Philosophy and theology
Confessions, by Saint Augustine
The first great autobiography of the West, read as a mirror for the reader: from the theft of pears to the conversion in the garden, from evil to time and memory.
Church History
Augustine's conversion (tolle, lege)
In the Milan garden, a child's voice repeats, pick up and read. Augustine opens Paul's letters, and the life he already understood but did not live finally turns around.
Philosophy and theology
The robbery of the pears
Why does Augustine dedicate pages to a banal theft of pears as a teenager? Because there he finds the enigma of sin: loving evil just for the sake of loving it.
Philosophy
What is time, according to Augustine
If no one asks me, I know; If I want to explain, I don't know. Augustine's famous meditation on time, eternity and the soul that measures.
Philosophy and theology
Evil as the absence of good
If God is good and created everything, where does evil come from? Augustine's answer that breaks with Manichaeism: evil is not a substance, it is a deprivation.
Literature
The Catcher in the Rye
Three days in the life of Holden Caulfield after being expelled from high school. Salinger's novel about adolescence, grief and the refusal of adult falsehood.
Literature
The meaning of the title
The title comes from a verse by Robert Burns that Holden barely remembers, and from the fantasy that gives the book its name: being the one who catches the children before they fall off the cliff.
Literature
Who is Holden Caulfield
The narrator of The Catcher in the Rye: sixteen years old, expelled from school, mourning his brother and at war with the falsehood of the adult world.
Literature
The ducks in Central Park
Holden insists on a silly question: where do the ducks in Central Park go when the lake freezes? Underneath it is the fear of disappearing.
Literature
Why the book is controversial
Loved and forbidden at the same time: the reasons why The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most censored books, and the shadow that followed it.
Art and Renaissance
Who was Rafael Sanzio?
The painter from Urbino who arrived at the Vatican at age 25 and died at 37, after creating the image that defined how the Christian Renaissance saw itself.
Art and Renaissance
What is Raphael's School of Athens?
Pagan philosophers painted in the Pope's private rooms. Why the School of Athens is a political manifesto, not just a tribute to Ancient Greece.
Art and Renaissance
Raphael and Michelangelo, rivalry or admiration?
One was harmony, the other strength. How the rivalry between Raphael and Michelangelo, in the Rome of the Popes, produced some of the greatest works in the history of art.
Greek philosophy
How to Listen, by Plutarch
An almost two-thousand-year-old treatise on the most neglected art of human formation, listening, and the internal enemies that sabotage this listening without you realizing it.
Greek philosophy
Who was Plutarch?
The Greek biographer who was also a priest at the oracle at Delphi, and who left, alongside Parallel Lives, a collection of treatises on practical life.
Etymology and culture
What is paideia?
The Greek concept that gives its name to the integral formation of the human being, and that Plutarch teaches begins not with speech, but with the ear.
Greek philosophy
Why is listening more difficult than speaking?
Talking feels like the active part of the conversation. Plutarch explains why it is just the opposite, and why listening well requires more effort from the mind than speaking.
Greek philosophy
Why should you listen before speaking?
The advice Plutarch gave young Nicandro was not "speak well." It was “listen first.” Because this order, and not the opposite, is the beginning of all formation.
Philosophy and logic
Premises, conclusion and validity
The difference between truth and validity explains why an argument can seem right and be wrong, or seem wrong and be right.
Philosophy and logic
What is a premise?
The statement that supports a conclusion: why a false premise brings down the entire argument, even with perfect structure.
Philosophy and logic
What is a syllogism?
The structure of two premises and a conclusion that Aristotle described, and which still organizes all valid reasoning, from "Socrates is mortal" to today's debate.
Philosophy and logic
Truth x validity
The sharpest distinction in informal logic: an argument can have perfect structure and false content, or the opposite. It's only solid when it has both.
Philosophy and logic
What is ad hominem?
The fallacy of attacking the person instead of the argument. "You can't talk about that" never answered whether what was said is true.
Philosophy and logic
What is the strawman fallacy?
Distorting someone else's argument into a weaker version, and overthrowing that version, is beating a straw doll, not the person, who is still standing.
Philosophy and logic
What is false dilemma?
"You're either with me or against me." The world almost never has just two doors, and whoever offers two has already chosen which one they want to push you through.
Philosophy and logic
What is appeal to the majority?
"Everyone does it like that, so it's right." There was a time when all of humanity swore that the sun revolved around the Earth.
Philosophy and logic
What is hasty generalization?
"I met two and they were both like that, so they all are." The silent factory of almost all prejudices, disguised as life experience.
Philosophy and logic
The Art of Being Right, by Schopenhauer
A short, sharp little book that goes the other way: instead of teaching you how to think well, it catalogs, with irony, the tricks to appear to be right.