A Fool's Errand by Matthew D'Antuono
What is the meaning of life? What is the nature of existence? Why am I here? What is real happiness? The big questions. Are there answers to these questions? In a world where we are bombarded by fuzzy and faulty non-thoughts by the media and society, this book provides an inspirational and accessible introduction for newcomers to the world of philosophical thought.
Episodes
January 19, 2020 • 2 mins
Plato's works are very readable. Since he was the father of philosophy, there was no technical vocabulary at the time. He wrote in the form of dialogues, so the prose is less dry than mere treatises. Aristotle is a little more difficult, but he is still very systematic and clear as long as you can pay attention. Mortimer Adler is one of the clearest and most common-sensical writers in philosophy. St. Thomas is not easy to read, but...
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January 12, 2020 • 10 mins
Beauty is the splendor of truth. If we find something that is truly beautiful, then we know that we have found something true. Most of the time, new scientific theories meet with great resistance within the scientific community; it takes a long time for scientists to be convinced of new ideas. But in the case of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, almost all scientists believed it as soon as they saw it. Even though there was ...
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January 5, 2020 • 14 mins
Ethics is about the good life. The study of happiness and virtue helps us understand how we ought to spend our time and live life to the fullest. This topic provides us with an answer to the age-old question about the meaning of life. What most people mean when they ask about the meaning of life is, “What is my purpose?” The answer is to reach your fullest potential. Matthew Kelly has phrased it as: become the best version of your...
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December 29, 2019 • 14 mins
Happiness is one of the words that we use without giving a clear definition. So it is really easy to equivocate with that word (use the word in more than one sense). The types of happiness discussed in the first paragraph are types of happiness, but Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and many other wise people discuss a different type of happiness. You might be wondering why we are discussing happiness in a chapter...
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December 22, 2019 • 11 mins
Due to man’s body-soul unity, we do not begin our lives knowing anything at all, but we are born with innate abilities. As we interact with the world, real objects impress themselves on our senses, and an image is formed in the intellect of those objects. Our intellect is then able to abstract the essences of things and their properties. For example, when I see a table, my senses perceive the table. My abstract intellect then takes...
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December 15, 2019 • 9 mins
The vast majority of people would find it horrifying to never be able to interact with people ever again. It seems that we were built for each other. As Aristotle said, man is a social animal by nature. It is part of the essence of man to live with other people and for men to organize themselves into societies. It is through this type of observation and reasoning that we can figure out the nature of this thing called a human being.
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December 8, 2019 • 7 mins
Picture in your mind the cave. People are lined up in rows, all facing forward. Above and behind them there is a light that produces an image on a large wall in front of them. What does this sound like? A movie theater? And how often are we convinced that the world in the movies is real life and that our own lives are just a boring copy of the movie world? That the fame, violence, vengeance, lust, greed, fancy cars, big houses, exp...
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December 1, 2019 • 13 mins
I was once asked what my favorite topic in philosophy is. It took me a second to think through the various topics, but as soon as I thought of it, I knew it: God. This was a surprising answer to the person who asked the question, because God is always thought of as a strictly religious entity. But philosophy can also give us a lot of information about God, and no subject is more beautiful. We call this natural theology because we a...
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November 24, 2019 • 13 mins
The basic and most fundamental law of logic: the law of non-contradiction, which states that a thing cannot be and not be in the same way and at the same time. After all, I could look at a piece of paper folded like a chair and say, “That chair is not a chair,” but what I really mean is that the piece of paper shaped like a chair is not a chair that you can sit in. The sentence, “that chair is not a chair,” uses the word “chair” in...
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November 17, 2019 • 12 mins
This study of the nature of existence is called Metaphysics. It is the most foundational topic in philosophy because anything else that we can talk about is something that exists, and it is sometimes called “first philosophy.” Metaphysics gets its name because the book that Aristotle wrote on this topic came after his book about physics. Meta- in Greek means after. So, this book was called the “after-physics” or “Metaphysics.”
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November 10, 2019 • 7 mins
Aristotle defined truth in a way that is so simple that he used words which are only one syllable when translated into English: “To say of what is, that it is, or of what is not, that it is not, is true.” Let’s break that down. If something is, and we say that it is, then our statement is true. If something is not, and we say that it is not, then our statement is true.
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November 3, 2019 • 6 mins
We all have a duty to engage in philosophy if we really want to be happy. No one becomes truly happy by accident. Wisdom (knowing what is important, not mere factual knowledge) is necessary for true happiness, and no one becomes wise accidentally, especially in modern society. Have you ever noticed how the people who know what really matters in life seem to have a deep-seated joy all the time? Don’t you want that? It is not easy, a...
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October 27, 2019 • 11 mins
The Church teaches that the mind is a good thing and that we ought to cultivate and learn critical thinking skills. True philosophy paves the way for thinking about God, morality, creation, and other topics important to Catholicism. This introduction to A Fool's Errand explains why a book like this is necessary for today's youth.
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