Saturday, January 15, 2011

Chesterton On Hard Thinking

Students of popular science... are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism.
The full context is in Chapter VIII of Orthodoxy. One of his central contentions is that the truisms of our age - he wrote a century ago, but the philosophical climate of the intellectuals then is similar to the popular climate now - are in fact untrue. That are not inaccurate because they are oversimplified cliches, but because they are backward, the reverse of the truth. We hide our thoughts behind ill-defined words, so that we can pretend what we say is kind, brave, and open-minded, when we are really mean of spirit and make excuses for tyrants.

Also, he kicks Shaw, which always makes me happy.

2 comments:

Kitten said...

I'm having a terrible time finding anything by Chesterton at the library or used book shops. Are they out of print, or am I just not trying hard enough?

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Don't know. You can get a fair bit online, though.