Society and Reality

Fr. Adam, in our blog discussion, made the following case about human nature:

With respect to your distinction between the capacity for consciousness and the potential to develop that capacity, I challenge you as follows: develop what? Your very language reveals the fact that the capacity is as present in the fetus as it is […]

From “How to Read Lacan”:
A century ago, in order to situate his discovery of the unconscious in the history of modern Europe, Freud developed the idea of three successive humiliations of man, the three ‘narcissistic illnesses’, as he called them. First Copernicus demonstrated that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and thus deprived us humans […]

Below is a quote from “Transcendence: Critical Realism and God” by Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier, and Douglas Porpora. Archer is a sociologist I believe she is also a Catholic. Collier is a philosopher. Porpora is a sociologist. From the preface:
We are all critical realists by philosophical position. Margaret Archer has a greater involvement with the […]

I am convinced that all reality is dynamic, and that structure is a special case of dynamics where energy or motion is canalized such that patterns are formed. When patterns are stable for periods of time longer than our lifetime or patience to observe, they appear fixed. But in reality, they are not fixed. Humans […]