European Philosophy

In the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends changed the world. Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny, what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. The rulers of Europe had ordered their peoples how to think and act for too long. Based in the small German town of Jena, through poetry, drama, philosophy and science, they transformed the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. They were the first Romantics.

In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation.

Postmodernism has infiltrated the academy, including the Evangelical academy. Christians must not be intimidated or bullied when they are told they need to be less tied to dry things like "propositions" and "abstractions". But truth is truth. As Chesterton said, “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

Lecture des États multiples de l'être, de René Guénon (1932).

Das Wort “Renaissance” ist Französisch und bedeutet “Wiedergeburt”. Der Name bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum zwischen dem 14. und 17. Jahrhundert, als Europa ein ausgeprägtes Wiederaufkommen der klassischen Kunst, Bildung, Philosophie, Architektur und Naturwissenschaft erlebte. Die ehemaligen römischen Gebiete machten sich abermals die Schriften der antiken Griechen und Römer und die Idee des Humanismus zum Vorbild. Die Wiedergeburt dieser Kultur war ein Zeichen für das Ende des Mittelalters und den Anfang der Moderne.

Award-winning author Colm Tóibín turns his incisive gaze to three of the world's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce, and their earliest influences: their fathers. In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways they surface in their work.