Athenian Nights

              Plato’s dialogues Sophist and Statesman are the only two works that seem to be part of a planned trilogy. In the very beginning of Sophist , it is asked whether the sophist, statesman, and philosopher are 3 different things or 3 different names of the same thing. It is easily decided that they are different, and the project is to define each to see in which way they differ. There is no dialogue entitled Philosopher , so either Plato wanted to write it and never got around to it, he did write it and it is lost to antiquity, or he left it open for us to explore on our own. I am no scholar, so my opinion here is laughably weak, but the most likely scenario seems to be the last one to me. These two dialogues are very heavy on metaphysics and tackle some big problems in philosophy under the innocent guise of merely attempting to define two terms. The problem is that these words are much more difficult to define ...

       Since I agree with the author of Qohelet and with Aristotle that there is nothing new under the sun, I have no problem repeating the old notion that sometimes a short book can proclaim as much, if not more truth and in a more beautiful than a sizeable tome. This happens to be the case with The Doors of the Sea by my favorite philosophical theologian, David Bentley Hart. This is a short work of only a little over 100 pages divided into 2 chapters with 5 sections each. Be that as it may, this book was definitely revolutionary for me – one of those rare books that actually changes your life and worldview. The way he does this is even more astonishing – the thing I find most compelling about most of Hart’s theological writing is that he really seems to embody the Orthodox teaching of tradition – that it is living and dynamic, not a static regurgitation of what others have said. What Hart discusses here is also nothing new; he is not attempting to respond to the p...

              This is the third novel from Dostoevsky that I have read out of the 16 he wrote. They keep getting better and better and I may end up reading his entire oeuvre. I read the P & V translation, which seemed pretty good to me. I haven’t read other translations and don’t know Russian so I can’t comment on the accuracy or aesthetics of the translation as compared to the original and others. I’ve heard good and bad things about all the translations, no one in particular seems to stand out to me. One thing I made sure to do was to avoid the introduction until after I finished the book – which was a good idea. I already had that spoiled when I read the P & V translation of Anna Karenina . I did make a mistake, however, when I peered at the blurb on the back of the book when I was about ¾ of the way through. It completely spoiled the ending – that’s the only major gripe I had of this version of the book. Just b...