Heat of the Summer Dark Night of the Soul I

Review of Last Show

Thesis statement: I have been deceived. What happened to those beautiful garden magazines in January?

– gardens are a subplot to the big drama, who will I follow? Which way will I take? What is truth?

– Gardening also demonstrates the application of the guideposts of catholic philosophy especially realistic epistemology and objective ethics.

Realistic epistemology is the sign that man does have the capacity to be in touch with the world. Epistemology comes from the two Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (reason, word, study), which taken together is the branch of study that concerns itself with how man knows something, what is happening in our minds when we know something. Realistic points to the certitude that man can be in touch with real things. A realistic epistemology says, “I really am reading this blog.”

Without a realistic epistemology, we cannot have certitude of the real order of things, especially about the natural world and the soul, and then we cannot have truth.

Objective ethics, the object, not the subject, determines the rightness or wrongness of something. Objective ethics is one of accountability and accuracy. A subjective ethics is one where a person is not responsible for their acts. An objective accounting of ethics might have extenuating circumstances for acting but it does not fully dismiss the person from the responsibility of knowing what is true or good. The object, the other person, by the subject, me, sets what I should do.

Noted the many challenges the heat of summer poses and our perseverance faulters. In some cases, this can be compared to as a Dark Night of the Soul.

Truth does not require man to have a realistic epistemology. It exists regardless of what man believes.

Unwillingness to engage things as they are. DNS adamant ascent to give priority intellectual faculties in spite of the absence of bodily senses.

Society puts the emotional over the intellectual process. Man denies reality of God, denies reality of himself. Man is who he is only in reference to God.

Separate from His reality ours crumbles.