bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Communism: Later Philosophical Developments
Authors: Hislop Ian 
Published: July 2007

Fruitful discussion between persons who accept different philosophic systems postulates a point of contact, an area of agreement in terms of which one system can translate the terms of another system. This is so because any highly developed system has its own terminology.So far as Marxism goes, we are like the spectators of a strange and complicated game, whose players speak a foreign language. For the Marxist philosophy is not a contemplative activity, it is not a system in the sense that Hegelianism is a system; it is simply the deduction of positive knowledge from the world through our minds. Any philosophic statement is simply the best approximate account of a given situation which is valid relative to this or that point in the historical process. The situation is constituted by matter and its laws translated into the human head. This is not an ‘insight into’, but a mirroring of, environmental conditionment.The difficulty is that words like ‘peace’, ‘justice’, and so on, have the same sound for Marxists and ourselves but mean quite different things. For the Marxist there is no meaning about the word ‘justice’ save as it receives definition in relation to one or other stage in the historical process. Indeed, only statements formulated in terms of matter in motion can be true. Hence the philosophic opinions of others are interpreted by him in relation to their exponents’ social conditionment and only affect him as ‘feudal’ or ‘bourgeois’.For Lenin, all ‘abstractions must be taken back into the concrete, for they are only true in so far as they reject the history of developing production’. He saw his philosophic task as that of a guardian of the Marx-Engels theory in its purity.
Economic Aspects of Communism
Authors: Brech Ronald 
Published: July 2007

Any discussion on the economic aspects of Communism has to refer to Russian experience since Russia was the first (and for some time the only) example of the application of Marxist economic philosophy. And it is perhaps only poetic justice that Russia should have contradicted Marx in almost every aspect of his economic teaching. Russia according to Marxist doctrine should never have become Communist—at least not when it did—for it had not experienced the full development of capitalist society. Russia also found it necessary, contrary to Marxist tenets, to operate a normal pricing mechanism and to pay money wages, not according to need, but according to the type of output that the state wished to foster. In other words, the Soviet planners discovered that the acquisitive motive— and original sin—still existed in a Communist state.But before the significance of this contradiction can be discussed, its existence must be proved. Marx did not study economic problems as an end in themselves but merely because in his day current political controversy had an economic content. To him economics was nothing more than a means of discovering the laws of social development. He argued that the social productive relationships entered into by man formed the anatomy of a society. They enabled a society not only to make the fullest use of its productive powers but also to increase them, and through this increase the productive powers were brought into conflict with the social relationships. In more concrete terms, Marx claimed that the basic contradiction in capitalism is the increasingly social co-operative nature of production, because the means of production are individually owned, and it shows itself in the development of two classes which are inevitably antagonistic since their interests are incompatible.
The Dignity of Conscience
Authors: Deman Thomas 
Published: July 2007

Conscience’ is a word of which we ought to be I proud. It proclaims that the criterion of good and evil lies within the individual man. Whatever orders he may be called upon to obey, in the last resort a man relies on the interior judgment which says ‘Yes, I ought to act in this way’, or ‘No, it would be sinful to do that.’ Through his conscience, a man is finally accountable to himself alone; or rather, he is freed from that merely human authority under which so many people find themselves.It was the moralists such as Cic'ero and Seneca who first gave conscience a prominent place, at least in so far as the examination of past actions is concerned. St Paul, who introduced the notion into the Christian tradition, extended it to the control of future actions as well. Here it has no easy part to play, and gives rise to many problems. The scholastic theologians who discussed the extent to which its judgments should be followed, held that it may sometimes be mistaken, for it may consider that something is good which in reality is evil, and vice versa. But it was St Thomas above all who insisted on the authority of conscience, declaring that its ruling must be followed even if it is mistaken, though he added that a man who acts in this way is not necessarily free from blame. The man must obey his erroneous conscience, but in doing so he sins if he could have corrected it; the only solution for him is to alter his conscience by bringing it into agreement with the truth.The importance given to conscience in St Thomas’s teaching is perhaps most clearly seen in his examination of the conflict that may occur between a subject and his superior.
Superior Orders
Authors: Wortley B. A. 
Published: July 2007

