The Pugcast

In our time everyone is obligated to create an identity for himself. We're supposed to "self-create"--making ourselves into works of art that are utterly original, you know, like snow flakes. So why is it that people increasingly think alike and are so fearful of disapproval? In today's show the guys discuss the paradoxical relationship between mimesis (mimicry) and poesis (creation, or making). They arrive at the conclusion that only people who have mastered skills through mimesis are capable of making something new--i.e. original. Until then everyone is finger painting.

Today the guys discuss the vexed topic of esoteric teaching and interpretation. Esoteric teaching is teaching intended to sort people into two groups--those who understand and those who do not. Why would anyone want to do that? Isn't that elitist? Isn't it undemocratic? Well, yes, it is those things--and Jesus undeniably spoke esoterically when he told parables--he said so in Matthew 13:10-17. The problem of esoteric teaching leads to a free-ranging conversation in which the guys get into what bugs them about contemporary approaches to interpretation as well as the subject of metaphysics (surprise, surprise).

Glenn, our intrepid historian, takes us back to the twelfth century to show how a new worldview developed that shaped how we study the natural world (i.e. what we call “science” but they called “natural philosophy” or “natural theology”) and changed the aesthetics of the era, leading both to early empiricism and to realism in art. Chris and Tom move the conversation into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the undoing of the medieval ideas Glenn had explained. The nineteenth century saw the rise of modern science that changed how we think about both the material world and knowledge, which resulted not only in materialistic worldviews that denied meaning in the world but also led to a deconstruction of art and a rejection of beauty.

This week the Pugsters are joined by Jonathan Edwards scholar Dr. Christian Cuthbert to discuss his research at Yale on the preaching of Jonathan Edwards on the subject of warfare. In the 18th century the Connecticut River Valley was on the frontier. It wasn't unusual for Native American warrior bands to attack colonial villages--add to this the rival claims of the French and English powers in the New World and war wasn't merely a matter of debate regarding the justness of a conflict half-way around the world--it was a matter of survival, and the conflict could be 20 miles away--or right next store. The discussion is illuminating--and in some ways surprising. This is new ground in Edwards studies and Dr. Cuthbert is right at the forefront of it.

Little by little, the notes and reflections of J. R. R. Tolkien have been published posthumously by his son, Christopher. Among the many volumes is the Tenth Volume in The History of Middle-Earth, entitled Morgoth's Ring. The book contains many of Tolkien's reflections on the nature of evil, mortality, and the eschatology of Middle-Earth. Among the gems is the publication of the conversation between Finrod (an Elf-Lord, the Eldar) and Andreth (a wise-woman from among the Edain--aka men). The Pugsters enjoy a free-range conversation that not only touches on the nature of evil in Middle-Earth, but also reaches our own--primary--world.

Today the Pugcast is joined by Nate Spearing, highly decorated combat veteran with 14 years and 12 deployments in Army Special Operations. Nathan has a broad range of experiences domestically and overseas and has spent his entire professional life walking out a theology of violence as a Christian in war.

Nate was homeschooled, and today is the father of five children. Along with his wife, they are educating their children at home.

Since leaving the military in 2016, Nathan has started several successful small businesses in real estate and construction. In the wake of the Covid crisis, Nathan launched www.Spearing.co to inspire and train people to live boldly — especially during times of crisis — through a variety of courses on business, self defense, and family resilience. https://spearing.co

Glenn introduces concepts from medieval epistemology (i.e. the branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge and truth) and how these got challenged in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, particularly through the recovery of the ideas of the ancient Greek skeptic Pyrrho. After a foray into Descartes, who tried to answer Pyrrho, we look at Blaise Pascal, the father of probability theory. Pascal used a barometer to short-circuit Pyrrho’s approach and in the process laid the foundation for a new approach to knowledge based on probability. This new epistemology has shaped thinking in the West ever since and largely created the modern world.

The guys finish unpacking the discussion of Plato from Ed Feser's article Woke Ideology is a Psychological Disorder. After noting how Plato understands the sick society, where democracy as a social disorder leads to tyranny, the guys engage Plato's insights, noting positives and yet critiquing the limits of Plato's vision in light of the the riches of the Christian understanding of the virtue. The aim is to retrieve the riches of Christian moral reflection as it engaged classic visions of morality and carved out a fully salvic vision which also has insights for addressing the maladies of our time.

The Pugsters return to a topic they’ve touched on before: the problems with the Enlightenment. Glenn starts off with a summary of changing ideas of authority, focusing on the transition from Reason and Revelation to Reason over Revelation to Reason without Revelation. That gets the guys into the Enlightenment, autonomous reason, and some of the problems associated with it. Glenn then looks at Romanticism as a reaction against the Enlightenment and other stress points in the period, noting both the problems with Romanticism and some of the things the Romantics got right. The conclusion points out that both the Enlightenment and Romanticism have problems, but each of them also gets things right. It’s only in the Gospel that the different strengths of each can be united and the problems avoided.

You may have heard feminists say, “The personal is political”—but are they right? Is the relationship between a mother and her child really a political relationship—or is it something else? In today’s show the guys discuss what else relationships like this could be. The term that they use is “pre-political”. Along the way the guys discuss the Kuyperian doctrine of “sphere sovereignty” as well as the Roman Catholic social doctrine of “subsidiarity” among other things. Enjoy!