Things to Focus On
A thing…is inseparable from its context, namely, its world, and from our commerce with the thing and its world, namely engagement. The experience of a thing is always and also a bodily and social engagement with the thing’s world. In calling forth a manifold engagement, a thing necessarily provides more than one commodity. Thus a stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathers the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center.
—Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life
Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture & Science is the online quarterly review of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute. Read the full issue on the Humanum Review website.
Table of Contents
Re-Source: Classic Texts
- Albert Borgmann: The Difference Between Things and Devices
Feature Articles
- Jonathan Bieler: Contemplating the Depth of Things: Maximus the Confessor on the Church
- Edward Trudeau: The Prophetic Metaverse of “Snow Crash”
- Sarah Carrig Bond: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Affection for Things: Thoughts on “Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses”
- Paisley Clowe: Come, Have Breakfast
- Stephen McGinley: On the Table
- Rodney Howsare: The Ritual of Vinyl
Witness
- Ever Johnson: O, Jerusalem, If I Forget You!
Book Reviews
- William R. Hamant: Hyperreality: The Prison of Our Own Device
Mulder, Frank, Hyperreality: How Our Tools Came to Control Us - Matthew John Paul Tan: Playing for Eternity
Bosman, Frank G., Gaming and the Divine: A New Systematic Theology of Videogames - Katrina Bieler: What Does Home Mean?
Gress, Carrie and Noelle Mering, Theology of Home: Finding the Eternal in the Everyday
Gress, Carrie and Noelle Mering, Theology of Home II: The Spiritual Act of Homemaking