Coronavirus and the Cult of Expertise

by Nathan Pinkoski

Do the managerial experts performing within the drama of this crisis have an adequate understanding of the hierarchy of human goods?  Continue Reading »

30 Mar 2020 0

Hope As a Natural Virtue

by Peter J. Leithart

We embark on the road of sanity only when we walk in hope; hope is the source of natural virtue. Continue Reading »

22 Nov 2019 0

Vacationing with Samuel Johnson

by K. E. Colombini

Like a scholastic, Dr. Johnson divides lovers of rustic solitude into subspecies. Continue Reading »

17 Jul 2018 0

Awkward? Or Wise?

by George Weigel

Too many of today’s churchmen seem unaware that the virtues are at the heart of Christian morality. Continue Reading »

12 Jul 2017 0

A Papal Tutor of Heroic Virtue

by George Weigel

To teach prayer and holiness to edgy adolescents is no small achievement. To do it under the pressures of a homicidal Nazi Occupation is remarkable. To do it with a future pope means that Jan Tyranowski’s lessons extend far beyond Dębniki and touch the entire world. Continue Reading »

1 Feb 2017 0

​Aristotle and the Elections

by John Cuddeback

Elections can make you wonder about where you live. It can be frightening to share so little in common with neighbors and fellow-citizens. Especially when they elect people to rule over you. Continue Reading »

3 Nov 2016 0

Delight in the Good

by Karen Swallow Prior

On The Challenge of Entertainment Continue Reading »

22 Sep 2016 0

The Cardinal Virtues & The Walking Dead

by Matthew Milliner

An academic friend was visiting from abroad, and after a day of talks and teaching, we wound down around ten o’clock at night. Noticing my exhaustion, he offered a secret to decompression. “Zohmbies, Mahtt,” he counseled in his inimitable Greek accent. So it was that I tuned into my first . . . . Continue Reading »

15 Jan 2016 0

A Guide Through the Thicket

by Jordan Hylden

For some time now, First Things has sought to bring Catholics and evangelicals together. Richard John Neuhaus, Charles Colson, and their fellow travelers have engaged in an fruitful ecumenism of the trenches, discovering as they went along that they had more in common than they knew, particularly with respect to Christian ethics and the church’s public witness. And much though not all of First Things’ work has been in the service of a religiously informed “public philosophy,” seeking to find a common language for perennial truths about marriage, life, freedom, and other issues in the public square. Continue Reading »

22 Sep 2015 0

Is Vice More Interesting than Virtue?

by Kathleen Hull

Since at least the age of Milton, whose Satan in Paradise Lost allegedly outmatches the other characters in depth and dynamism, artistic depictions of evil have often been associated with power and interest. So it’s not surprising that many critics approached director Kenneth Branagh’s rococo new version of Disney’s Cinderella on the stepmother’s side. “Bad always sizzles more than good,” Manohla Dargis proclaimed in the New York Times. Other critics noted with genuine puzzlement that the title character manages to be compelling in spite of her moral goodness. Where is the dramatic appeal, they wondered, in a conventionally virtuous character? Continue Reading »

26 May 2015 0