Gilbert Meilaender

The Moral Sense by James Q. Wilson Free Press, 300 pages, $22.95 We read books and recommend them for many different reasons. Some are tightly constructed, theoretically persuasive works; others may be conceptually more confusing, yet very rich in their individual parts. James Wilson has, it seems . . . . Continue Reading »

In Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, Socrates and Critobulus are discussing household management, in which the wife plays a major role. The exchange goes this way: “Anyhow, Critobulus, you should tell us the truth, for we are all friends here. Is there anyone to whom you commit more affairs of importance . . . . Continue Reading »

Of late I have been reading John B. Meier’s A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus . I have enjoyed it, not least because the book is clearly and carefully written, even if the Jesus who emerges from these pages is not exactly the “startling” figure promised by the dust . . . . Continue Reading »

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It may just have been a throwaway line, a presumed witticism, to which he gave little thought; in which case he is convicted merely of intellectual sloppiness. But it may also have been seriously meant, a revelation of his considered judgment; in which case he offers us a window into the blindness . . . . Continue Reading »

The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas by Isaiah Berlin Alfred A. Knopf, 277 pages, $22 Henry Hardy, the editor of this hook, describes it as “in effect the fifth of four volumes” of Isaiah Berlin’s collected essays. Like one of its predecessor volumes . . . . Continue Reading »

Recently I was a speaker and panel member at a small educational workshop on “advance directives” sponsored by the ethics committee of our local hospital. The workshop was an opportunity to provide information about, and discuss the relative merits of, living wills and durable powers of attorney . . . . Continue Reading »

Memoirs in Exile: Confessional Hope and Institutional Conflict by John H. Tietjen Fortress Press, 368 pages, $19.95 In the spring of 1969, near the completion of my first year as a student at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, John Tietjen was named the seminary’s president. Most of the students, I . . . . Continue Reading »

Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all. —King LearFor much of human history death was associated at least as much with infancy and youth as with old age. To live to be old was an achievement—a modest victory over death, and one often thought of in . . . . Continue Reading »

In his engagingly titled book, What’s Wrong With the World, G. K. Chesterton argued that his fellow citizens could not repair the defects of the family because they had no ideal at which to aim. Neither the Tory (Gudge) nor the Socialist (Hudge) had an ideal that viewed the family as sacred, . . . . Continue Reading »