Why Tocqueville? Why Today?
by James PoulosIn part two of my Atlantic interview , I say a few words on a subject that brings pomocons and front porchers together (for a bench-clearing brawl or a bout of hope and healing)? . . . . Continue Reading »
In part two of my Atlantic interview , I say a few words on a subject that brings pomocons and front porchers together (for a bench-clearing brawl or a bout of hope and healing)? . . . . Continue Reading »
I take the first of several laps around the track with Conor Friedersdorf, who’s doing interviews on Big Ideas for The Atlantic . I’m especially delighted to be able to speak with some coherence about a few concepts that I’ve been kicking around for a while now. First up, our bad . . . . Continue Reading »
Here are a couple of excerpts from a brilliant decoding of Balzac’s esotericism, accomplished by Scott Sprenger, a colleague of mine at BYU. Consider the applications to the analysis of Straussianism, and to a post-Straussian postmodern critique of modernity: The fundamental problem that . . . . Continue Reading »
The skill in desire and aversion is knowing how to preserve the practical self from dissolution. OAKESHOTT As will one day be elaborated in a dissertation, Machiavelli’s eponymous Prince lived — and killed — by surfeit of this virtu ; Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet . . . . Continue Reading »
David Brooks’ recent column on genius , which offered a portrait of the Mozart who excelled by logging his ten thousand hours of rote practice to get on sooner to the good stuff, seemed to gibe poorly with not only our romantic understanding of unique human excellence but our practical . . . . Continue Reading »
The latest issue of Modern Age (Winter 2009) is now available for general consumption and features a symposium on Remi Bragues amazingly erudite book The Law of God . Besides a very fine lead contribution from Mark Shiffman (who blogs over at Front Porch Republic ) youll also find short . . . . Continue Reading »
It is generally accepted by both the left and the right that science itself is a morally neutral enterprise, since it merely creates the mechanisms of power that can be used for moral and immoral purposes alike. In a public speech a few years ago, President Bush expressed this commonly-held view, . . . . Continue Reading »
Blogito, ergo sum . I blog, therefore I am. This epistemological premise would seem to describe more than a few who inhabit the blogosphere these days. One wonders what would happen to the likes of an Andrew Sullivan or a Jonah Goldberg if they awoke one morning to discover that they were unable to . . . . Continue Reading »
Andrew has a fairly careful and modest essay at the Times on the progress of religious faith in the face of scientific progress. The issue of whether faith should gird us to not fear scientific truth is an intriguing one; the Holocaust was scientifically true, after all, meaning the facts could not . . . . Continue Reading »
There are two models of rapture — one super-worldly, one this-worldly, one in which we are abducted, from here to eternity, and one in which we are inducted, to infinity and beyond. The first model is depressing if it’s the only opportunity we have to experience eternity. Even the . . . . Continue Reading »