You're Being Destroyed by Awful Philosophy | Malcolm Guite

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:00]I saw a great meme. It's a kid standing on a couple of books looking at a library and he says, "God exists." And then the next is a man standing on several books and he says, "God does not exist." He's looking just above the bookshelf. There's a third guy who's got so many books that he's now looking at the universe and he says, "Oh [ __ ] it's God again." Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great. Yeah. So, I mean, I let's put it this way. I mean to borrow a phrase of Aquinas since we're having pints with Aquinus. I mean >> um God is the ground of all being.

[00:00:31]>> Yeah.

[00:00:31]>> So the ground of all being is not going to go away >> and he doesn't need to employ kind of double glazing salesmen and insurance agents to get his word out there. It's always going to be there. He is the root and ground of being. And also all the atheist arguments are old. I've been talking about Aquinus again. So when I decided I was going to specialize in medieval literature, I thought I've got to read the guys, you know, read Augustine. So I I had ques some controent, which is, you know, I'm a gentile. Speak to me.

[00:01:01]>> So you may remember that >> that book more or less begins with, you know, is there a god?

[00:01:06]>> It would seem not for the following 10 reasons.

[00:01:09]>> And he gives you 10 really. And I thought, blime me, I'm an atheist. How are you going to get out of this?

[00:01:13]>> I'm I'm an atheist and I've only thought of five of these. So he really and that that's totally disarming.

[00:01:19]>> Yeah.

[00:01:19]>> Because the modern narrative is people only believe, you know, like Christianity is for dummies.

[00:01:24]>> Yeah.

[00:01:24]>> You're not going to say that after reading Aquinas. No.

[00:01:26]>> So the assumption I had was that now we'd seen science and now we understood, you know, more about the mechanics of the universe. We didn't need that stuff.

[00:01:35]That's the childhood of the world, you know.

[00:01:37]>> Does he give 10 arguments? I mean, in the Suma um theologia, he gives two. I didn't realize. No, there's a bunch of them. He he he goes through why you shouldn't believe and then you know in the famous phrase that comes he says said contra.

[00:01:49]>> That's right.

[00:01:49]>> On the other hand, >> said bloody contra he Yeah. I mean I'm remembering this from a long way back. So I hope but you know it I won't fact check you in real time. I just want to see what he says.

[00:01:59]>> But anyway, the point is just the fact that he then sets it out in terms of argument and then okay. So I get to the sum of theologia and then there's this distinction between faith and knowledge and the proper relationship between faith and knowledge and faith isn't plugging a gap of in knowledge >> but it's a foundation and ground of knowledge and then that's developed later by well it's developed before before Aquinus by anelm >> who says theology is fed quarian's intellectum it's faith seeking but earlier Augustine had said I don't understand in order to believe.

[00:02:34]>> Mhm.

[00:02:35]>> I believe in order to understand.

[00:02:37]>> And anybody who says just to say that other people exist is an act of faith >> cuz you only have the evidence of your interior monologue, your interior mind about it, maybe you're just making it up.

[00:02:47]>> You know, >> to believe that there's a truth beyond yourself to exercise reason. Fantastic.

[00:02:53]>> Very good. That's a good analogy, right?

[00:02:54]Because I could be a solopsist and just assume you don't and then life's pretty bloody confusing.

[00:02:59]>> And I remember my dad explaining to me what soypism was.

[00:03:03]Well, I went through a bout of that as a teenager. But as soon as you assume, okay, what if I'll act as if there are other people >> or believe and now all of a sudden I understand what's going on.

[00:03:11]>> Yeah. Exactly. So the question about belief is not whether you're going to believe or not cuz everybody's going to believe something is cuz you got to believe that logic is actually works and is logical before you use logic, you know, analytic reason. So there's something a priori that you believe. The question is not whether you're going to believe, it's what and on what grounds.

[00:03:32]And on what grounds are you going to assess whether you were right to have put your faith there.

[00:03:38]>> So the question really about the Christian faith is whether it makes more sense of the world as we actually live it.

[00:03:45]>> That's right.

[00:03:45]>> Than the atheist alternatives.

[00:03:47]>> Yeah. And if the atheist alternatives are telling you you have no real personhood, no real soul, you're just the unwinding of an enzyme and they and self, >> how is it that you actually experience choice and the peril of choice and you experience responsibility and you experience and you experience beauty and your experience of beauty is essentially transcendent rather than limit. You kind of have a sense I mean it's all there.

[00:04:14]Yeah.