We are bound to obey the legitimate orders of our legitimate superiors in any society we claim to be part of.The defendants at Nuremberg admitted themselves to be members of the Nazi State; both the defendants and the prosecutors admitted that Nazi Germany was a state in the international sense of that term, and in that state orders could be legitimately conveyed down the appropriate chain of military or civil command.Because authority was legitimately vested in the state, it could be presumed to be properly exercised by those tn whom commands were addressed. This presumption was not irrebuttable to the ordinary European mind; but the Nazis strove to make it irrebuttable. The Nazis sought to make the state the sole society to which a Nazi could belong, and to make the head of that state the sole source of legal and moral obligation; this monolithic conception, intended to be the strength of the Nazi state, in fact became its greatest weakness. When the Fuhrer destroyed himself, he also carried the Nazi state to destruction: as he intended.A strong society is one which allows the free growth of legitimate aspirations expressed in different forms of societies and corporations. The closed, or totalitarian, form of society looks strong from outside, it looks neat and streamlined, but internally its life tends to be cramped and to lack spontaneity when not kept young by regular blood transfusions from those who direct it and who themselves remain relatively free.It is fashionable nowadays for some critics of the Church to compare the Church with a totalitarian state. Clearly there are resemblances between any well-organised hierarchical societies when viewed from outside: but such a comparison overlooks the essential difference in spirit between the Church and the secular state.
Dafydd AP Gwilym
Authors: Lewis Saunders 
Published: July 2007

Until recent years Dafydd ap Gwilym was the only Welsh poet with a high reputation outside Wales. This was not so strange. He fitted into the conventional picture of medieval poetry. He shared themes and modes with Guido Cavalcanti and with Thibaut de Champagne. He stretched a hand to Rutebeuf and another to the early Chaucer. Sir Idris Bell tackled English translations; Stern treated him as a Welsh minnesänger; a Dutch scholar, Theodor Chotzen, killed later in a Nazi prison, had in 1927 published his Recherches sur la poésie de Dafydd ap Gwilym, a large volume which remains still a most valuable survey of much of the poetry of Northern Europe in the fourteenth century. Now Professor Parry, of the University College of Bangor, gives us the long-awaited edition which is based on a study of all the manuscript sources. One must not speak of a final edition, for the simple reason that oral tradition admits of very little finality} but here are the text and critical apparatus that will be the starting point of study for the rest of this century. What I propose to attempt now is to give English readers a glimpse of Dafydd ap Gwilym from the point of view of the Welsh literary tradition.This is no longer too difficult. The first volume of The Growth of “Literature by H. M. and N. K. Chadwick—a great and noble work despite necessary lacunae and some errors—has revealed to English students the tradition of heroic panegyric that is the main stream of Welsh poetry from the sixth century onwards. The Welsh poets themselves used to call it the tradition of Taliesin, from the sixth-century poet of that name.
The Aims of Catholic Ecumenism
Authors: St John Henry 
Published: July 2007

In a previous Blackfriars article the development of the attitude of the Holy See to the Ecumenical Movement, during thirty years, was traced in outline. This development has followed marked changes in the nature and aims of the movement itself, and these have enabled the Holy See, while still remaining aloof from ecumenical organisation, to encourage the Catholic episcopate in fostering its own ‘reunion’ work on ecumenical lines, in close touch with the movement. The principles of a Catholic ecumenism, with necessary safeguards against the dangers to be met with in their application, are embodied in the Instruction to local ordinaries on the Ecumenical Movement, issued in December 1949 by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. This document is a charter and guide for Catholics in the work of promoting the unity of Christendom among our own countrymen.The purpose of the present article is to discuss, tentatively and by way of suggestion, the lines of action by which Catholic ecumenical work could be applied to the religious situation in England today. Between Catholics and their non-Catholic countrymen who are professing Christians, there lies a formidable psychological barrier; a barrier which keeps in being distorted ideas of the doctrines that divide Christendom, and hinders the realisation by non-Catholics of the direction in which true Christian unity lies. The aim of Catholic ecumenism is to work, from our side, for the removal of this psychological barrier by the same methods and in the same spirit with which the non-Catholic ecumenists are working from theirs. The non-Catholic ecumenist may object that this is not, and cannot be, true ecumenical work, but is rather the proselytising spirit of Catholicism in borrowed clothes. True ecumenism, he would say, renounces convert-making and aims only at promoting corporate growth towards truth, in each separate tradition, until the day when all achieve a common unity in Christ.
On Commending Authority
Authors: Roberts  
Published: July 2007

The excitement with which the conferring of the Red Hat on Cardinal Gracias was greeted in Bombay had a special quality. It was not just that it came to the first Indian Cardinal; it was rather like the enthusiasm of Preston or Bolton on receiving the Cup. The Cup, clearly, is won. So in a real sense was the Hat, and that is the difference between East and West.There had been no attempt to disguise the disappointment felt when about a month earlier all twenty-four hats had gone to the West. Indian Catholics had seen overwhelming reason to hope for at least one more Asian Cardinal in the seventy; in general what the Westerner says about the decision of a superior, the best Eastern Christian likes to say to a superior; in that he is already much nearer to apostolic Christianity. But if there was an Indian Archbishop in Bombay at all to receive the Hat, that was a situation which had been earned also. This is not the place to dilate on the subject. Immense as the joy in India has been in the first Indian Cardinal, I think that there may be more joy in Heaven on what the East can give back to the West.
The Sacring of the Queen
Authors: Farrell Ambrose 
Published: July 2007

