Austin Stone

Immediately following Obama’s less than reassuring pledge to the world’s most famous plumber to "spread the wealth around" we’ve been treated to a shocking character assasination of a private individual and the careful if tedious parsing of Obama’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Leo Strauss’s “elevation” of the philosopher’s “eternity” is intended as a rhetorical counterweight to the dehumanizing power of technology.  Christianity, by referring the meaning of morality to an authority beyond humanity, and by implicating man at heart . . . . Continue Reading »

Dr. Lawler asks, in a question re: my previous post, "Are today’s sophisticated Western individuals the first people to ever have lost all contact with any sense of transcendence of their biological existence?" To be intellectually sophisticated there must be . . . . Continue Reading »

James’s post, "A View from Somewhere of this Month in Pomocon," as I understand him, seems to me to describe a contemporary view of politics that has striking similarities to the age of the classical Greeks who were confronted with the death of their myth and the ongoing . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m pleased that Joe Carter has taken up the important argument that one shouldn’t assume redneck conservatives hate elites just because they hate Blue elites, but I’m concerned about the way Mr. Carter has gone about it. It isn’t wrong to point out, as Carter does, that . . . . Continue Reading »

I make the argument here that an increasing reliance upon Powerpoint among college professors in the humanities reveals much about the state of liberal education and the condition of professional philosophy today. A snippet: The hidden premise beneath the proliferation of PowerPoint in university . . . . Continue Reading »

Quick takes on the sparks flying off Helen’s latest: 1. Definitely Alex Massie is right as far as it goes when he heaps criticism on this notion that there is a "Red" America and a "Blue" America. True, this is fostered by all the sweet and pretty maps, but it’s . . . . Continue Reading »

It seems that Conor Friedersdorf and I only ever have one fight: he tends to judge things (candidate, ideas, and political parties) strictly on their merits, and I always want to make it more complicated . From his post on Young Turkism in the pundit class: . . . had TS Elliot sent me "The . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s Daniel Larison (more specifically, one of many good points Daniel Larison makes in response to this post ): If it was absurd to say that an unexamined life was worth living, as the “red state” correspondent claimed, it is perhaps even more absurd to say that a complicated . . . . Continue Reading »

Dr. Hancock in his latest post has hit upon a problem that has plagued philosophy since the age of the Greeks in writing that "thinkers" should, " . . . .appreciate the dependence of their own transcendence on the intimations available in ordinary, pre-philosophic life." It . . . . Continue Reading »