"Prior to Kant, the line between theological and philosophical discourse is fluid. Both these extravagantly human enterprises have the same root. Human beings are persuaded that the totality of sensory-empirical data such as observation, the sciences and rational analysis which can assemble and order them, is not the whole story. Or, in Wittgenstein's aphorism: that the facts of the world are not, will never be, 'the end of the matter.'"

"The number of human beings who, at any given moment in any defined society, care deeply about literature, music and the arts, for whom such caring comports a truly personal investment and opening of being, is small…Given a free vote, the bulk of humankind will choose football, the soap opera or bingo over Aeschylus."