The ardent faith that inspired von Hildebrand is not easily recovered in our skeptical times. But through his love of truth and his brave opposition to a public culture of deception, he bore witness to values that we still share. "
Roger Scruton, foreward to My Battle Against Hitler
“Love is not concerned with a person’s accomplishments, it is a response to a person’s being: This is why a typical word of love is to say: I love you, because you are as you are.
Love typically gives rise to responsiveness regarding the beauty of a very specific individual taken as a whole rather than for values taken individually. Happiness is love’s outcome, never its motive. Where someone is loved they are an end in themselves, and certainly not a means toward something else.
It is therefore of love’s essence, wherever it is found, that the loved one seem precious, beautiful, and worthy of love."
Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living
"He immunized and protected us from the philosophical waves that swept across Germany in those days. Whoever understood von Hildebrand was saved. Despite the many factors at work, I think one can rightly say that history might have been quite different had there been more professors like him."
Paul Stöcklein, student of von Hildebrand at the University of Munich
"That damned Hildebrand is the greatest obstacle for National Socialism in Austria. No one causes more harm."
Franz von Papen
"If God permits evils such as Bolshevism and National Socialism, then of course, as St. Paul says, it is to test us; it is precisely our struggle against evil that God wills, even when we suffer external defeat."
Dietrich von Hildebrand, My Battle Against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of The Third Reich
It is certainly an irony of history that so many without some external and independent moral grounding to save them will flee the devils of the left by embracing the devils of the right and vice versa, lurching from one to another, with a high moral hypocrisy, even into the abyss.
Truly at times in history, perhaps such as our own, the increase in wickedness and cynical selfishness will provoke the love of most to grow cold. But even then, and especially then, we have the moral imperative to stand our ground, even to the end, and be saved in saving others while serving that which we have been given that is lasting.
Stocks managed to rally into the close on another summer trading day.
Gold was down a little, silver was up.
The dollar largely chopped sideways after rising a little bit.
It seems that the miners were taking a bit of a hit in selling in the afternoon.
There will be an option expiration on Friday.
Have a pleasant evening.