[00:04:15]>> I mean, even if you even if you go back to say like a Shakespeare set so famously, you know, shall I compare thee to a summer's day, right? You know, I mean, >> executive summary, shall I compare thee to the summer's day? No, you're way better.

[00:04:28]>> Yeah.

[00:04:28]>> So, he's going through what's the problem with the summer is full of promise, but it's full of it's problematic. So, you remember, you know, shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

[00:04:36]Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

[00:04:38]Now, here's the problem with summer.

[00:04:40]Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. And summer's lease hath all too short a date. It's temporal. It flies.

[00:04:49]It promises. And it goes away. And it, you know, winter comes. Says your lease is up. Your time is up. It's gone.

[00:04:55]What's the next line? He says, "But thy eternal summer shall not fade." Now, eternal summer is a contradiction in terms or better still a paradox. There's something in spring or something. that says there's more of this. It doesn't have to fly away. That this is coming.

[00:05:14]This temporal fleeting thing that you you have to love and it leaves you is always telling you that there's something that won't fade.

[00:05:22]>> That there's something and in this case in the experience of human love just paradoxically even as the moment flies I think >> there's something permanent. There's something eternal. Thy eternal summer shall not fade. And we've just we've been left with the stories, but they're telling us there's no eternity. There's a there's a an English folk folk songwriter called um Alan Franks who's got a great line and one of his songs.

[00:05:49]He says, "They give us the wings then dismantle the sky."

[00:05:54]>> So, so yeah. Um, I think what's returning is precisely the sense of the eternal coming through the temporal and the temporal the the material temporal accounts can't account for it.

[00:06:09]>> It's a real experience for millions of people and they don't have a philosophy that makes sense.

[00:06:14]>> I was sitting here with a fellow I'm going to go I'm going to switch to the to the cigar. You see how quickly I did that?

[00:06:18]>> Yeah.

[00:06:19]>> Um, I was sitting with a fellow here yesterday, Dr. J. Bujashevsky who was a Nietian uh nihilist uh he said more nihilist than ner he came to Christ um he's a Catholic uh in Austin um uh what was he saying golly forgive me I'm sure there was a point there but blood I like that little clippy sound of a cigar clipper you know >> well that's the that's the ritual >> it's exactly >> it's all yeah the ritual's lovely >> okay here's what he said I came back to me. He said that he ripped up his mind.

[00:06:56]That's how he put it. Like he ripped up his mind with nihilism.

[00:06:59]>> Yeah.

[00:07:00]>> Um and we're living in a time where period people are longing for culture.

[00:07:05]They're longing to be reconnected to the story. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:07:07]>> But they may have may like my friends say they've ripped up their mind. How do we put the mind back together?

[00:07:14]>> Well, let's just look. We do so by remembering the things we've forgotten. And we just need to think for a moment about the ethmology of the word remember.

[00:07:26]To remember is to remember to take what has been split apart and ripped apart and severed and bring it back together again >> into one hole. And we can only if we've been as it were culturally and psychologically dismembered by the kind of trashy philosophies we inherited, then we need to remember deeper ones and older ones. And this is the great gift of Christianity.

[00:07:54]You know, we've been around for a while.

[00:07:57]And uh there's a there's a reason for that because we're we are a story being told by God himself. And I'll tell you an interesting thing. I noticed in the last 10 years of my chapy in in Cambridge >> that whereas we were all being told you know in theological college that we should be down with the kids and like you know two guys in a guitar in a cafe and >> no it turns out the the most popular services were the most traditional ones >> 100% >> that we do prayer book even song you know book of common prayer 1660 >> anthems going beyond that sometimes sung in Latin full choir And no explanations.

[00:08:36]>> Yeah.

[00:08:37]>> No kind of cheesy little talks.

[00:08:40]>> Yes.

[00:08:40]>> Just this incredibly powerful. We have er and strayed from the like lost jeep.

[00:08:45]You know, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.

[00:08:51]>> Boy, a kid with an iPhone knows more about devices and desires than even Thomas Graham did. You know, >> but I think why is this happening? And I think it's partly that that generation of kids, like if they buy a new smartphone, it just in the time that took them to walk home from the shop and unwrap it, the software is already obsolete.

[00:09:11]>> Like they have to upgrade it, you know, to the new version, whatever. And everything about life is it's like that.

[00:09:19]>> And in that situation, you long for anything with permanence, >> stability, >> you long for stability. you, you know, and when I can say to them, look, we've been doing this exact service for the last 400 years, and we're just beginning to get it. I don't think we get it totally, but we'll get there. You know, there's headroom, there's growth room, you know, it's not, you know, if you get it straight away, >> then it's less than you are.

