3 Quotes & Sayings By William C Placher

William C. Placher is a lawyer and author of the legal thrillers Justice for None and Justice for All. He has worked as an assistant district attorney in New York and New Jersey, and as a defense attorney in New York and Connecticut. He is also an associate professor at Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches courses in criminal law, trial advocacy, and evidence Read more

His books have been translated into eight languages. Mr. Placher has been a member of the New York State bar since 1985, when he was admitted to the bar in Connecticut.

He earned his undergraduate degree in English and American literature from Harvard College in 1983 and his J.D. in 1987 from Yale Law School, where he was a Public Interest Fellow in Trial Advocacy. He lives with his wife and two sons in New Jersey.

1
..only in the late 1100s and 1200s did scholars in Sicily and Spain translate Aristotle's greatest philosophical and scientific texts. These translations had an impact reminiscent of those science fiction stories in which the world suddenly encounters a civilization far in advance of its own. Aristotle had systematically answered the widest range of questions on everything from ethics to physics to biology. Students flocked to the universities advertising that they taught Aristotle. For Christian theologians, all of this posed at least two problems. First, the whole Augustinian tradition had taught that faith provided the standpoint from which one could understand the world correctly. Since Aristotle had not been a Christian, how had he managed to understand so much? Second, most theologians had drawn on the idea, going back to Aristotle's teacher Plato, that the road to knowledge involves turning away from the senses and looking inward to the truths of the soul. Aristotle, on the other hand, taught that all knowledge begins with sense observation. William C. Placher
2
The themes of Jesus' teaching are important, but of course he was more than a teacher. All the Gospels put the end of his life at the dramatic center of his story. Here all the hopes of Israel come together–he is the king of the Jews, the greatest of all the suffering prophets. Yet Jesus transformed those expectations. He did not lead Israel to victory over Rome. Indeed, one of the remarkable features of the narratives of his last days is that his increasing isolation makes it impossible to identify him with any one 'side' or cause. The Roman governor sentenced him as a Jewish rebel, but the leaders of Judaism also turned against him. He attacked the powerful on behalf of the poor, but in the end the mob too called for his blood. His own disciples ran away; Peter denied him. He did not go to his death agony as a representative of Jews, or of the poor, or of Christians, but alone, and thus, according to Christian faith, as a representative of all. . William C. Placher