Monday, June 22, 2015

Dressing Up and Other Formalities



With this homily it’s time to close. Both Plato and Tocqueville talk about forms, but I have tried to find them in our daily life, in the difference we make between formal and informal, and why and how we do that. A formal ceremony shows what we want to be and covers up what we don’t want to show. Human life is part show, part concealment. We never show ourselves exactly as we are, but always a little more (when through formalities we conceal) or a little less (when with informality we leave out our self-importance).


Read all of the commencement speech by Harvey Mansfield at The Weekly Standard.

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