Month: April 2008
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Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, But Not Both
George Steiner published a book back in 1959 called Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. Like all of Steiner’s books, this first publication of his ranges over a lot of territory and sheds light all around. As with most of Steiner’s books, I had to read only the parts I could understand,…
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Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Self (Calvin’s Institutes)
John Calvin’s masterpiece, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, has a classic opening statement. He wrote it for the first draft of the book when he was 26, and it stayed the same right through the much larger final edition of the book. Here it is: Nearly all the wisdom which we possess, that is…