Rod quotes David Rieff, who writes in personally, and reflects: consumerism is Promethean knowledge and [ . . . ] the only alternative to it is economic catastrophe —- something only the most convinced of misanthropes could possibly welcome. Is he correct? Is the only alternative to being . . . . Continue Reading »
One can surely make a reasonable argument that Sarah Palin was underqualified to be the next Vice President. Nevertheless, I argue here that the hyperventilated contempt shown for her by our cosmopolitan elites reveals a caricatured and ugly dismissal of the lives of ordinary Americans. It’s . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the hallmarks of the modern conception of man is a kind of anxious inquietude — we struggle to ovecome the diremption and alienation that haunts our consciousness. In the Lockean account, our restlessness is a function of our distance from nature — our capacity for . . . . Continue Reading »
Ross , as often transpires, has blogged something of interest: [ . . . ] Obama’s "ironist’s temperament" doesn’t just make him a more interesting politician than your average baby-kisser: It has the potential to be crucial to his success as President. Mass democracy has . . . . Continue Reading »
It is often correctly pointed out that Kant saw himself as carrying out a grand Socratic mission inherited from Rousseau. However, as Kant himself makes clear in his Logic , this had less to do with the recognition of the aporetic character of philosophy and more to do with the distinction . . . . Continue Reading »
Every once in a while — or maybe often — it’s worth a reality check to see if theory matches up to practice. Of course those of us inclined to note that being precedes consciousness (or practice precedes reason) are inclined to pay attention to what’s going on in the real . . . . Continue Reading »
Our own Peter Lawler insightfully examines the evidence that, despite breathless exertions in the service of creating a secular paradise, the modern attempt to "master and possess" nature has failed to make us fundamentally happier. The crux of the problem has to do with our . . . . Continue Reading »
Dr. Lawler asks, in a question re: my previous post, "Are today’s sophisticated Western individuals the first people to ever have lost all contact with any sense of transcendence of their biological existence?" To be intellectually sophisticated there must be . . . . Continue Reading »
James’s post, "A View from Somewhere of this Month in Pomocon," as I understand him, seems to me to describe a contemporary view of politics that has striking similarities to the age of the classical Greeks who were confronted with the death of their myth and the ongoing . . . . Continue Reading »
Quick takes on the sparks flying off Helen’s latest: 1. Definitely Alex Massie is right as far as it goes when he heaps criticism on this notion that there is a "Red" America and a "Blue" America. True, this is fostered by all the sweet and pretty maps, but it’s . . . . Continue Reading »
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