from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 76

Transcendence: True and False...

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 75

I apologize for the non-working link to the Richard Rodriguez article in my previous post of Part 74. The link has been removed.

Melanie Phillips

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 74

This excerpt begins with the 11th cassette tape of the Famished Craving series recorded in the mid-1990's where Gil Bailie gives a review of the last part of the 10th tape. So, there will be some repetition from the previous excerpt (part 73), however he brings some new material to this discussion and introduces further examples of the western world's loss of transcendence.

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 73

Continuing with the Dali Lama on discipleship...and...Freud on the hypnotic subject.

"We have moved from the world of happy admiration into the world of unhappy envy" - Soren Kierkegarrd

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 72

In this excerpt: from the Dali Lama's view of Master & Disciple - to Freud, hysteria and hypnosis....all in 10 minutes.

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 71

From hierarchy to discipleship

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 70

Without hierarchies, whether of grace or power, we fall into the crisis of distinctions where

...each thing meets in mere opugnancy - Wm. Shakespeare, Troilius & Cressida

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 69

Hierarchy of grace or of power...

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 68

Can there be transcendence without hierarchy?

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 67

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 66

Mentioned in this excerpt, Crossing the Threshold of Hope by John Paul II

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 65

the Imitation of Christ...

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 64

“My heart laments that virtue cannot live out of the teeth of emulation”
Artemidorus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar - Act 2 scene 3

From the Archives: Famished Craving - Pt 63

Continuing with Robespierre in the role of the martyr as his own sacred executioner; and also continuing "What happens when there are too many 'Alexanders'?"

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 62

Post-modern nihilism's distant mirror - the French Revolution

In this excerpt Gil Bailie references the following texts:




The Sorrows of Young Werther - by Goethe
(this is a public web version from Project Gutenberg)

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 61

Can there be an exception to the rule that finds no basis in the unanchored, self-validating human mind for shared social norms? Carl Schmitt and decisionism.

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 60

Is it true that much as one may appeal to universal rationality as supplying the content of ethics, universally shared norms cannot be distilled from the unanchored, self-validating human mind?

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 59

With this excerpt the Famished Craving series begins tape #9 - so Gil starts with a bit of a review and then picks up where he left off at the end of tape #8 with Leo Braudy's comments:

"Alexander was bent on defying any order that he had not created himself"

"What happens when there are too many Alexanders?"

Referenced in this excerpt and the one to follow is a W H Auden poem, Law, Like Love:

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.

Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,
Expounding to an unpriestly people,
Law is the words in my priestly book,
Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,
Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I've told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:
Law is neither wrong nor right,
Law is only crimes
Punished by places and by times,
Law is the clothes men wear
Anytime, anywhere,
Law is Good morning and Good night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;
Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.

And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more
Than they about the Law,
If I no more than you
Know what we should and should not do
Except that all agree
Gladly or miserably
That the Law is
And that all know this
If therefore thinking it absurd
To identify Law with some other word,
Unlike so many men
I cannot say Law is again,

No more than they can we suppress
The universal wish to guess
Or slip out of our own position
Into an unconcerned condition.
Although I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly
A timid similarity,
We shall boast anyway:
Like love I say.

Like love we don't know where or why,
Like love we can't compel or fly,
Like love we often weep,
Like love we seldom keep.

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 58

What happens when there are too many 'Alexanders'?