Education, writes Roberto Calasso in The Ruin of Kasch, comes with a paradox: “it consists above all of things that cannot be learned — or of things that represent what cannot be learned.” Calasso drops the remark almost in passing, …
Humanism is a heresy
“There is nothing particular about man. He is but a part of this world.”
This observation on the pretensions of humanity — cool, disillusioned, unsparing of sentimentality — was made in the Forties, midway between our own time and the …
Atheists have an evil problem
“Jesus descends in dread array to judge the scarlet whore”. This was Charles Wesley’s hot take on the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. It was a terrible response even by 18th-century standards. Tens of thousands of people were swallowed up by the …
