Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Orthodox"

Coming home on the tube tonight I saw a quote on a station wall that was attributed to G K Chesterton reading "you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it", thinking to myself what a marvellously presuppositional statement this was I checked it out when I got home and found that it is attributed to Chesterton in a selection of uncollected writings entitled "The Man Who Was Orthodox".

"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Was-Orthodox-Chesterton/dp/0234775998/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379018244&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Man+Who+Was+Orthodox

This book is quite hard to get hold of now but it strikes me how useful it would be to have this collection in Logos, or indeed a fresh selection of uncollected writings if there were copyright problems with this edition.

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Nick Steffen

[Y]

Agreed. Though if it were up to me, I would want to include all of the collected works from Ignatius.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525477#Comment_525477

Agreed. Though if it were up to me, I would want to include all of the collected works from Ignatius.

[Y]

My priorities for works of his I'd like to see them publish next, if they can't do all of the rest of them at once, would be:

The Everlasting Man
Saint Francis of Assisi
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Father Brown Stories (complete)
On Lying in Bed and Other Essays
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Autobiography

And some books about Chesterton and his work:

Battling for the Modern Mind: A Beginner's Chesterton (by Thomas C. Peters)
Gilbert: The Man Who Was Chesterton (by Michael Coren)
G. K. Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense (by Dale Ahlquist)

Nick Steffen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525479#Comment_525479

Yep, most of those are living in my Logos library today only by the good graces of the PBB.

Butters

Coming home on the tube tonight I saw a quote on a station wall that was attributed to G K Chesterton reading "you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it", thinking to myself what a marvellously presuppositional statement this was I checked it out when I got home and found that it is attributed to Chesterton in a selection of uncollected writings entitled "The Man Who Was Orthodox".

"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Was-Orthodox-Chesterton/dp/0234775998/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379018244&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Man+Who+Was+Orthodox

This book is quite hard to get hold of now but it strikes me how useful it would be to have this collection in Logos, or indeed a fresh selection of uncollected writings if there were copyright problems with this edition.

hi Mike, I may be wrong but I think that original quote is "God" not "truth" - there are a ton of great collections. Rosie has mentioned some.

I would add a few that are really important, especially in the company of his Aquinas, Everlasting Man, Autobiography, etc. Those would be:

Orthodoxy
Heretics
Chaucer
His two books on Dickens
And his Shakespeare Crit

Also, there's a new collection put out called In Defense of Sanity, edited by Ahlquist, Pearce and Mackey.

There are many good books on Chesterton. Two I would highly recommend are:

The Tumbler of God: Chesterton as Mystic. Fr. Wild is excellent and he builds upon the work of the following book, essential arguing that Chesterton is a new kind of mystic. He is part of a movement to canonize him, in addition to William Oddie and others.
Hugh Kenner's Paradox in Chesterton is still one of the best books on Chesterton: how he thinks, how that translates into his unique writing style, etc.

Finally, if you're interested we get together as a society all over the country and then once a year we gather to discuss and lecture on him. These are always loads of fun; next year it will be north of Chicago. www.chesterton.org

I should add that you can purchase audio from previous Conferences; many of the lectures are simply outstanding.

~Butters [:)]

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525582#Comment_525582

Coming home on the tube tonight I saw a quote on a station wall that was attributed to G K Chesterton reading "you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it", thinking to myself what a marvellously presuppositional statement this was I checked it out when I got home and found that it is attributed to Chesterton in a selection of uncollected writings entitled "The Man Who Was Orthodox".

This, I think, illustrates the truth of Churchill's statement to the effect that the British and the Americans are one people separated by a common language. When I first read this statement, I thought you were referring to the TV by "tube" though it is obviously the subway. [:D]

I may be wrong but I think that original quote is "God" not "truth"

That sounds more correct. Chesterton was a true curmudgeon—enjoyable to read.

Butters

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525603#Comment_525603

Chesterton was a true curmudgeon—enjoyable to read.

Do you have a favorite Chesterton volume George? Or are you too feeling too curmudgeonly yourself this morning to even bother discussing him? [:D]

~Butters[:)]

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525615#Comment_525615

Chesterton was a true curmudgeon—enjoyable to read.

