Peter J. Leithart

Belief in God is natural, argues Justin Barrett in Born Believers. His is not a theological or philosophical argument about natural knowledge, but a conclusion from interviews, surveys, and other psycho-sociological evidence.Which makes atheism rather an anomaly, Barrett things, and a . . . . Continue Reading »

Jonathan Ree’s delightful I See A Voiceglances at Enlightenment-era efforts to work out analogies between color and musical harmonies.Newton’s Optics was key. He argued that “just as all different tones can be located on a single scale running from the highest to the lowest . . . . Continue Reading »

We don’t hear sounds, Heidegger said. That’s an abstraction. What we hear are things making sounds - “the creaking wagon, or the motor cycle . . . the column on the mark, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling” (quoted in Jonathan Ree, I See A Voice, . . . . Continue Reading »

Voice has often been seen as expression, as the coming into public space of something within. Given its reliance on breath, it was easy to conclude that voice is the expression of the soul.According to Ree (I See A Voice), it was Herder who broke through this illusion bt arguing that voice . . . . Continue Reading »

“What makes this team special?” a reporter asked University of Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett after his Cavaliers beat Syracuse to sew up the Atlantic Coast Conference championship. It was a typical sports-journalistic question, but Bennett’s answer wasn’t typical. “Humility,” Bennett instantly replied, then looked down and waited for the next question.

Diane Thompson concludes her essay in Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition with this superb description of the place of God’s Word in the words of Dostoevsky’s novels, and his characters:“Dostoevsky’s feeling for the dynamic aspect of the Logos was exceptionally . . . . Continue Reading »

Consciousness enters the world and the stones remain stones and the sun the sun. Still existence becomes completely different when consciousness arises, Bakhtin argues in Speech Genres. This happens become the coming of consciousness is the coming of “the witness and the judge” . . . . Continue Reading »

Nabokov didn’t much like Dostoevsky. What interests him in literature is “enduring art and individual genius,” and from this viewpoint Dostoevsky is mediocre: “with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between” (Lectures on . . . . Continue Reading »

At the 1993 conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth, Marshall Sahlins was invited to provide “after-dinner entertainment.” His anthropological stand-up routine has been published as Waiting for Foucault, Still, most recently in 2002 by . . . . Continue Reading »

Amos Wilder’s Theopoetic, recently reprinted in Wipf & Stock’s Amos Wilder LIbrary, is a plea for a renewal of imagination, written with the taut elegance of a poet.Writing in 1976, Wilder saw himself fighting on two fronts - against the utilitarian spirit of American . . . . Continue Reading »