[00:09:45]>> Yeah. But if it's transcendent, it's got, you know, when I be I I eventually returned to my Christian faith, you know, fairly thoroughly in my time as an undergraduate at Cambridge. And one of the things that held me back from it was a fear of intellectual suicide and a fear of stasis. There were some Christians in the kind of Christians going around saying like here's exactly what you have to do. You have to find Jesus. You have to life to him. You say this prayer, then you're done. And um and you're you're right with God through the through the sacrificial blood of Jesus. and like then you can carry on being a chartered accountant and in need never trouble your mind again cuz you're fixed. And I thought I I don't want to do that.

[00:10:21]>> So I can remember actually I was just beginning to think there's more to this Christianity than I realized because I was reading the confessions of St. Augustine and I got to this bit where he says late have I loved you beauty always ancient always never always knew it hadn't occurred to me that you could call God beauty >> and that although he was always ancient he was always just moving me then there's a knock on the door right and there's two ardent young you know evangelical guys with a tract >> while you're reading >> Yeah. Yeah. and they come in and lay it on the line and they say, "You've got to believe this or you're going to go to hell, but thank God for Jesus. Here it is." You know, basically, and I'm I'm going, "Oh, like, is this the same thing as Augustine?" I like And had those guys said, "What are you reading?"

[00:11:08]And I'd said, "This is what I'm reading.

[00:11:10]Amazing." And if they'd said, "Yeah, we too believe in that that that God, you know, but they didn't do it. They had like a a set pattern."

[00:11:18]>> It's almost like this western efficiency >> and it kind of put me off. Yeah.

[00:11:22]>> No, I did. Thanks God I came, but it kind of delayed the moment.

[00:11:26]>> Um, but eventually I I got there and um >> here here's one way I would imagine people could have re remember their mind, have their mind remembered.

[00:11:35]>> I just I haven't read this before, so I just I just can I read two uh stanzas from your book?

[00:11:41]>> Please do. As I walked out one morning, all in the soft fine rain, it seemed as though a silver veil was shining over hill and veil, as though some lovely long- lost spell had made all new again.

[00:11:56]And through that shimmer in the air, I seemed to hear a sound, as though a distant horn were blown in some lost land that I had known, that seemed to speak from tree and stone, and echo all around. And with the music came these words. Poet, take up the tale. Take up the tale. This land still keeps and earth and water magic sleeps. And dryad size and niad. Is that how you say it?

[00:12:19]>> Nad weeps. Yeah.

[00:12:21]>> But you can lift the veil. I mean, God, I didn't know that I was about to read the answer to what we're talking about.

[00:12:26]>> We're talking about isolation, cut off from culture and community. Take up the >> take up the tail. So there's a great bit at the end of CS Lewis's novel um that hideous strength in which kind of Merlin recovers.

[00:12:40]>> There's a conversation between two of the characters where he says something we may call Britain is always haunted by something we may call Logres. Now Logres is the name for Arthur's Kingdom. It's the Welsh name for Arthur's Kingdom. And he says, >> he says, "We've heard better than we can do." And he says, "Don't you see it in everything English? You know, we're a nation of poets, but we're a nation of shopkeepers. You know, behind every Arthur and Morrid, you know, after every Milton or Cromwell, you know, and it's as if we have an asses head, we got it.

[00:13:10]We've forgotten ourselves. We've forgotten who we are. We need to recover. So, in that same prelude a little bit later, that's the kind of that's the muse giving me my marching orders. I kind of riff on that and it tells you what I'm trying to do. Uh, and I'll just I just >> tell me the page, too.

[00:13:26]>> Find it for you. So this is this is just the page after you were reading.

[00:13:30]>> Okay.

[00:13:30]>> So I talk about all the things I need to tell and then I talk about reviving memory and then I say this um but listen well before you start. Be still where you begin. See through the surface roundabout the noise, the rush, the fear, the doubt. Though modern Britain lies without, fair logres lives within. And I'm playing a little. You may yet walk through Merlin's aisle by Oakan ash and thorn. The ancient hills do not forget, and you might wake their wisdom. Yet, who knows what wonders might be met on this midsummer mourn.

[00:14:12]So, I have taken up the tale to tell it.

[00:14:15]>> Thank you for taking up the tale.

[00:14:16]>> Thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed that clip, you are going to love the full interview. Please click it and watch it or else I will tell on