Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
Week 1: Chapter I — Introduction in Defence of Everything Else
Read Chapter I of Orthodoxy: "Introduction in Defence of Everything Else"
Chesterton opens by confessing that his grand philosophical discovery was the embarrassing discovery that it had already been discovered — inviting us to consider what it might mean to arrive, with great effort and originality, at something old and true.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Chesterton frames the whole book with the image of an English yachtsman who accidentally discovers England while thinking he is finding a new island in the South Seas. What is the point of this parable?
a.Why does Chesterton insist the yachtsman's mistake was "a most enviable mistake" rather than an embarrassing one?
b.What does this image tell us about how Chesterton understands his own intellectual journey?
2.Chesterton says he is not writing a philosophy of his own because "I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me." What does it mean for a philosophy to make a person rather than the other way around? Have you ever been "made" by an idea you did not choose?
3.The central human need Chesterton identifies in this chapter is for a life that is both strange and secure — "to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it." Do you feel that tension in your own life? Which side do you tend to neglect — wonder or belonging?
Closing Prayer
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