Do you have a favorite Chesterton volume George? Or are you too feeling too curmudgeonly yourself this morning to even bother discussing him?

~Butters

"Curmudgeonly"? What, ME? [:)] I can't really point to one volume as my favorite, I simply find him enjoyable. Of course, being an Anglican (thus a Protestant) and a Calvinist, I don't always agree, but that isn't necessary.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525582#Comment_525582

I would add a few that are really important, especially in the company of his Aquinas, Everlasting Man, Autobiography, etc. Those would be:

Orthodoxy

Heretics

These first two are already available from Logos, both individually (links added), and as part of the G. K. Chesterton Collection (11 vols.) which includes a bunch of his other works.

Mike Pettit

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525582#Comment_525582

hi Mike, I may be wrong but I think that original quote is "God" not "truth" -

I cannot access the original source but the full context is:

"Logic and truth, as a matter of fact, have very little to do with each other. Logic is concerned merely with the fidelity and accuracy with which a certain process is performed, a process which can be performed with any materials, with any assumption. You can be as logical about griffins and basilisks as about sheep and pigs. On the assumption that a man has two ears, it is good logic that three men have six ears, but on the assumption that a man has four ears, it is equally good logic that three men have twelve. And the power of seeing how many ears the average man, as a fact, possesses, the power of counting a gentleman’s ears accurately and without mathematical confusion, is not a logical thing but a primary and direct experience, like a physical sense, like a religious vision. The power of counting ears may be limited by a blow on the head; it may be disturbed and even augmented by two bottles of champagne; but it cannot be affected by argument. Logic has again and again been expended, and expended most brilliantly and effectively, on things that do not exist at all. There is far more logic, more sustained consistency of the mind, in the science of heraldry than in the science of biology... There is more logic in Alice in Wonderland than in the Statute Book or the Blue Book. The relations of logic to truth depend, then, not upon its perfection as logic, but upon certain pre-logical faculties and certain pre-logical discoveries, upon the possession of those faculties, upon the power of making those discoveries. If a man starts with certain assumptions, he may be a good logician and a good citizen, a wise man, a successful figure. If he starts with certain other assumptions, he may be an equally good logician and a bankrupt, a criminal, a raving lunatic. Logic, then, is not necessarily an instrument for finding truth; on the contrary, truth is necessarily an instrument for using logic - for using it, that is, for the discovery of further truth and for the profit of humanity. Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it." [GKC Daily News Feb 25, 1905 quoted in The Man Who Was Orthodox]

As such I think that the original is "truth".

Butters

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525772#Comment_525772

Thanks Mike - interesting. If it's from 1905, then no doubt you're correct that the original was "truth" - I hadn't come across that one. Like most prolific writers (and he out-prolificked the even the prolickerist), he recycled turns of phrases that he liked.

Cheers,

~Butters [:)]

Milford Charles Murray

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525835#Comment_525835

Peace! *smile* One Google article has it in February 1905 .

http://www.basicincome.com/bp/youcanonly.htm

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525479#Comment_525479

[Y]

This. I already have the Chesterton Collection, and augmenting or updating it with these would be splendid. Perhaps making a second collection would be an option, similar to the separate collections for the writings of Pope Benedict.

Many of these works are in the public domain, so demand for paying for their incorporation into the Logosphere would be key. I recall that the rights situation for Everlasting Man was somewhat unusual and might require some negotiation.

Anyway a capitol suggestion [\more transatlantic humor]

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/525983#Comment_525983

Many of these works are in the public domain

Unfortunately, I was told in a Verbum blog comment some time ago that there are more copyright issues than you'd think with Chesterton's works. Even books that are freely available on the web and claimed to be PD, aren't necessarily so.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/526038#Comment_526038

Unfortunately, I was told in a Verbum blog comment some time ago that there are more copyright issues than you'd think with Chesterton's works.

But Logos has a relationship with Ignatius Press and has published lots of their books, so they ought to be able to work this out. It'll just take time.

Mike Pettit

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/526155#Comment_526155

I love the quote:

"Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."

It amazes me that even some professing Christians do not understand the point he is making here, but I suppose it takes all sorts.