Doctor Faustus

  After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre I'll start by saying I found this book truly valuable and illuminating. I'll divide my observations about it to two sections, the first about its criticisms of dominant ethical stances as well as the social sciences. The second about the solution it proposes, its version of virtue ethics. In the beginning of the book MacIntyre essentially compares the state of ethics in modern society to the premise of A Canticle for Leibowitz. The idea is that there was a catastrophic cataclysm of a sort that rendered ideas that were once intelligible, comprehensible, logical null. A weird state like the premise of A Canticle for Leibowitz ( which I wrote a blog post on ), in which we possess fragments of knowledge about the past, but we are also in a state of semiotic confusion about the meaning of the terms and why they are there in the first place (like how a scholar in the aforementioned novel believed Capek's R.U.R is in f...

  A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch "A History of Christianity" is a massive historical overview. A thousand pages depicting the long history of Christianity from its cultural roots in ancient Judaism and classical civilizations all the way to our day and age. For this reason whatever thoughts I can compose here cannot summarize it, the vast multitude of subjects and ideas would render that task futile. Rather, I'll discuss a couple of observations, ones I found among the most interesting and enlightening. One such observation that I found fascinating was the relationship between Christianity and earthly political power. Christianity's very conception of theological orthodoxy was molded by its partnership with Roman imperial authority, the Emperor present in ecumenical councils and subsequently lending his violent military power to the enforcement of the resulting conclusion of the council. When Julian attempted to under...