Various

Fusion or Confusion? Joseph Bottum’s intelligent and clever essay on “The New Fusionism” (June/July) offers a possible hypothesis, but as the last surviving Protestant Democrat on the editorial boards of FIRST THINGS, I am bound to see things a little differently. I cannot accept . . . . Continue Reading »

Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature. By Nicholas Boyle. University of Notre Dame Press. 304 pp. $55. In Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature , the Cambridge literary scholar Nicholas Boyle hopes to find “some new ways in which some of . . . . Continue Reading »

An Actual Buddhist Peter J. Leithart does not know what he is talking about in his article “When East Is West” (April). Your printing of his work is a disservice to readers who might actually wish to know something about American Buddhism. Leithart has clearly not visited an American . . . . Continue Reading »

Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews. By Mark Mazower. Knopf. 528 pp. $35. In 1430, Sultan Murad II conquered Thessalonica, the second city of Byzantium, for the Ottomans. His successors welcomed Jews expelled by Spain in 1492, and for the next four-and-a-half centuries three . . . . Continue Reading »

More on War Paul J. Griffith’s analogy of the “just war” with the procedure for licensing drivers confuses agents and their actions (see “Who Wants War? An Exchange,” April). Licensing implies that the state has a “presumption against drivers” (agents), not a . . . . Continue Reading »

Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World. By Wesley J. Smith. Encounter. 219 pp. $25.95. The Brave New World referred to is that of biotechnology. Specifically, Smith is concerned with the “power of biotechnology to affect the human future by harnessing our bodies at the cellular . . . . Continue Reading »

The Science of the Mind It was good to read Paul C. Vitz’s article about “psychology in recovery” (March 2005). Important things are going on today in psychology, and the positive psychology movement is a breath of fresh air. I do take exception, however, to a few of Dr. Vitz’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers in Canada’s New Social Experiment. Edited by Daniel Cere & Douglas Farrow. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 208 pp. $22.95 paper. “Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as . . . . Continue Reading »

Duel over Dualism Dualists hold that the human person consists of both a soul (or mind) and a body. For healthy, fully-functioning human beings, the person is a unified subject, but at times such as physical death, dualists hold that persons (souls or minds) can survive the destruction of their . . . . Continue Reading »

John Buridan: Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Arts Master. By Jack Zupko. University of Notre Dame Press. 550 pp. $40 paper. Jack Zupko of Emory University is from the Cornell school of medieval philosophy. These scholars see it as their mission to explain to today’s analytic philosophers why . . . . Continue Reading »