{
  "id": "CH06.P019",
  "oid": 144,
  "kind": "paragraph",
  "label": null,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
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  "work_metadata": {
    "title": "Orthodoxy",
    "authors": [
      "G. K. Chesterton"
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    "description": "G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (1908), his account of how he came to Christian belief: the full text with annotations, cited sources and commentary.",
    "original_publication_year": 1908,
    "alternate_titles": [],
    "subjects": [
      "Christian apologetics",
      "Christianity",
      "Philosophy of religion",
      "Paradox",
      "G. K. Chesterton",
      "English literature, 20th century"
    ],
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    "metadata_updated_at": "2026-11-07T20:29:57Z"
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  "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH06.P019",
  "text": "All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium; that one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little. Some moderns have indeed appeared with vague versions of progress and evolution which seeks to destroy the μεσον or balance of Aristotle. They seem to suggest that we are meant to starve progressively, or to go on eating larger and larger breakfasts every morning for ever. But the great truism of the μεσον remains for all thinking men, and these people have not upset any balance except their own. But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way.",
  "length_cp": 793,
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      "revision_oid": 165309,
      "created_at": "2026-11-07T17:39:29Z",
      "updated_at": "2026-11-07T17:39:29Z",
      "title": "Aristotle's mean is already a demanding balance",
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          "exact": "the μεσον or balance of Aristotle",
          "start": 230,
          "end": 263,
          "prefix": "volution which seeks to destroy ",
          "suffix": ". They seem to suggest that we a",
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        "task": [
          {
            "approach": "Philosophical contextualization: then and since",
            "question": "What does Aristotle's mean actually require, and how far does it support Chesterton's move from equilibrium to a distinctively Christian way of achieving it?"
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      "created_at": "2026-11-07T19:04:35Z",
      "updated_at": "2026-11-07T19:04:35Z",
      "title": "The balance that lets opposed passions keep their strength",
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        "run": "argument-articles-restart-2026-11-07",
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        "task": "Developing argument of chapter VI, The Paradoxes of Christianity",
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