The Philosophical Optimist

I pray you let me lay my beard over the block, lest you should cut it. Sir Thomas More   Lord!   Open the king of England’s eyes. William Tyndale         The two quotations given above are the reported final words of two great men of the sixteenth century: Sir (now St.) Thomas More and William Tyndale.   Each man sought to serve God with his whole heart, and each died a martyr to conscience.   Their final words reflect their differing temperaments: Tyndale always deadly earnest; More ever jesting, even on the gallows with the axman about to cleave his neck.   However, it was not their differences in temperament, but a much deeper theological divide that, in 1528, less than ten years before the death of both men in 1535-36, would lead them to collide head-on in a vicious war of words, ostensibly over Tyndale’s attempt to put the entire Bible into clear idiomatic English for the first time.    ...

            The wonderful thing about a literary education is that, assuming it is done right (an outcome that is far from certain), it improves one's ability to read any text, written or otherwise.  Read with a discerning literary eye, any text of any real value reveals meaningful symmetries, the discovery of  which greatly enhances the reader's—or viewer's—enjoyment of the text.             This epiphany occurred to me once as I was watching an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise called "Breaking the Ice."  I had been teaching my students about the concept of theme, and how it is often reflected in the title of a story; so I decided to apply this principle to the episode I was watching and ask, "How, in this episode, is ice being broken?"  I was not disappointed with the results.            ...