Word of the Day

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Shameless Linking

http://rbhardy3rd.blogspot.com/2009/09/reading-journal-burkes-speech-on.html

A few quotes from there:

Aristotle, the great master of reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight and propriety, against this species of delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, as the most fallacious of all sophistry." Again, at the root of modern conservatism, in the eighteenth century, is a rejection of abstract reasoning in favor of practical experience and moral sensitivity.

Central to Burke's conservatism is a respect for tradition tempered by what he called "a moral imagination," which the conservative Russell Kirk defines as "that power of ethical perception which strides beyond the barriers of private experience and momentary events." In other words, it includes "empathy."


Here he is quoting Dryden's translation of a passage in Vergil's Aeneid:

...One common soul
Inspires and feeds and animates the whole.
This active mind infus'd through all the space
Unites and mingles with the mighty mass (982-985).

In the original Latin:

Spiritus intus alit; totamque infusa per artus,
Mens agitat molem; et magno se corpore miscet (6.726-727).

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