Friday, October 12, 2007

Chesterton on Defense & the Common Good


The president of the American Chesterton Society, Dale Alquist, offers choice words on "Sometimes You Have to Fight: A Chesteronian Perspective"

1 comment:

David Nybakke said...

Good article.

And yes, I agree, sometimes you have to fight.

As I have been reviewing some of Girard and then reading your post, from 2 different perspectives, it was interesting reading about the triangle. Here as Chesterton writes: "...explanation of romantic fiction. Every story must have three characters. Chesterton identifies them as St. George and the Dragon and the Princess: “there must be the Princess, who is a thing to be loved; there must be the Dragon, who is a thing to be fought; and there must be St. George, who is a thing that both loves and fights.”

And Girard's observations of the triangle: "by analyzing the novelistic masterpieces (Cervantes, Stendhal, Proust and Dostoïevski), René Girard reveals a different mechanism for the human desire. This one would not fix itself in an autonomous way according to a linear path between the subject and an object, but by imitation of the desire of an Other, according to a triangular plan : subject - model - object."