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Commonsense Morality

From the January 2024 Print Edition

As has become distressingly clear, many people blame the Israelis for the atrocities that Hamas terrorists perpetrated on Saturday, October 7, against hundreds of civilians, including women and children, across southern Israel. The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, along with many . . . . Continue Reading »

Experience Explained

From the February 2015 Print Edition

True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World? by david skeelintervarsity, 176 pages, $12 Evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and experimental psychologists like Steven Pinker have gained immense cultural influence arguing for an atheistic, materialist worldview. Their . . . . Continue Reading »

Dogmatic Philosophy

From the February 2014 Print Edition

Religion Without Godby ronald dworkinharvard, 192 pages, $17.95When he died last February, Ronald Dworkin had been a towering figure in legal philosophy for more than forty years. His most important work was Law’s Empire, in which he argued that in interpreting the law we are necessarily . . . . Continue Reading »

Response to Reno

From Web Exclusives

Last week in this space R. R. Reno set out to challenge the foundational beliefs of economic conservatives. They must, he said, come to grasp what the postmodern left already sees: that current economic and regulatory conditions are such that market forces and the creative destruction inherent in capitalist economies will produce significant economic inequality as well as serious hardships … Continue Reading »

Taranto on the Politics of Abortion

From First Thoughts

The irreplaceable James Taranto devotes his Best of the Web Today column to a wide-ranging and highly illuminating discussion of the politics of abortion in the United States. Taranto is not quite fully pro-life, but he is very close, and his piece is one of the best analyses you’ll ever read . . . . Continue Reading »

Eudaimonia in America

From the April 2013 Print Edition

America is under attack in the pages of First Things. In a recent article Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen tells us that America is founded on a philosophy of “unsustainable liberalism.” Implicit in the ideas of the American founding, he argues, are certain mistaken philosophical premises . . . . Continue Reading »

Berry, Berry Quite Contrary

From First Thoughts

Christopher Roberts, amplifying in a blog post on his fine article on Wendell Berry’s reversal on same-sex marriage, quotes Berry as saying of contemporary Americans that “we are talking about a populace in which nearly everybody is needy, greedy, envious, angry and alone.” This, of . . . . Continue Reading »

Thinking Clearly About Drones

From Web Exclusives

Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Robert H. Latiff, a retired Major General in the United States Army now teaching at Notre Dame University, and Patrick J. McCloskey, who teaches at Loyola University in Chicago, take up the troubling question of military drones that, in the near future, will be able to deploy lethal force without direct human control… . Continue Reading »

From the April First Things: “Eudaimonia in America”

From Web Exclusives

America is under attack in the pages of First Things. In a recent article Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen tells us that America is founded on a philosophy of “unsustainable liberalism.” Implicit in the ideas of the American founding, he argues, are certain mistaken philosophical premises about individual choice and man’s separation from nature. Moreover, these mistakes are not merely intellectual because, as their logical consequences play out over time, the inexorable results are severe and pervasive social pathologies … Continue Reading »