‘The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence… Whoever has approved this idea of order… will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.’
- T.S. Eliot
‘The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.’
- William Faulkner
‘It is eighteen hundred years and more since Jesus Christ walked here on earth. But this is not an event like other events which, only when they are bygone, pass over into history, and then as events long bygone, pass over into forgetfulness. No, His presence here on earth never becomes a bygone event, and never becomes more and more bygone – in case faith is to be found on earth. And if not, then indeed at that very instant it is a long, long time since He lived. But so long as there is a believer, such a one must, in order to become such, have been, and as a believer must continue to be, just as contemporary with His presence on earth as were those [first] contemporaries.’
- Søren Kierkegaard
Ooh, Kierkegaard. He has a knack for saying very important and good things in a way that I choke on and then have to think over very carefully. I like him for that, though it makes reading him a very loo-oo-oong process.
Ben – you should enjoy this, posted a little while ago over at Per Caritatem.
Hah. I’d forgotten how painful that text was. And we wondered why it was our coursework included so little Kierkegaard.
Then again, it was better than Hegel. *Shudder.* Charles Taylor has a monograph about Hegel that is so clear and straightforward that one wonders if he’s reading the same originals. I suspect not. I think my German philosophy class mostly helped my ability to throw around large, ponderous metaphors that help you avoid analyzing the text directly.