I Nietzsche claimed that if men took God seriously, they would still be burning heretics at the stake. In the same spirit, one supposes, are the notions that if men really cherished moral truth, they would suppress all beliefs that they considered wrong, and that if men still cared about the . . . . Continue Reading »
Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays edited by robert p. george clarendon/oxford university press, 371 pages, $39.95 A few years ago I appeared on “Firing Line” with my Notre Dame colleagues Gerhardt Niemeyer and Ralph McInerny for a discussion of natural law. My memory of that occasion is . . . . Continue Reading »
The Ethics of Authenticity by charles taylor harvard university press, 142 pages, $17.95 To grow up in Canada is to inherit a privileged position for understanding modernity—sufficently distant from that hurtling spaceship of “the republic to our south,” while retaining (perhaps from . . . . Continue Reading »
In Genesis (24:10) it is said that Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, descended from Mesopotamia—or as it is called in Hebrew Aram-Naharaim, literally, a land of the two rivers. Paul Mendes-Flohr notes that when the great philosopher and theologian Franz Rosenzweig came to . . . . Continue Reading »
As is well known, teachers are often in the habit of giving pop quizzes, and I indulge the habit here. Quick, who said the following? “Ordinary language … is the only language in which we can be sure of really grasping the phenomena.” Even people who have only a passing acquaintance with . . . . Continue Reading »
In this highly individualistic age, it is probably safe to assume about every victim what Tolstoy at the beginning of Anna Karenina assumes about every unhappy family: that each is unhappy in his or her own way. This could mean that to think about victimization now is to be overwhelmed with an . . . . Continue Reading »
Along with Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein is generally considered to be one of the two greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. But as with the field of twentieth-century philosophy itself, Wittgenstein has never seemed to be a very accessible thinker to the nonspecialist. Those, it . . . . Continue Reading »
Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man by David Lehman Poseidon Press/Simon & Schuster, 318 pages, $21.95 David Lehman’s book on deconstruction has the rare quality of being better than its jacket blurbs and prepublication puffs. It is more than “lively and engaging” . . . . Continue Reading »
Roger Scruton's unique philosophy combines analytic and continental schools of . . . . Continue Reading »
Is not the past large enough to let you find some place where you may disport yourself without becoming ridiculous? —Nietzsche It is nothing new for poets, painters, and philosophers to harken back to Utopian “golden ages” when greatness or harmony flourished. The German Romantics . . . . Continue Reading »
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