Mind and spirit at work …

… An Ancient Legacy of Form: Guardini on Mastery and Nearness | Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… “mastery” as Guardini uses it is not mastery as we usually think of it. He is not interested in the modern project of easing man’s estate and achieving what according to Bacon was truly lost in Eden: complete dominion over nature. Guardini neither flaunts modern credentials nor posits a state of nature such as Locke or Hobbes or Rousseau might recognize: “In nature ‘untouched,’ in the order in which animals live, we have no place.”