The Pugcast

In today's show Tom returns to the theme of intellectual faithfulness in a church that has lost any sense of what that means.

Glenn and Chris jump in with their thoughts.

Who is the mysterious River-daughter, and how did Tom Bombadil make such a catch? Chris once thought that Goldberry was an afterthought in the story of Tom Bombadil, but after writing a chapter on her for his book on Tom Bombadil, he’s pretty sure that she’s at the heart of his story in more ways than one.

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Jokes about the uselessness of a liberal arts education are cliche--they also evidence the absence of a liberal arts education.

The whole point of a liberal arts education is the study of things that are good in themselves, not good as a means to enjoying something else. Arts of that sort are servile--they serve a higher good.

Today Chris introduces listeners to the book, Leisure the Basis of Culture by the late German philosopher Joseph Pieper.

Of course Tom and Glenn have a lot to add. The conversation gets into the parallel between Sabbath observance and leisure, social class and freedom, and many other matters.

Enjoy!

Here's a link to the book on Amazon.

Today Glenn rises to defend a holiday that some pagans and certain Christians love to hate: Christmas. 

Who could hate Christmas? It is puzzling. There are the folks who claim that there is no justification for December 25th--or January 6th for that matter--so it must have been some sort of appropriation of a pagan holiday. Then there are the folks who just don't think any Christian holidays can be justified, period. 

Glenn challenges these conceits and more. You can depend on Tom and Chris to egg him on.

Join the Pugcast crew today as they discuss how Christians should think about the relationship between various kinds of reality.

Glenn introduces consumer-choice as a kind of worldview in today's show.

Consumer choice is a fine thing when it comes to fast-food and designer clothing, but where does it end? Should we get to choose everything? Is consumer choice the apogee of freedom, or in some paradoxical way its denial and a form of slavery?

Glenn dares to say that people shouldn't get to chose certain things--their family members for instance, or their religion. When it comes to the most important things we are choosers, we're receivers. And that entails an entirely different logic.

In today’s show Chris introduces the Pugcast crew to Matthew B. Crawford and his book, Why We Drive. Crawford is known for his writing on moral agency and how the manual arts help to develop it. Self-driving cars have the potential for undermining competence and promoting greater dependency on distant institutions. If passivity is already a problem, self-driving cars will only make things worse.

Glenn starts off by talking about Tolkien and philology, the study of language to understand culture, and looks at its role in creating Middle Earth. He then notes that this idea has largely been reversed in the modern world, where we belief language shapes thought and culture. This leads to Political Correctness and the use of language as a form of thought control. Tom and Chris discuss theological and philosophical ideas surrounding this change and some of the practical effects of it in culture today.

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This week Tom follows up his topic last week on Presentism. He introduces the topic of 'historicism' and looks at its role in setting the conditions for the current trend of turning against the past in the name of the present. Historicism comes about when the doctrine of providence gets ripped from the doctrine of creation, making human meaning and purpose merely what it is in terms of historical processes. Glenn and Chris add a plenitude of insights as the topic unfolds.

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In today's show Chris reads portions of Leon R. Kass's, The Beginning of Wisdom. The book contains Kass's reflections on the book of Genesis. Kass is Jewish, and a conservative scholar teaching at the University of Chicago. His reflections on the impiety of Noah's son Ham, and how Ham's descendant Nimrod, the political leader behind the Bible's first political dystopia--Babel--are quite profound. His thoughts on the connection between impiety and totalitarianism provide the basis for discussion for Chris, Tom, and Glenn.

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