursory glance at the interior life [...]

Our Post-Truth Society: Dooming Democracy?

By |2021-05-18T15:19:42-05:00April 10th, 2017|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Donald Trump, Featured, George Stanciu, Politics, Presidency, St. John's College, Technology, Truth|

In the post-truth society, your facts are not my facts, and lies by political figures are greeted with indifference. Judged by past standards, citizens of a post-truth society have no real experience and no capacity for critical thinking. We Americans have virtually no interest in history; for us, the past pales in comparison with the [...]

The Fetters of “Free Thought”

By |2021-05-18T15:40:10-05:00March 19th, 2017|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Culture, Democracy in America, Featured, Freedom, George Stanciu, Philosophy, St. John's College|

Since American culture tells us that all individuals are equal and that we can recognize the truth just as well as the next person, we think that we have no need to seek guidance from others, even acknowledged masters. We Americans so firmly believe that each one of us has freely chosen our own way [...]

Homo Sapiens: The Unfinished Animal

By |2021-05-18T15:33:16-05:00February 28th, 2017|Categories: Civil Society, Education, Featured, Freedom, George Stanciu, History, Intelligence, Love, Philosophy, St. John's College|

No animal except Homo sapiens has any choice in what life to live. Having a vastly richer interior life, we humans must struggle to find an excellent way of living, and we must recognize the most fundamental principle of human life: By nature every person is meant to love and be loved. I don’t know about [...]

Will the Wicked Be Punished?

By |2021-05-18T15:58:36-05:00January 15th, 2017|Categories: Aristotle, Capitalism, Christianity, Civil Society, George Stanciu, Justice, Morality, St. John's College|

To shun wickedness, to care for our souls, and to love one another without looking for rewards, if followed by all, would turn injustice, now a constant companion of human life, into a stranger. In his 2005 masterpiece, Match Point, Woody Allen explores moral failing in a universe governed by chance, or what the protagonist [...]

Individualism: The Root Error of Modernity

By |2021-05-18T16:46:18-05:00November 7th, 2016|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Family, Featured, George Stanciu, Modernity, Philosophy, St. John's College|

Alexis de Tocqueville, while traveling through the dense woods in Michigan, in 1831, came across a pioneer and his family, making the “first step toward civilization in the wilds.”[1] He noted in his travel diary that “from time to time along the road one comes to new clearings. As all these settlements are exactly like [...]

The Copernican Revolution: The Defining Event of Modernity

By |2020-08-03T14:43:23-05:00November 2nd, 2016|Categories: George Stanciu, Modernity, Science, St. John's College|

The Copernican Revolution elevated the scientist above the stars, planets, and Earth to a position of the highest being in the cosmos. The Myth Like most, if not all religions, science has a creation myth that proclaims a new cosmic situation. The Copernican myth tells how science began and, like all myths, is recited again [...]

Looking for God in Modernity

By |2021-05-19T10:21:21-05:00October 15th, 2016|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Existence of God, George Stanciu, Modernity, Philosophy, St. John's College|

To understand the concept of God in Modernity, I first turned to the high point of Christianity in both the East and West. According to patristic tradition, God can be known in two ways. Cataphatic, or rational, knowledge defines God by positive statements; apophatic knowledge is direct experience of God, although such knowledge cannot be [...]

Atheism: Disproved by Science?

By |2021-05-19T10:46:55-05:00September 9th, 2016|Categories: Atheism, Existence of God, George Stanciu, Science, St. John's College|

I, like you, was born in the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hindu mythology, when all the great faiths of the world are on the wane. The secular faith in the Nation-State, in grand schemes to institute Paradise on Earth, and in placing transcendent hope in human institutions has been destroyed by history. No [...]

Life in the Image-World

By |2019-09-05T12:54:46-05:00August 23rd, 2016|Categories: Character, Civil Society, Culture, Featured, Film, George Stanciu, History, Information Age, Modernity, St. John's College, Technology, Television|

Recently, I went with a group of friends to a concert of American choral music based on black spirituals. At the intermission, my friends and I spoke excitedly about what we experienced. The sole musician amongst us praised the balance of the ensemble and the conductor’s energy. One woman noticed how nervous the lead soprano [...]

Nihilism, American-Style

By |2021-05-19T11:00:51-05:00August 14th, 2016|Categories: Democracy in America, Featured, George Stanciu, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, St. John's College|

Old-World nihilism belongs to a handful of intellectuals persuaded by philosophical arguments that human knowledge, on the whole, is worthless as a reliable guide for living. Consider Heinrich von Kleist, the nineteenth century dramatist and short-story writer, who became intellectually unglued when he read Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason. In a letter to [...]

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