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D. T. Sheffler

D. T. Sheffler

D. T. Sheffler

Sometimes, people are hampered by a certain intimidation factor when it comes to difficult texts. They feel that they are too uneducated, haven’t read such-and-such books that ought to come before, need the for-dummies introductory version, and need someone to hold their hand while offering them a glass of milk.

If you can read a text breezily, in a reclining position, with a cocktail in one hand, and come away with confident assurance that you have understood every single thing the author has said, then that text is probably not worth your time. It might be good as pure, time-filling entertainment, but you may as …

While paling in comparison to the achievement of that final goal and worthless without it, the refinement of a cultured life is nevertheless a worthy pursuit. Ideally, as we see so compellingly illustrated in Newman’s own life, the refinement of culture serves as a kind of superadded halo around the halo of holiness, a fringe …

Versions of our future are “out there,” a set of determinate options, some objectively better and some objectively worse. We have the freedom to select from among the cards in the deck, but we can do nothing about the deck itself. Nothing about the cards comes from us, only the act of selection. This freedom-as-selection …

The Good, therefore, is something that can never be properly known or understood by intellect because it is prior to the very conditions of intelligibility. This understanding of the Good has strong affinities with the apophatic traditions of many religions, and because of this, Platonic texts are often appropriated in this context to forward the …

A dark Cathedral with prayer candles.

The eternalist–temporalist debate is ill-named. From this terminology, one would assume that the debate is between those who assert that God is eternal and those who assert that he is not. Most temporalists, however, do assert that God is eternal, they merely wish to dispute what this eternity is like. They maintain that God is …

Black and white photo of a crowd

As Aristotle observed, man is a political animal. In the limited cases of feral children (none of which have been truly and completely separated from the human community), we see the devastating effects that isolation has upon the individual. Such children fail to develop even the basic capacities characteristic of a proper human existence and …

A suit hanging from a door knob by a hanger.

There is something extremely mundane about this foundational element of all culture, but there is also something excitingly cosmic. In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien famously explains the concept of “subcreation.” He argues that imaginative authors act like God when they create worlds of beauty, meaning, and story. Extending Tolkien’s concept (beyond what …

Wisdom involves two elements: (i) gaining insight into the way of things, that is, the objective structure of reality or what the Greeks would call the Logos, and (ii) learning to shape our lives in conformity with this objective order.

Library books

How do I know what to read? If I have not read a book before, how do I know whether it will be any good? After all, reading a book, especially if I read it well, is a significant investment of hours. Every time I commit to reading one book, I am simultaneously choosing, by …