This
has been another interesting week, with a number of important meetings and
events, to say nothing of advances in basic research on the origins of the Just
Third Way and the opposing paradigm. Interestingly,
thanks to having come across the work of Dr. Julian Strube of Heidelberg
University (the one in Baden-Württemberg, not Ohio), we now have solid evidence
of what we only suspected before: the link between pre- and non-Marxist socialism
and “esoteric” philosophy that deviates substantially from (and often contradicts
outright) traditional Aristotelian-Thomism that underpins the Just Third Way.
While
we have been working hard to integrate Dr. Strube’s findings into our own
research (with all due credit given, of course — it looks really good and gives
greater credibility to cite a German professor at Heidelberg, even if he isn’t
a student prince), we’ve also been involved in more mundane happenings:
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| Dr. Stephen Chanderbhan |
• The Big News of the week is that
the Committee at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, has recommended Stephen
Chanderbhan, Ph.D., for tenure. Steve is
an Aristotelian-Thomist who has expressed interest in finding out more about
the Just Third Way, which is framed within the Aristotelian-Thomist natural law
tradition. He is also interested in the Justice University program.
• Speaking of the
Aristotelian-Thomist natural law tradition, the current blog series inspired by
Fulton J. Sheen’s 1943 book, Philosophies
at War, has been generating a great deal of interest. Readership of the blog has increased on the
average 300-500% while the series has been running. Research for the series has revealed that a
number of authorities cited by today’s “experts” in interpreting Catholic
social teaching (on which the Just Third Way is, in part, based) actually
contradict the natural law principles of Catholic social teaching at a profound
level, to say nothing of stating “facts” of dubious quality and that cannot be
verified.
• Much of this week has been
devoted to talks and meetings with Mr. William Mansfield of Louisville,
Kentucky, who came to Northern Virginia specifically for this purpose. While there have been a number of meetings
with potentially key people, the main focus has been on a possible Justice University event to
take place in April, geared toward surfacing new leaders among the
“Millennials” to spearhead the effort to establish and maintain the Just Third
Way.
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| Kallikles the Sophist |
• Recently we received a copy of
another rare Fulton Sheen book, Declaration
of Dependence (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Bruce Publishing Company, 1941). Not unexpectedly, this book, too, zeros in on
the problems associated with the shift away from the Aristotelian-Thomist
natural law basis of the social order, and toward what turns out to be just
another rehash of (the possibly apocryphal — Plato probably made him up to make a point) Kallikles the Sophist’s dictum that
“Might makes right.” As a number of
people from Mortimer Adler to Pope St. John Paul II have pointed out, a shift
away from the Intellect as the basis of the natural law (Aristotle’s position, lex ratio, “law is reason”) to the Will
(lex voluntas, “law is will”), seems
inevitably to lead to totalitarianism.
• CESJ’s latest book (makes a great
pre-Easter gift . . . obviously), Easter
Witness: From Broken Dream to a New Vision for Ireland, is available from Amazon
and Barnes
and Noble, as well as by special order from many “regular” bookstores. The book can also be ordered in bulk, which
we define as ten copies or more of the same title, at a 20% discount. A full case is twenty-six copies, and
non-institutional/non-vendor purchasers get a 20% discount off the $20 cover
price on wholesale lots ($416/case).
Shipping is extra. Send enquiries
to publications@cesj.org. An additional discount may be available for
institutions such as schools, clubs, and other organizations as well as
retailers.
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| YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR SMILE?!?!?!? |
• Here’s the usual announcement
about the Amazon Smile program,
albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing
it. To participate in the Amazon Smile
program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice Arlington.” If you type anything else, you will either
get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• We have had
visitors from 67 different countries and 56 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, Australia, Nigeria, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were “The Purpose of
Production,” “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Philosophies at War, I: The
Meaning and Purpose of Life,” “What Would Aquinas Do? — The Refugee Crisis,” and
“The Problem of Wealth, II: The Capitalist Solution.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
