My Intellectual Diary ... Just One Man’s Journey Through the Western Intellect
Latest Updates and Thoughts: The Pope's new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas just came out. I look forward to reading and unpacking it soon! Summer is coming, and so will more posting :) My reading for pleasure for 2026 has looked like: finishing The Fellowship of the Ring in January. Then I read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, followed by Emma also by Austen. Finishing Emma basically corresponded with the end of the school year, so I read a portion of A Canticle for Leibowitz again, but have stopped for now. Here's a great student essay from this semester: Prompt: What is the difference between what is most real to me and what is most real in itself? "The issue here is that we use 'real' to mean two different things. When we say that something is most real to us, we mean that it is most knowable to our senses or mind. So when we see a physical chair, this is most real to us because we can clearly perceive it. However, when we say that something is...
