Peter Lawler

1. So there were some fine comments in response to my course summary below. 2. First off, why not Nietzsche first? 3. To take Nietzsche seriously at all, we have to consider various respected descriptions about who we are these days. Bloom and Rorty don’t disagree on the facts—on . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s my rough description of my new course that I have to start teaching next week. It’s obviously too much stuff, and perhaps “the whole” only makes sense to me. So your comments are so welcome that I might even take them into account: This course is an examination of . . . . Continue Reading »

So Palo Alto and Stanford might be as close to paradise as we will experience in this life—especially at the Stanford Park Hotel. I’m talking/discussing at a Hoover lunch today on NATURE these days, as part of a general effort to restore a natural foundation for conservatism. My . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s boring! It’s like a long (really long) video game. It’s fairly complicated, like a good game/puzzle, but you’d have to get more involved than any reasonable viewer could to follow all the clever stuff. It has very annoying background music, a lame attempt to make . . . . Continue Reading »

So I’m sorry I haven’t time to say more about the great professors and students at the ISI conference. I was going to explain how Dr. Pat Deneen was right to connect Bloom and Dewey on the proposition that the past—including devotion to God, country, and so forth—is dead to . . . . Continue Reading »

1. First off, let me thank Cindy Searcy for organizing a perfect week. Dr. Pat Deneen might say otherwise, given that his original room in the historic inn was a little too historic for him. (There are, it turns out, limits to the natural instinct for affection for one’s place.) It is true . . . . Continue Reading »

I just got back from a week at the ISI Honors Program in Annapolis. The real reason I had the lame post on Hilton Head was to make that trip tax deductible. The reason I’m saying a few things about the ISI week is to dispel the impression that I’m against liberal education and all that. . . . . Continue Reading »

So, thanks to PRICELINE, I’m able to spend a few days with my wife in Hilton Head, SC at a reasonable rate. This the largest island in the South, with beautiful beaches and marshes and some Gullah and Civil War history. But basically everything is new and planned (in accord with trendy . . . . Continue Reading »

1. The study of great books is usually contrasted with the use of textbooks and other technical books. It is contrasted, in other words, with study of the studies that show us what we most need to know as productive beings in a free, middle-class society. 2. It’s inevitable on our society that . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m aware of the overlap with previous posts, but the space wasted is only virtual (and so compatible with sustainability): 1. Everyone knows that the species—unlike God or country or family—is something less than oneself. Losing myself in the species is obviously unworthy of me. . . . . Continue Reading »