Tag Archives: rationalism

Marilynne Robinson on Family

By chris | Published: 16 October 2009
Carrying on a series posts in which I snatch random fragments, magpie style, from Marilynne Robinson’s enchanting Death of Adam Essays I offer a couple of fragments from the Family essay. For some time we seem to have been launched on a great campaign to deromanticize everything, even while we are eager to insist that more [...]
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The Crawfords

By chris | Published: 15 October 2009
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments. Mansfield Park Preface Introduction Method Critiques The Moral Law Within Fanny and Edmund The Crawfords Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram Mrs Norris The Quiet Thing Enlightenment Kantian Deontology King Lear Romanticism The Satirical Inheritance Conclusion Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price 3.3 The Crawfords Worse still, because more vital in the book, is her constant deliberate weighting of the balance against [...]
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Fanny and Edmund

By chris | Published: 15 October 2009
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments. Mansfield Park Preface Introduction Method Critiques The Moral Law Within Fanny and Edmund The Crawfords Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram Mrs Norris The Quiet Thing Enlightenment Kantian Deontology King Lear Romanticism The Satirical Inheritance Conclusion Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price 3.2 Fanny and Edmund prig noun a self-righteously moralistic person Compact Oxford English Dictionary In any assessment of Mansfield Park it is important [...]
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Mansfield Park: Critiques

By chris | Published: 13 October 2009
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments. Mansfield Park Preface Introduction Method Critiques The Moral Law Within Fanny and Edmund The Crawfords Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram Mrs Norris The Quiet Thing Enlightenment Kantian Deontology King Lear Romanticism The Satirical Inheritance Conclusion Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price 3. Critiques This section analyses a selection of critiques of Mansfield Park under six headings. Next: The Moral Law Within
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The Moral Law Within

By chris | Published: 13 October 2009
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments. Mansfield Park Preface Introduction Method Critiques The Moral Law Within Fanny and Edmund The Crawfords Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram Mrs Norris The Quiet Thing Enlightenment Kantian Deontology King Lear Romanticism The Satirical Inheritance Conclusion Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price 3.1 The Moral Law Within Everyone agrees that Mansfield Park is an infamously moral book.  ‘One can almost hear the [...]
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Calvin and the Fall

By chris | Published: 12 October 2009
Paul Helm has an interesting series on John Calvin over at the Guardian CiF belief (part 1, part 2). I was first alerted to the subtlety of Calvin’s thought by Marilynne Robinson’s Death of Adam essays and this series of articles is consistent with what I remember from Robinson. John Calvin of course was supposed [...]
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Tariq Ramadan on Love and Detachment

By chris | Published: 8 October 2009
Tariq Ramadan has written a lovely article on Love and Detachment on his blog. Here is the message I have just written to him asking if what I have just written in makes any sense to him.
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Losing Our Minds

By chris | Published: 8 October 2009
Reading Antti Kauppinen’s ideas on moral philosophy (long version & encapsulation) and Marilyn Butler’s conclusion for Mansfield Park in Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975), I am reminded of a crucial mistake repeatedly made in moral philosophy that I can scarcely believe could be made by anyone with a religious training and commitment [...]
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Just War Concern Trolling

By chris | Published: 8 October 2009
Austen Ivereigh has posted an article at The Gurdian CiF arguing that Catholics can’t be pacifists, finishing: That is why Catholic teaching on war and peace is nowadays a combination of just war elements and a strong emphasis on nonviolence. In 1993 the US Catholic bishops summarised it like this: “1) In situations of conflict, our [...]
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Mansfield Park and King Lear

By chris | Published: 23 September 2009
My Mansfield Park essay (in progress) has led me to King Lear, and I thought I would sketch some of the connections between the two works. Much the clearest account I have come across is the brief summation by Jane Stabler in her introduction to the Oxford World Classics edition of Mansfield Park.  The basic outline [...]
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Rational Or Christian

By chris | Published: 22 September 2009
I have been using Marilyn Butler’s brilliant Jane Austen and the War of Ideas to write the essay on Mansfield Park and was reminded of this: In characterizing her heroine, Fanny, Jane Austen illustrates her idealogical disagreement with Maria Edgeworth.  Caroline Percy of Patronage, Belinda, Leonora, and other Edgeworth model characters, is essentially a rationalist.  Fanny [...]
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Love Follies Postscript

By chris | Published: 19 September 2009
In Love Follies I criticised a philosopher—a logician as it turns out—for pouring cold water over on a sharp critique of delusionary Romantic love.  I want to make it clear that I am not against poetic or even romantic love, being as susceptible to them as the next person, maybe more so.  What I find [...]
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Update and Happiness

By chris | Published: 18 September 2009
Delay in Posting I am sorry for yesterday’s posting drought and the delay in the next part of the Mansfield Park essay.  This is partly due to outside factors but mainly due to the length of time it is taking to write the main section of the essay.  That I should over-estimate my preparedness and underestimate [...]
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The Heart of Philosophy

By chris | Published: 26 August 2009
The comment thread on Mark Vernon’s fourth instalment of his Plato series has taken a most interesting turn. (My earlier post True Love discussed this article, arguing that it reflects a modern propensity to take a wilfully irrational approach to love and other related concepts.) Mark has responded to criticism in the comment thread to argue [...]
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