The coronation service is not a picturesque anachronism, of purely secular interest. It is an historical drama of great antiquity. The central feature is the hallowing of the Queen effected by the anointing, as expressive of her own self-dedication to the service of God and of her people. At the crowning of the Emperor the whole ritual was called ordo ad benedicendum imperatorem, quando coronatur. Regal coronation therefore takes the form of a blessing imparted with great solemnity, with the Mass as its natural setting and culminating point. In origin it is a sacramental conjoined to a sacrament.The Queen herself, in her broadcast last Christmas, asked for the prayers of her people, no matter what religion they belonged to, that she might be blessed by God, and be made faithful to the promises she would make before the altar of Westminster Abbey on the day of her coronation. Catholics will not be slow in responding to the deeply religious appeal publicly made by her Majesty.In remote times the crowning and investiture of the Emperor was without religious character. When Leo II was crowned (473) we find the Patriarch reciting a prayer, and at length it became the duty of the Patriarch of Constantinople to set the diadem on the head of the Emperor. With the crowning in church of Phocas (602), the ceremonial assumed a formal and religious character.
The Beginnings of ‘Blackfriars’
Authors: Delany Bernard 
Published: July 2007

The editor asked me to write something about how Blackfriars came into being. It was over thirty-three years ago and I am now six thousand miles away. So at this distance in time and place my task has its difficulties. I have little more than my memory to rely upon, and I feel like old Kaspar in Southey’s poem sitting in the sun indulging in reminiscences, perhaps as remote to many people as the Battle of Blenheim must have seemed to little Wilhelmine and her brother Peterkin.It was Father Bede Jarrett who decided to start the review and it must have been among the many schemes that filled his thoughts when he became Provincial at the end of the year 1916. The idea of such a review was by no means new. The Hawkesyard Review, which had been in existence for about twenty years, was an occasional review edited by the students at Hawkesyard and a kind of depository for their written efforts, literary, philosophical and theological. It began as a collection of manuscripts later it appeared in typescript and finally blossomed out in the full glory of print three times a year. During Father Vincent McNabb’s priorship the students were actually printing it themselves on a hand press, and printing it well enough to win the praise of experts. The Review provided a training ground for aspiring writers whose contributions naturally varied in style and quality: it was just a family affair and strictly for private circulation only. There was another collection of manuscripts of a different kind, produced annually by the Hawkesyard students, called The Mince Pie.
The Impact of Eastern Wisdom on the West
Authors: White Victor 
Published: July 2007

Of the impact of Western science and technology on the East little needs to be said. But there is a reverse process which is less manifest, more subtle, but which may perhaps prove hardly less effective in shaping the future of mankind. ‘Let us look towards the East’, the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung has bidden us. ‘Let us look towards the East. . . . European cannons have burst open the gates of Asia; European science and technique, European worldly-mindedness and cupidity. . . . We have conquered the East politically. . . . But do you know what happened when Rome overthrew the Near East politically? The Spirit of the East entered Rome . . . and out of the most unlikely corners of Asia Minor came a new, spiritual Rome. Would it be unthinkable that the same thing might happen today? ... I know that our [Western] unconscious is full of Eastern symbolism. ... The spirit of the East penetrates through all our pores, and reaches the most vulnerable places of Europe.’Perhaps that sounds extravagant. But I am not so sure. It was just about the time when the French revolutionaries were enthroning the goddess of Reason in the cathedral of Notre Dame that some Upanishads were first translated into a European language. It was a rather dubious translation into French by way of the Persian, and, for some time after that, European renderings of the great spiritual classics of the East were rare enough. But we know how the discovery of Buddhist thought influenced Schopenhauer; and however much he may have misinterpreted it, European thinkers have never since been unaware of the challenge to their own ways of thinking of an immense power of age-old wisdom in the Far East.
Latin American
Authors: Evans Illtud 
Published: July 2007

