Reading in Exile

This question gets tackled frequently by various Catholic thinkers, bloggers, and apologists, and generally the answer is an unqualified "no". Indeed, frequently philosophically-inclined Catholics (and other Christians) express anger at those who say things like "now God has another little angel" in the context of a child's funeral. A conversation I had yesterday at a philosophy conference led me to mull this question over a bit, and my answer to this question is a qualified "yes". For this reason too, I don't think that people who say these things about the dead being angels should be corrected. Part of this issue is the question of what is meant by 'angel'. If by 'angel' one means a person who is necessarily immaterial--that is, a person who cannot have or be a body--then of course it is impossible for a human person to be an angel. You have or are (again, it depends on what you mean by 'have' and 'are' which is ...

The Western Catholic intellectual tradition is built as it were in layers of texts, with one writer commenting upon another, and then further writers commenting upon that one. Consider, for example, the following chain of commentaries: the Neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry wrote his Isagoge , which was a commentary on and introduction to parts of Aristotle's logical texts (his Organon ); St. Boethius, in turn, wrote a commentary on the Isagoge , as well as on parts of Aristotle's Organon e.g. the Categories and the De interpretatione . Peter Abelard also wrote a commentary on the Isagoge as well as on various parts of the Organon , but his Isagoge commentary is in large part a commentary on Boethius' commentary on the Isagoge . Abelard in turn influenced later commentators on these logical works. To "comment" is to engage in a paradigmatically traditionary actitivty. It is not merely to merely explain the meaning of the text on which one is commenting. Rather, i...