I didn't think of this as an historical story, but more as a free
ride of the imagination. There was to be no research. I would take pointers from
Virgil perhaps for the sea and travel and the seasons, from the Gospels and the
Acts of the Apostles for the feel of the municipal or provincial organization of
the Roman Empire; I would get moods and the idea of ancient religion from
Apuleius; Horace and Martial and Petronius would give me hints for social
settings.
(It's better to create than destroy what's unnecessary)
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The Enigma Of Arrival - pg. 92
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 209
Berkeley's favourite quotation, from ACTS 17:28. Strangely, it is also the last senstence in Malebranche's Recherche 3. 2. 6 -- the section expounding Malebranche;s view that 'we see all things in God'.
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Saturday, September 5, 2009
Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 31
Berkeley felt that the materialist conception of the world kept God at far too great a distance from us. It leads us to think of God as hidden behind te world he has created rather than as revealed in it; he is at best the product of an inference. For Berkeley, thiswas not the way in which the Holy Scriptures (the Bible, that is) thought of things at all. He wanted a God who is close to us at every moment of the day, in everything we do. And his system provides exactly that. God is present to us in every waknig moment, since every experience we have is an idea caused in us by him. So the God whose existence he sets out to prove is 'a being whose spirituality, omnipresence, providence, omniscience, infinite power and goodness, are as conspicuous as the existence of sensible things'. His favourite quotation from the Bible speaks of a God 'in whom we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:28).'
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