Enjoying the view from Limbo
From W. H. Auden, we have this charming short:
Why are the public buildings so high? How come you don’t know?
Why, that’s because the spirits of the public are so low.
To extrapolate on that theme of matter and form in society, body and soul writ large, I shall dare to venture a few lines of my own….
A few spiritual reflections to stave off despair in these somewhat desperate times. First, from Epictetus: In every feast remember that there are two guests to be entertained, the body and the soul; and that what you give the body you presently lose, but what you give the soul remains forever. This deceptively simple contrast between the priorities of body and soul invites...
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 14, 2025 · Last modified July 16, 2025
If your most important contribution to the world was something you did for material gain, then you have not contributed anything of great importance to the world. The profit motive exists, and works well, but what profit motivates is not of a higher nature. Or rather, even the most potentially beautiful activity becomes pedestrian and merely practical to the extent that profit is...
Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the unquestionable giants of world literature: essential to the development of the nineteenth century anti-romantic novel; one of his century’s two great prophets and critics (Nietzsche being the other) of the then-growing nihilism that was devouring European intellectual life, and has since — as he (like Nietzsche) predicted — settled like volcanic ash over the entire civilized world;...
This week, North Korea has continued to test and perfect its missile systems, while Donald Trump reassures everyone that all is well with his relationship with his good friend Kim Jong Un. Meanwhile, the United States of America, the last hope for any semblance of individual liberty and citizen self-determination to survive on this planet into the foreseeable future, has taken yet another...
by Daren Jonescu · Published October 14, 2018 · Last modified October 17, 2018
The following pictures were taken during a recent daytrip to Tongyeong, Korea, sometimes referred to as “the Naples of Korea.” As the town is highly photogenic, these pictures do not really require any comment or explanation. Instead, therefore, I have chosen to let the images comment on or explain me, as it were. The one exception is the final picture, for which I...
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