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If Paul brought the first generation of Christians the useful skills of a trained theologian, Origen was the first great philosopher to rethink the new religion from first principles. As his philosophical enemy, the anti-Christian Porphyry, summed it up, he 'introduced Greek ideas to foreign fables' -- that is, gave a barbarous eastern religion the intellectual respectability of a philosophical defense. Origen was also a phenomenon. As Euse..
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Paul Johnson |
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Moses and Hesiod, David and Sappho, Deborah and Tyrtaeus, Isaiah and Homer, Delphi and Jerusalem, Pythian tripod and Cherubin-sanctuary, prophets and oracles, psalms and elegy-for us, they all lie peacefully in one box, they all rest peacefully in one grave, they all have one and the same human origin, they all have one and the same significance-human, transitory and belonging to the past. All the clouds have dispersed. The tears and sighs ..
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Paul Johnson |
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Though Rousseau writes about the General Will in terms of liberty, it is essentially an authoritarian instrument, an early adumbration of Lenin's 'democratic centralism'. Laws made under the General Will must, by definition, have moral authority. 'The people making laws for itself cannot be unjust.' 'The General Will is always righteous.' Moreover, provided the State is 'well-intentioned' (i.e., its long-term objectives are desirable) inter..
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Paul Johnson |
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Both Mussolini's biographer, Margharita Sarfatti, and his Minister of Finance, Guido Jung, were Jews. When Hitler came to power, Mussolini set himself up as the European protector of the Jew and was hailed by Stefan Zweig as 'wunderbar Mussolini'.
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Paul Johnson |