Monthly Theme: October
There’s nothing like cold, Autumn winds to make you wonder how you know what you know
In Virginia the days are still warm, but there’s now a chill in the early morning breeze that heralds the coming cold. Funnily enough, as everything begins to die, I begin to feel alive. A sense of vigilance—of watchfulness—descends over me; each falling leaf shatters the lethargic complacency that settled during the many weeks of slow and sunny afternoons.
But enough of my seasonal melancholy. As you may have noticed, we had another sad run of show with only two articles making it to the press between July and August, and nothing to show for September. (As for some happier news: Joe got married in August, so he did have an okay excuse for not writing something.) In July, the reliable Peter Cermak published a great piece about Gouverneur Morris, where he states:
“Despite his funny sounding name, the impact [Morris] had on the constitution and the early development of the United States is profound. He is sometimes called the “penman of the constitution” in contrast to Madison’s moniker, “the father of the constitution,” but this was not for lack of influence…He was not only the Convention’s most frequent speaker, but also played key roles in seemingly every one of its sub-committees, from the Committee on Style to the Committee of Detail.”
His influence was of deeply conservative import, as Peter argues. Be sure to read the essay here and please do comment and share (and why not give it a like?).
Secondly, with an additional month to write, I managed to scrape up an article about James Madison and his passion for religious liberty. In the piece, I share how Madison’s political career was jumpstarted exactly because of this same passion, and I also raise some of the challenges religious liberty faces today—what is religion? What is conscience and what role does it play? You can find the essay here, and I kindly invite you to share your thoughts in the comments or share the piece with others who might enjoy.
Finis. Adieu, September.
Enter, our October theme…
Monthly theme for October: Epistemology
I can only imagine this theme is exactly what you were hoping for. What better way to enter fall than to snuggle up with a pumpkin spice latte and a lovely article about…epistemology?
Hurray?
We are not writing on this theme to flex our philosophical muscles or to flaunt our liberal arts degrees. In fact, we want to write on the topic of epistemology precisely because we want to learn more about it (that is, we, or at least most of us, don’t know that much about it), and we hope you learn something too by reading along.
At the simplest level, what is epistemology? Merriam-Webster defines it as “the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity.” In other words: how do we come to know what we know? Or how do we know that we know?
Still not sure what that means? Join us for this next month and become even more confused as we dive into the wily world of epistemology!