Some of my critics have objected to my use of the word “catholic” to describe my “ecumenism.” I would point out that my use of “catholic” is a perfectly understandable one in English. Dictionaries define the word as “all-inclusive” or . . . . Continue Reading »
Visser (p. 128) traces the separation of the household from the economy, and the resulting separation of economic relations from social relations. These divisions can be summed up as the division of Commodity from Gift: “In opposition to the invading force of cold, calculating, purely . . . . Continue Reading »
Visser ( The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude , p. 118) notes, “The mobility of modern life demands . . . that our personal links receive repeated affirmation. The close-knit small social worlds that we create, like islands in the sea of our mass society, are essential to . . . . Continue Reading »
Karuna Mantena ( Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism , pp. 68-70) describes the rise of modern social theory (in line with Arendt, Strauss, and Wolin) as the displacement of politics by society. He disagrees with Strauss and others because he argues that the politics . . . . Continue Reading »
Karuna Mantena spends a chapter of his Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism explaining the 19th-century origins of social theory. He begins by pointing to what he calls “one of the characteristic features of nineteenth century social theory,” namely, . . . . Continue Reading »
Christianity brought the “end of sacrifice,” the replacement of the bloody animal sacrifices of paganism and Judaism with the sacrificial feast of the Eucharist. But not quite the end, or at least not quite everywhere. In a 1903 article, Fred Conybeare explored the “survival of . . . . Continue Reading »
“When did destiny become manifest?” asks Ernest Lee Tuveson in his classic Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Midway Reprint Series) . He answers the earliest formulations of the apocalyptic American millennialism arises in the 1760s, best exemplified by the . . . . Continue Reading »
Secularization is not for Carl Schmitt, a Weberian disenchantment or “detheologization.” Rather, Agamben says (p. 4), “theology continues to be present and active in an eminent way.” The substance of theology and modernity may not be identical; instead, secularization . . . . Continue Reading »
In his study of the rise of the spirit of capitalism, translated as The Quintessence Of Capitalism: A Study Of The History And Psychology Of The Modern Business Man . . . , Werner Sombart emphasizes the role of the State in cultivating the capitalist spirit and in supporting capitalist enterprises. . . . . Continue Reading »
In his Coercion, Capital and European States: AD 990 - 1992 (Studies in Social Discontinuity) , Charles Tilly tells the story of the modern state as a story of coercion and capital. It is a story of two political forms, state and city. Coercion is gradually monopolized by the state, while the . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