The generalities of geography, or a shape on the map, do little to prepare you for a new land. After the timeless, torpid days of sea and sun, the gradual bulk of a strange continent seems a heroic gesture against the empty world of water. And the introduction to South America is a warning that you must forget what you expected to see. For the islands of Fernando de Noronha, two hundred miles still from the Brazilian coast, a penal settlement for political prisoners, stand hostile and apart, with their toppling peaks and deserted bays. This is what land can be like; first a geology, and then the fantastic thing within that man can make of it.Brazil is the fourth largest country in the world. More than two thousand miles from north to south, as many from east to west, and with a coastline of four thousand five hundred, it sprawls, huge and unmanageable in mind. Absurd to begin to write of it in terms of ports of call: the half-day visit and the scheduled sights. Yet there is something to be seen, and much to imagine. Here, more than in any other Latin American land, the layers of history are immediately revealed. First the immense fact of it, prodigal and strange: vast enough and rich enough to absorb the succeeding waves of Portuguese conquerors, African slaves, immigrants from Germany, Italy, Japan. Today a population of fifty-three million can suggest a false record of the facts, for three-quarters of the people are crowded within a hundred miles of the coast, mainly in the south-east. Here are the colossal cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, skyscrapered and growing every hour.
Moral Dilemmas
Authors: Vann Gerald 
Published: July 2007

The ‘muddled marriage’ is only one among a great number of cases needing very special pastoral sympathy and care and guidance, in these days especially. The grim fact has to be faced that problems connected with the sexual life, often caused by a clash between the individual Catholic’s instinct or indeed conviction on the one hand and the Church’s teaching as it is so often presented or understood on the other, are responsible not only for great unhappiness in the lives of innumerable Catholics, but also for the fact that an appalling number are led, by their inability to ‘conform’, to leave the Church altogether. The equally grim fact has also to be faced that within the Church the growing conviction among lay people that the clergy either cannot or will not understand or sympathise with their very real difficulties is leading to a wider and wider cleavage between the two.The case of preventive birth-control is a notorious example. There are married people who for one reason or another just cannot, at least temporarily, have more children: what an insult to tell them, sans façons, that in that case they must just ‘abstain from indulgence in sexual intercourse’. (Ecclesiastical jargon often indicates a lack of real theological thinking.) The whole point is that this is not a question of ‘indulgence’: it is of the very essence of their married, their Catholic married, life. From the layman’s point of view what too often happens is that first they are told how wonderfully God has blessed the mystery of human love and sex and marriage, and then in the next breath they are told to go off and do without it.
Sunflowers and Giants
Authors: Sewell Elizabeth 
Published: July 2007

Riddles are out of fashion. They have sunk to an idle fourth form exercise. The classics, ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ or ‘When is a door not a door?’ hardly kindle enthusiasm. Even the more promising ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ with its answer ‘The higher the fewer’ cannot take one far. The Mad Hatter and Mr Salteena had one or two up their sleeve, but they were both in their own way rather questionable company, and nowadays riddles do not figure in polite society. Still less does one meet them in poetry. Yet this is strange, for they once flourished in our literature, rhyming riddles whose remnants survive in nursery jingles—‘Long legs, crooked thighs, Little head and no eyes.’ Every mind with a bent towards poetry has in it something that engenders riddles, and the recognition of these and the attempt to solve them are among a writer’s most important tasks. The Sphinx in the mind propounds her dark saying and waits in her cave for the answer,‘. . . that Theban Monster that propos’d Her riddle, and him, who solv’d it not, devour’d’, showing that inability to answer may have serious consequences.It is convenient to collect Milton, and Thebes, here, for they are part of my riddle (which I set, not officiously for you, but for myself). It was set me two years ago, one gusty Sunday afternoon in September on a farm in the Hudson Valley. I had been invited to spend the day there, whiling away the brief uneasy week before the opening of an academic year.
Hilaire Belloc: A Nursery View
Authors: Haynes Renée 
Published: July 2007

From what a man is, springs all that he does. The being Hilaire Belloc, a person of very much larger than life size, a natural portent, vivid, roaring, and exciting as a thunderstorm, was present to me long before I knew anything about his work, even the Moral Alphabet and the Bad Child's Book of Beasts which were kept in the back drawing-room and later filled us with a fearful joy as intense as that inspired by their creator. He had always been there: a grown man who liked children, and who could be observed with delicious awe to behave very badly, according to the standards of Nanny. We did not then know he had created an entirely apocryphal legend that there hung in our quiet rationalist nursery a card bearing the words, illuminated like a text, ‘No Rot About God’; but we were acutely conscious that he did many other agreeably outrageous things. He shouted with laughter whenever he felt like it; he sometimes sang in the street as he walked along; he went into pubs; and once there was talk of his being tried in a court of justice for something he had put in a paper, talk which led me to visualise him as chained by the leg in a dark stone cell in the Tower of London, with a jailer looking in once a day to bring him a stale loaf and a jug (the large white enamelled sort used in bathrooms) of tap-water. This must have been at the time of the Marconi case libel action.He had always been there; yet the natural self-centredness of childhood made him seem real only when he flashed through our humdrum ambience like a shooting star. To go to King’s Land where he lived under the downs was for the first time to perceive him as a giant with a house, a family, a way of living quite independent of our own, continuing when we were not there to see.