Michael Martin's Blog, page 10

You Are Here: Nikolai Berdyaev Calls the Eschaton

For Nikolai Berdyaev, philosophy is many things, but it is in no way an academic exercise performed for one’s peers. The idea of conformity to the opinions of even a highly cultured group repelled him, as it always compromises the essential freedom of the philosopher who sells his birthright for a plate of lentils by appealing to the crowd, however sophisticated its opinions. Berdyaev holds that philosophy is primarily a creative act, and as such it must resist the temptation of acceptance promi...

The Transhumanist Gamble and the Rise of the New Romanticism

Im sure youve heard of The Fourth Industrial Revolution, probably the first revolution in history to come with a marketing team and implementation strategy. Thats because this revolution is a top-down phenomenon. It has nothing to do with a dissatisfied proletariat, an oppressed peasantry (the working poor to you and me), or a desired changed in the social order. Thats because the people proposing this alleged revolution are those at the top of the economic food chain, the 1% that...

The Blood of a Poet and the Magic Mead

I remember watching a television documentary on the Kennedys (this was probably in the 1970s, since I was in high school) and an interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who must have been in his twenties at the time. He was discussing his father’s state of soul following the assassination of the elder Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy. “He spent as lot of time reading the poets,” the young man said. That made a great impression upon me. My parents, working class Irish Catholics, did no...

iHuman: Transhumanism is Bullshit

Twenty years ago, I began my career as a college English professor, teaching an evening composition course at the Catholic liberal arts college I had attended as an undergraduate. The theme of my course was “Being Human,” and I used a reader by that same title and edited by Leon Kass, M.D. I loved the book, as it included selections from philosophy, mythology, the hard and social sciences, literature, and even science fiction. One of the science fiction selections was a chapter from Philip K. Di...

Prosopon: The Dream of the Face of God

The dream:

I am at church, waiting for a service to begin (but it’s not the Divine Liturgy). Fr. John is at the altar preparing something like a monstrance (which is odd, since we don’t use a monstrance in the Byzantine Rite). There is no iconostasis and almost all of the icons are covered in green duct tape; the only one not covered is a small icon of Christ. I don’t really want to sit anywhere (I feel estranged from everything) but find a seat to the side facing away. Fr. John comes over to ...

My Rosary

Well, I had to retire another rosary this week. It happens. Since I pray the rosary every day—sometimes while driving, sometimes in the house before everyone in my crowded house wakes up, sometimes in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, sometimes in the garden—I like to have one with me at all times. Since I’m both a scholar and a farmer, my pockets are a poor choice for a place to carry a rosary. Rosaries tend toward tangling in pockets anyway, but when in the company of loose change, p...

Lords of Misrule: A Meditation on Conviviality

I’m still pissed about Easter.

It seems so long ago that services for the Resurrection of the Lord were canceled as politicians wantonly issued edicts and bishops of every denomination rolled over and played dead. In short, both classes of authority showed their true colors. Then the Ascension, Pentecost, and even the secular holiday of Independence Day were canceled. Now, eight months into this experiment in social engineering, even more restrictions are being imposed, such as California G...

The Sophianic Reset

So it seems we are in the middle of The Great Reset. Don’t call me a conspiracy theorist. This plan has been out of the closet for some time, and the guys and dolls over at The World Economic Forum see the pandemic as the opportune time for its implementation. I’ve read their plan (you should, too), and though its rhetoric is equal parts alarmism and idealism, what lurks behind is a technocrat’s wet dream. The tragicomedy of NGO’s simultaneously lamenting and capitalizing on a pandemic with such...

Rudolf Steiner and Sophiology

Last week I had the extreme pleasure of giving a lecture to the Ann Arbor Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America. The original idea was to do it in person, but with COVID concerns and an ongoing construction project at the Society’s building, it was decided to go online in a Zoom format. Now, clearly, we all would have preferred in-person—the presence of soul available in person cannot be duplicated in an online environment, no matter how congenial; but we did what we had to do. Of co...

Nikolai Berdyaev on Freedom

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), the Russian expatriate religious philosopher and radical thinker, was the first philosopher I ever read intently and exhaustively. As a college undergraduate, I had the great fortune of finding a teacher, a tremendously generous and open man named George Alcser, who could guide me through my halting steps on the way to being a philosopher (though I had no idea that’s what I was doing at the time). George gave me tutorials on a number of subjects—Classical and mediev...