An astute political analyst once mentioned that Aristotle taught us that the ad hominem was a logical fallacy. He went on to add, "I wonder what he had to hide." Ideologies and systems should not be seen as pristine, stand-alone affairs. The best book to get us thinking about beliefs' bloodlines:
Why is it that many of the most lionized figures of the modern world were people who lived seriously rancid lives? Should it matter that Rousseau, a darling of educational theorists, serially abandoned all his children?
Turning Freud's projection theory of God on its head, Vitz strikingly argues that the fatherlessness of modern atheists should be seen as a function of deeply felt fatherlessness at the human level.
Bellow reveals that many "self-made men" were nothing of the kind—they were family-made men. A corollary of this would be that great contributions to civilization do not fall from the sky, but are forged in conversations around the dining-room table.
Centuries of hard-edged theology and hardscrabble living placed 18th-century Scots in a unique position to contribute to an unexpected renaissance. The answer to, "Who gave our culture what it has and why?" may surprise those who just ask, "What do we now possess?"