Finished Reading “Heretics”

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  "G. K. Chesterton, the "Prince of Paradox," is at his witty best in this collection of twenty essays and articles from the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on  "heretics" - those who pride themselves on their superiority to Christian views - Chesterton appraises prominent figures who fall into that category from the literary and art worlds... those who hold incomplete and inadequate views about "life, the universe, and everything." He is, in short, criticizing all that host of non-Christian views of reality, as he demonstrated in his follow-up book Orthodoxy. The book is both an easy read and a difficult read. But he manages to demonstrate, among other things, that our new 21st century heresies are really not new because he himself deals with most of them." (Goodreads)

Desire and Aversion, Motivation, and Judgement

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“There are three areas in which the person who would be wise and good must be trained.

The first has to do with desires and aversions—that a person may never miss the mark in desires nor fall into what repels them. 


The second has to do with impulses to act and not to act—and more broadly, with duty—that a person may act deliberately for good reasons and not carelessly. 


The third has to do with freedom from deception and composure and the whole area of judgment, the assent our mind gives to its perceptions. 


Of these areas, the chief and most urgent is the first which has to do with the passions, for strong emotions arise only when we fail in our desires and aversions.” 


— Epictetus, (50 - 135 AD) “DISCOURSES”, 3.2.1–3 a 

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