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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

"When religious questions were not the most fashionable"

From the international bestseller and my current reading project, Luc Ferry's A Brief History of Thought: A Philosopical Guide to Living--

When I was a student – in 1968, when religious questions were not the most fashionable...it was possible pass our exams and even become a philosophy professor by knowing next to nothing about Judaism, Islam or Christianity. Of course, we had to attend lectures on ancient thought– Greek thought, above all – after which we could cut straight to Descartes. Without any transition, we leapt 15 centuries, broadly speaking from the end of the second century (the late Stoics) to the beginning of the 17th century. As a result, for years I knew more or less nothing about the intellectual history of Christianity, beyond the cultural commonplaces. This strikes me as absurd.

Exactly.

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