David Davis
I’ve been wondering to myself what to do about this matter. It’s increasingly probable that the British GramscoFabiaNazis will try to engineer – by postal votes or by sheer scamming – a resounding “Yes” vote, which will mean that plans will have to be got into motion to separate Scotland from the UK. Read more
On Being Uncertain:
A Case for Scepticism
by Sean Gabb
2004
I will write nothing yet again about the great issues of the day. I will instead respond to several of my readers who objected to my confession of scepticism in my last piece about ghosts. I am asked how I can be a sceptic when our knowledge of the world is based on such sure foundations. How can I deny the obvious, and so join myself to the nihilists whose own course of doubt ends in the various kinds of political correctness, and whose denial of reality in earlier generations cleared the way for the gulag and the holocaust?
My answer is that the probability of a belief is not determined by its alleged consequences. As for nihilism, I am not devoid of belief. I have strong beliefs, indeed, on just about every subject. I am a sceptic in the sense that I do not believe rational certainty to be possible in any of these subjects. In arguing this, I do not pretend to originality. Nor do I claim that this will be an academically useful essay. I am writing while sat on a railway train, far away from my books. If I draw on the thoughts of Plato, Lucretius, Cicero, Sextus Empiricus, Descartes, Berkeley and Hume, it is without consulting them on any point, and often without having read them for many years. I will use and conflate and alter the ideas of others as I see fit to argue my case. This being said, I will begin. Read more
For those who may not recognise it, this is Caravaggio’s St John the Baptist, which is currently on display in Siena Cathedral. The artist was apparently in the habit of treating his boy models in a way that would give Esther Rantzen a stroke. Should any English tourist suspected of looking at this be arrested and charged on his return from Italy? Or is it only proley paedos who get done in England? Read more
Orwell and the Paranormal, by Philip Bounds
http://www.orwellsociety.com/2012/04/28/orwell-and-the-paranormal-by-philip-bounds/
George Orwell sometimes complained that the English were incapable of intellectual consistency. One of the areas in which his own inconsistencies were most fascinatingly on display was that of the paranormal. As an atheist who was deeply interested in the ethical, cultural and religious consequences of the decline of religious faith, Orwell might have been expected to eschew all talk of ghosts, mediumship and psychokinesis.
In fact he had a casual interest in such things that lasted for the whole of his adult life. While at Eton he famously tore the leg off an effigy of an older pupil called Philip Yorke, reacting with horror shortly afterwards when Yorke died of leukaemia. More than thirty years later one of his last book reviews was a respectful account of Jean Burton’s Heyday of a Wizard, a well-documented biography of the Victorian medium Daniel Dunglas Home.
In between came a fleeting encounter with a ghost in Walberswick cemetery, correspondence with Sacheverell Sitwell on the subject of poltergeists and several other brushes with the world of the unknown. Whatever else it might have done, Orwell’s atheism did not preclude the feeling that there was more in heaven and earth than was dreamed of in Bertrand Russell’s philosophy.
Why was Orwell interested in the paranormal? And to what did extent did his fascination with it relate to his wider intellectual concerns? His most deeply considered remarks about the paranormal grew out of his engagement with literary modernism.
Several of the British modernists were Read more
by Roderick Long
http://c4ss.org/content/17971
No Matter, No Master: Godwin’s Humean Anarchism
The following article was written by Roderick T. Long for the SEASECS conference – February 2008 and linked on his Austro-Athenian Empire, May 10th, 2010.
William Godwin (1756-1836) is often regarded as essentially a Berkeleyan in his metaphysics and a Rousseauvian in his social philosophy. For example, Peter Marshall in his biography William Godwin describes Berkeley as “Godwin’s principal mentor in immaterialism” (p. 367); as for the Rousseau connection, Walter Bagehot described Godwin as “a disciple of Rousseau” (Economic Studies, 2nd ed., pp. 135-6), while Peter Landry more recently claims (incredibly, I should say) that Godwin “followed along in the footsteps of Rousseau in his nostalgia for the simple and the primitive.” (Biographical Sketches: The Thinkers.) Read more
THE FIGHT OF FAITH:
Christian Soldiers in Spiritual Conflict
INTRODUCTION
Dr Alan C. Clifford
O HEAVENLY Father, the Father of all wisdom, understanding and true strength, we beseech Thee look mercifully upon Thy servants, and send Thy Holy Spirit into our hearts, that when we must join to fight in the field for the glory of Thy Holy Name, we being strengthened with the defence of Thy right hand, may manfully stand in the confession of Thy faith and of Thy truth, and continue in the same unto the end of our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Nicholas Ridley, bishop and martyr, 1555. Read more
