The Christian Vanguard

I have been reflecting on my many regrets lately. The biggest of which is my consumption of carbs. I should have had my sandwich lettuce wrapped instead of on buns. I should have let my girlfriend have my chicken nuggets, instead of consuming them all by myself them like a fatty. So, I go home, and I have remorse. "Why am I like this? Why wasn't I able to control myself?" Plato considers it, and so does Aristotle to some extent. Of course, I was able to control myself. It wasn't like I was sitting down, watching myself on a TV screen, and seeing someone else control my body as if I were being possessed. No one possessed me. If I go to a dinner, and I let myself go, I say I lost control. In a literal sense, I did not lose control, but something did come over me, and that was my appetites (both in Aristotlean sense and in the common sense). My emotions came over me, and I decided to follow that. What we mean by losing control is that we let our reason lose control....

I recently found out that there is a Rothko Chapel . Apparently, Rothko intended on arousing a religious experience when you looked at his paintings, and it inspired some to build a chapel in his honor, where there would hang some of his work (different panels of the same project). Looks cold, sterile, and somewhat dystopian.  Two years ago, I wrote about how realism is necessary for art, which you can find  here . It was a reaction against Pollock and Rothko, and I still agree with what I said there. I did qualify myself as saying realism may not have been alone a sufficient reason, but it was definitely a necessary one. I want to add that abstraction is also necessary, which wasn't a view I held at the time. My reaction against the radical abstractionism of Rothko and Pollock inclined me against the view that abstraction was a necessary condition. I mean, look at the "chapel" and you could see why I believed it. It was nothing but abstraction.  But in a con...

This is a draft of my final essay for my Modern Philosophy class. In it, I look at Cartesian dualism and Cartesian skepticism from a Thomist view. Feedback welcome.