Category: Body and Soul
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A Final Word to Brother Jackass
You've served me well, old friend, borne many a burden, and conducted me over many a pons asinorum. Your exuberance and animal spirits have caused me trouble, but they have also broadened and deepened my soul's experience. I too have served you well with my counsels and warnings. More than once have I saved your…
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Body, Soul, and Self Revisited
On 4 December of last year, a Substack entry of mine entitled Care of Body and Soul occasioned a comment by Tony Flood to which I replied on 10 December in Body, Soul, Self. Today, 25 June 2023 Tony responds to my response in a piece entitled Man's "True Self": A Reply to Critics. Now…
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Driver or Passenger?
Are you the driver of your vehicle or merely a passenger? Who is in control of route and destination? Body or soul? Which is just along for the ride?
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Body, Soul, Self
Tony Flood writes: Hard to imagine Hitchens at almost 73, had he lived. Great post, but I have a question. Briefly, why do you refer to the soul as one's "true self"? Genesis 2:7 reports that from the dust of the ground (ha-adamah) God created ha-adam, i.e., "the man." The man became a living soul (le-nephesh hayyah) when God…
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Care of Soul and Body
To care properly for the first, live each day as if it will be your last. To care properly for the second, live each day as if your supply of days is infinite. (Adapted from Evagrius Ponticus.) ………………………. The mortalist body-abuser is one puzzling hombre. Christopher Hitchens loved to drink and he loved to smoke…
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Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?
In his last book, Mortality, the late Christopher Hitchens writes, "I don't have a body, I am a body." (86) He goes on to observe that he has "consciously and regularly acted as if this was not true." It is a curious fact that mortalists are among the worst abusers of the fleshly vehicle. But…