“Pascal wrote that ‘man is the most amazing object in nature.’ Indeed, we are such complex beings that not only do we have great difficulties understanding others, but worse, we have great difficulties understanding ourselves.”
—Alice von Hildebrand, Man and Woman: A Divine Invention, p. xiii
Join us as we explore one of Alice von Hildebrand’s most poignant works, Man and Woman: A Divine Invention.
In part three of a multi-part podcast miniseries, today’s episode dives into Chapter 3: “The Feminine Genius: Mystery, Veiling, Piety, and Modesty.” The discussion ranges over a host of topics, from the relationship between receptivity and efficiency, to the role of grace allowing men and women to “put on Christ,” and even on the role that sin plays in emphasizing our natural tendencies, virtues, and vices.
“This book is a profound meditation on the superiority of being over bustling, of love over the impress of one’s will, and of receptivity to God over what we take to be our creative ingenuity. As such it poses challenges to those creatures we call men and women, but in different ways. Dr. von Hildebrand reminds men that, apart from the genius for personal and the concrete that women possess, they become architects of heresy and inhumanity. She reminds women, meanwhile, of their at once humble and high calling to motherhood, physical or spiritual. It is a work steeped in the reverence she enjoins upon us all.”
—Anthony Esolen [from the endorsement of the book]
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