Chesterton, G.K.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
“Později se budeme musit podrobněji zabývat faktem, že čistě duchovní či mystická stránka katolicismu nabyla neobyčejné převahy v prvních katolických stoletích - vlivem génia svatého Augustina, který byl kdysi platonikem a snad jím nikdy nepřestal být, a působením transcendentalismu domnělého díla Areopagitova, jakož i orientálních sklonů pozdního Imperia a jakéhosi asiatského nádechu byzantského vladařství, jež bylo téměř vladařstvím velekněžským. Všechny tyto věci zatlačily to, co bychom dnes nazvali západnickým prvkem, ačkoli to má stejně dobré právo být nazýváno prvkem křesťanským, ježto jeho zdravý rozum jest jen svatou důvěrností slova učiněného tělem. Buď jak buď. pro tu chvíli musí stačit, řekneme-Ii, že theologové jaksi ustrnuli v jisté platónské pýše, v držení nedotknutelných a nesdělitelných vnitřních pravd.”
“The modern philosopher claims, like a sort of confident man, that if we will grant him this, the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind...Against all this the philosophy of St. Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs. The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkelian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists, since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble. But no pupil of St. Thomas needs to addle his brains in order adequately to addle his eggs; to put his head at any peculiar angle in looking at eggs, or squinting at eggs, or winking the other eye in order to see a new simplification of eggs. The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God.”