Philosophy and theology
Faith and reason: rivals, separate or allies?
The three answers to the relationship between faith and reason, from fideism and scientism to NOMA, to the image of John Paul II's two wings.
Philosophy and theology
What is Fides et Ratio
John Paul II's 1998 encyclical on faith and reason: what it says, the image of the two wings, and where to start reading.
Philosophy and theology
What is fideism?
The faith that despises reason: its origin in Tertullian, why it turns against faith itself and what the Christian tradition responds to.
Philosophy and theology
What is scientism?
The belief that there is only what can be measured. The difference between science and scientism and why the thesis contradicts itself.
Philosophy and theology
What is Gould's NOMA?
Magisteriums that do not overlap: the separation between science and religion proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and its hidden price.
Latin and tradition
The origin of the words reason and faith
Ratio, logos, fides, pistis, emunah: what etymology reveals and why the opposite of faith is not reason, it is distrust.
Latin and tradition
Credo ut intelligam
Believing to understand, understanding to believe: Saint Augustine's formula that unites faith and reason in a single path.
Latin and tradition
Fides quaerens intellectum
The faith that seeks understanding: Anselm of Canterbury's formula that defines the program of all theology.
Philosophy and theology
Grace does not destroy nature
Thomas Aquinas' principle: faith perfects reason, and truth cannot contradict truth.
Philosophy and theology
Who was Anselm of Canterbury?
Monk, archbishop and philosopher (1033-1109): life, faith that seeks understanding and the ontological argument of the Proslogion.
History and literature
The Historical Macbeth: The Real King
The real Macbeth existed, reigned seventeen years and was not a monster. Who was the Scottish king and how Shakespeare transformed him via Holinshed's Chronicles.
Literary curiosities
Why is Macbeth "the Scottish play"?
Why actors avoid saying "Macbeth" and call it "the Scottish play": the origin of superstition, the supposed curse and the ritual to undo bad luck.
Latin and culture
Sic transit gloria mundi
"Thus passes the glory of the world": the origin of the Latin phrase, its use in the coronation of the popes and the echo in Macbeth.
Literature
"The straight is crooked and the crooked is straight"
What the witches' speech that opens Macbeth means and how the inversion of values organizes the entire play.
Literature and philosophy
Free will in Macbeth: destiny or choice?
Do witches predict the future or just reveal wish? Destiny and choice in Macbeth, with Plato's Gyges' ring as the key to reading.
Literature
Macbeth's descent into hell and Dante
Why does Dante put traitors on ice instead of fire? Macbeth's fall in the light of Hell: the betrayal of his relative, his guest and his master.
Literature
Macbeth's prophecies explained
Birnam Forest and the man "not born of woman": what each prophecy means and how they are both fulfilled to the letter in the end.
Comparative literature
Macbeth and Raskolnikov: the anatomy of guilt
Two men who believed that an idea authorized them to kill, and the punishment does not wait for the court: it comes first through the body.
Literature and philosophy
The Anatomy of Fear in Macbeth
The prophecy that reveals desire, the crime committed first in the imagination and the guilt that wins where no army would win. Shakespeare's tragedy scene by scene.
Literature
"Sound and fury, signifying nothing"
The monologue "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow": the meaning of Shakespeare's most nihilistic speech, its context in the play and the translation of the original.
Literature and life
The influence of others: Lady Macbeth
How the people around us shape what we do. The rhetoric that inverts cowardice into courage and why influence unlocks, not invents, our desire.
History and literature
Macbeth and the Gunpowder Plot
Because the play is Scottish, has witches and speaks in equivocation: the attack of 1605, King James I and the fear of the time that shaped the tragedy.
Philosophy and creativity
How to be more creative: the lesson of the Muses
Creativity is the daughter of memory. What the Greeks knew about inspiration and how to build your inner museum, from Homer to Raphael.
Etymology and culture
Where does the word "museum" come from?
Museum comes from the Greek Mouseion, the house of the Muses. The origin of the term, its connection with memory and the path to the modern museum.
Greek mythology
What are the 9 Greek Muses?
Calliope, Clio, Erato and the others: the domain of each of the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Memory.
Greek mythology
Who was Mnemosyne?
The titanoid that personifies Memory and mother of the nine Muses. Because, for the Greeks, inspiration is the daughter of memory.
Greek philosophy
Cronos and Kairos: the two times of the Greeks
Chronos is the time that is measured; Kairós, the opportune moment. The difference that changes the way of living and creating.
Art and Renaissance
What is Raphael's "Parnassus"?
The Vatican fresco in which Apollo and the Muses bring together Homer, Virgil, Dante and Sappho in creative silence.
Latin and culture
Verba volant, scripta manent
The words fly, the writing remains. The origin of the Latin maxim and why recording changes your relationship with ideas.
Church History
Who was it Daniel Rops?
The French historian who dedicated his life to telling the history of the Church without filters, with the rigor of a scientist and the elegance of a novelist.