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What is Christian Existentialism? The Leap into the Infinite
In our previous exploration, we walked through the smoke-filled cafes of 1940s Paris to define the “mood” of atheistic existentialism. We looked at Jean-Paul Sartre’s “existence precedes essence” and Albert Camus’s “Sisyphus,” both of whom painted a portrait of a human being standing alone in a silent, indifferent universe. To the atheist, we are “condemned…
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What is Existentialism? The Rebellion Against the System
Existentialism is perhaps the most enduring “mood” in the history of Western thought. To the casual observer, it is synonymous with mid-century Parisian cafes, black turtlenecks, and a certain grim obsession with the pointlessness of life. However, beneath the cinematic aesthetic lies a rigorous, demanding, and ultimately transformative framework for understanding human agency. At its…
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The Professional Dissenter: Raymond Tallis and the Mystery of the “I”
In the modern attempt to map the human mind, there is a figure who stands at the crossroads of every major theory, holding a “Stop” sign. Raymond Tallis—a retired Professor of Geriatric Medicine and a neuroscientist—is a man who knows the literal “meat” of the human brain as well as any surgeon. Yet, he has…