Interesting, unusual, and good choice with G.K., paradoxically yours; thanks, well done Jon.
Your post got me to explore him a little: 12,000+ pages in his Delphi Complete Works!
A true, eccentric, British fruitcake with many calories of understanding—a physical body like Thomas Wolfe as big as his opus!
Good quotes from his novel, well aimed at the postmodern nonsense (“A House Built on Sand--Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science” Edited by Noretta Koertge)
Also, an early critic of Eugenics, although he toyed with joining the Fabians and remained friends with Eugenicist Shaw.
As a Voluntaryist (Aka, Anarchist etymologically defined as No Rulers)—and you as a “Christian Libertarian”—I wonder what you make of his writing for the British “War Propaganda Bureau” such war mongering pieces as “The Barbarism of Berlin”?
Whatever, I get the sense G.K. was an equal opportunity offender as I am, and would never join any club, along with Groucho and me, that would have us.
Here is interesting account of him on YouTube: The Outline of Sanity, Thom Willis
I think Chesterton was taking aim at people and outfits like the Fabians, Theosophy (Blavatsky), Rudolf Steiner and so on. These would be considered ‘modern’ in a broad sense. Postmodernism is a post-WW2 development that took aim at their various certainties.
I think he was taking aim at the Fabians and other socialist groups (though Marx was unlikely know to GK), but he was attacking their ideas more than their politics, and their ideas were clearer postmodern.
It's true that Chesterton never would have described the ideas he was attacking as "postmodern," which was not yet a formalized philosophy and wouldn't be for decades. But the ideas underpinning postmodernism--skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason--are precisely what Chesterton was poking at.
This only makes the book more brilliant, imo. Chesterton saw se
where this philosophy was taking us, and he clearly understood the insidious nature of a philosophy still in the womb.
Interesting, unusual, and good choice with G.K., paradoxically yours; thanks, well done Jon.
Your post got me to explore him a little: 12,000+ pages in his Delphi Complete Works!
A true, eccentric, British fruitcake with many calories of understanding—a physical body like Thomas Wolfe as big as his opus!
Good quotes from his novel, well aimed at the postmodern nonsense (“A House Built on Sand--Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science” Edited by Noretta Koertge)
Also, an early critic of Eugenics, although he toyed with joining the Fabians and remained friends with Eugenicist Shaw.
As a Voluntaryist (Aka, Anarchist etymologically defined as No Rulers)—and you as a “Christian Libertarian”—I wonder what you make of his writing for the British “War Propaganda Bureau” such war mongering pieces as “The Barbarism of Berlin”?
Whatever, I get the sense G.K. was an equal opportunity offender as I am, and would never join any club, along with Groucho and me, that would have us.
Here is interesting account of him on YouTube: The Outline of Sanity, Thom Willis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1o7Q7Zj4tg
A wise quote of his I pass on often: “The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.”
Keep safe and free of rulers.
Not familiar with his bellicose writings, but will check them out.
Chesterton was a good philosopher and a great writer, but he had some bad political/economic ideas.
His economic ideas on what he called Distributism were half-baked and very silly, imo.
I think Chesterton was taking aim at people and outfits like the Fabians, Theosophy (Blavatsky), Rudolf Steiner and so on. These would be considered ‘modern’ in a broad sense. Postmodernism is a post-WW2 development that took aim at their various certainties.
I think he was taking aim at the Fabians and other socialist groups (though Marx was unlikely know to GK), but he was attacking their ideas more than their politics, and their ideas were clearer postmodern.
It's true that Chesterton never would have described the ideas he was attacking as "postmodern," which was not yet a formalized philosophy and wouldn't be for decades. But the ideas underpinning postmodernism--skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason--are precisely what Chesterton was poking at.
This only makes the book more brilliant, imo. Chesterton saw se
where this philosophy was taking us, and he clearly understood the insidious nature of a philosophy still in the womb.