Every honest college teacher – at least every one who has been around long enough to judge -- knows that teaching, really teaching, is getting more and more difficult.  One reason is the prolongation of adolescence, which I discussed yesterday.  But there are others.

Mondays are for letters from students.  This one is a doctoral candidate in Dallas.

Question

You may have noticed that animals have a sense of fun, but not a sense of humor.  James V. Schall, S.J., explains why:

Interviewer:  “Universally and necessarily we cannot affirm and deny the same thing at the same time and in the same way.  What is wrong with that?”

Cornelius Van Til:  “My concern is that the demand for non-contradiction when carried to its logical conclusion reduces God's truth to man's truth.”

NBC has suspended nightly news chief anchor and managing editor Brian Williams for six months without pay for falsifying what happened when he was reporting in Iraq.  Does the punishment fit the offense?

The natural law is not just a philosophical theory; it expresses the common sense of plain people everywhere.  This being the case, one would expect it to shine with particular brightness today, for the modern age is supposed to be the age of the common man.  This is a myth.  The modern age is not the age of the common man; it is the age of the expert.

Some theoretical differences are unbridgeable.  For example, what specialists call the incommensurability thesis is either true or false (I think it is false).  Yet considering that a war for the moral sense of Western Civilization is going on, you would think Thomists and other natural law thinkers would work harder to find common ground.  To this end, I suggest:

Monday, as always, is for letters from students.  You would think my letters would all be about things like natural law.  Directly, no.  Indirectly ....

Question: