"We could almost say, the human being is a ceremonious animal." - L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough
Author: David Lloyd Dusenbury
David Lloyd Dusenbury is a philosopher, historian of ideas, Times Literary Supplement contributor and senior fellow at Budapest's Danube Institute. The author of I Judge No One and The Innocence of Pontius Pilate (published by Hurst and Oxford University Press), he is also Chair for Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Antwerp.
Proclus of Lycia: “If I were the master …”
Never a smart or honorable impulse: "If I were the master, of all the ancient books I should allow the circulation of only the [Chaldaean] Oracles and [Plato's] Timaeus." - Proclus, according the the Life of Proclus by Marinus of Neapolis (modern Nablus)
Nietzsche: “As Hamann says…”
As Hamann says: "Clarity is the right distribution of light and shadow." Wie Hamann sagt: Deutlichkeit ist die richtige Vertheilung von Licht und Schatten. — Friedrich Nietzsche, "Darstellung der Antiken Rhetorik"
Nabokov: “The gentle young rabbi dying on the Roman crux”
".... that wonderful Jewish sect whose dream of the gentle young rabbi dying on the Roman crux had spread over all Northern lands." - V. Nabokov, Bend Sinister, 1947
The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: “a veiled commentary on our contemporary religious landscape”
Tomiwa Owolade's incisive write-up of my new book, The Innocence of Pontius Pilate, went up today. This is right: "Dusenbury’s dense, erudite book is not only a historical account and an exercise in theological exegesis; it is also a veiled commentary on our contemporary religious landscape." And it's hard to argue with Owolade's last sentence,… Continue reading The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: “a veiled commentary on our contemporary religious landscape”
At long last, a cover: “Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature (Oxford University Press, 2021)
My next book has a cover (which I believe is more beige than the prose). Though I wrote it, the book's last sentence haunts me: "To be human is to be faced with a choice—to rise, or to fall."
Juvencus: “Nothing is immortal – not golden Rome, not the sea”
In case we've forgotten : "Nothing contained in the structure of the world is immortal – not the globe, not human kingdoms, not golden Rome, not the sea, not the land, not the fire-stars of heaven." - Juvencus' preface to his epic poem, Four Books of the Evangelists (ca 330 CE)
Locke “did not study at all; he was lazy and nonchalant”
Thanks to Felix Waldmann's remarkable new find, we're hearing that Locke "did not study at all; he was lazy and nonchalant" (per James Tyrell). My chapter on Samuel Pufendorf (out in April) begins: "Anglophone historiography is illiberally fixated on the Ur-liberal, John Locke..." Pufendorf is a much more interesting thinker than Locke, & he is… Continue reading Locke “did not study at all; he was lazy and nonchalant”
“Socrates and Plato will exist again”
"The Stoics say that the planets are established again into the same sign [as] when the world was first formed, and at set revolutions of time they bring about the conflagration and destruction of all things and again they establish the world anew in the same state, and, as the stars travel once again in… Continue reading “Socrates and Plato will exist again”
Public lecture in Jerusalem: Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature
I'll be giving a public lecture on the topic of my next book, Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature (Oxford, 2021), this Sunday in Jerusalem.
D. L. Dusenbury 