Philosophy and theology
The robbery of the pears
Why does Saint 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.
Church History
Saint Augustine's conversion (tolle, lege)
In the Milan garden, a child's voice repeats, pick up and read. Saint Augustine opens Saint Paul's letters, and the life he already understood but did not live finally turns around.
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.
Quotes
Living the questions, by Rilke
Rilke's phrase in Letters to a Young Poet: love your own questions like closed rooms, and live everything, until the answers mature.
Latin and tradition
Veritas is adequate
The classic definition of truth, from Aristotle to Saint Thomas Aquinas: the adequacy between the mind and reality. And because the truth is discovered, it is not invented.
Philosophy
Plato's dialogue Meno
Meno arrives sure he knows. Socrates asks what virtue is, and the dialogue becomes a lesson on the difference between examples and definition.
Philosophy
What is Socrates' maieutics?
The art of midwifery applied to ideas: the method with which Socrates gave birth, through question, to the truth that was already within the other.
Philosophy
What is the philosophical attitude?
Curiosity, questioning and the search for truth: the three dimensions of the philosophical attitude, and the enemy that destroys it from within.
Philosophy and theology
What is the Logos?
In the beginning was the Logos: so opens the Gospel of John. What Logos means and why it grounds truth and the intelligibility of the world.
Philosophy and theology
Truth, goodness and beauty: the transcendentals
The classical tradition called truth, goodness and beauty transcendentals: three faces of one reality, being itself. What this means.
Philosophy and theology
The principle of non-contradiction
One and the same thing cannot be and not be at the same time, under the same aspect. What the principle of non-contradiction is and why no one escapes it.
Philosophy and theology
What is relativism?
’Everyone has their own truth’ sounds humble, but contradicts itself. What relativism is and why ’everything is relative’ undoes itself from within.
Philosophy and theology
Truth as coherence
The coherence theory: a statement is true when it fits without contradiction into a system. An excellent test, but why it is not enough.
Philosophy and theology
What is alétheia?
Alétheia is the Greek word for truth: a-létheia, un-concealment. Truth as unveiling, lifting the veil and letting reality appear.
Philosophy and theology
What is truth?
What is truth? The classical answer in three steps: correspondence with the real, the test of coherence, and the truth that has a face.
Literature and philosophy
One, None and One Hundred Thousand and identity
In Pirandello, Vitangelo Moscarda discovers that he is not one, but a hundred thousand. The parallel with Don Quixote and the question about who we are to others.
Comparative literature
The Idiot, Dostoevsky's Russian Don Quixote
Dostoevsky called Prince Myshkin his Russian Don Quixote. The parallel between The Idiot and Don Quixote: radical kindness in a cynical world.
Literature
Who is the Knight of the White Moon?
The Knight of the White Moon defeats Don Quixote and forces him to abandon his cavalry. Who is behind the armor and why this defeat kills him.
Literature
Clavileño: the flying wooden horse
Clavileño is the wooden horse on which Don Quixote and Sancho, blindfolded, believe they are flying. The episode and what it reveals about the illusion.
Literature
The lion episode in Don Quixote
Don Quixote challenges a lion that just yawns and lies down. The episode with the lions and why the hero declares himself the winner even without combat.
Literature and politics
The Baratária Island and Sancho's government
The Dukes give Sancho Panza a fake island to laugh at him. But the squire rules wisely. The Baratária Ísula episode explained.
Literature
Who is Alonso Quijano? The man behind Don Quixote
Alonso Quijano is the La Mancha gentleman who becomes Don Quixote and returns to himself at the end. Meet the man behind the knight, and why he matters.
History and literature
Who was Avellaneda, the author of the false Quixote?
In 1614, an unauthorized continuation of Don Quixote was released, written by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. Who was he and how did Cervantes respond.
Philosophy
I am me and my circumstance
Ortega y Gasset's phrase explained: there is no isolated self, always situated in a circumstance. The origin, meaning and connection with Don Quixote.
Philosophy
What is Ortega y Gasset's perspectivism?
Ortega y Gasset's perspectivism: truth is seen from an angle, without falling into relativism. The lion scene from Don Quixote as an example.
Literature
What is metafiction?
Metafiction is fiction that knows it is fiction and uses that as its subject matter. The concept explained and why Don Quixote is its first great example.
Literature and philosophy
Don Quixote, Part 2: summary and analysis
Summary and analysis of Don Quixote, Part Two, by Cervantes: metafiction, the Baratarian Island, the defeat in Barcelona and why the hero dies of reason.
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.
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.
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.