One of our leading experts on the ethics and public policy of scientific innovation, Yuval Levin has written a searching and philosophically deep book on the complicated relationship between science and politics in America. He addresses the divergent ways in which the right and the left typically . . . . Continue Reading »
Larry Arnhart provides this characteristically astute response to my post below about Darwinian Conservatism. Instead of offering a genuinely postmodern view, he criticizes me for adopting a "distinctly modernist assumption of transcendendalist dualism" that traffics in the . . . . Continue Reading »
Thru Walter Olson at Secular Right , I perused this morning the Buckley-hosted Sharon Statement , "adopted in conference at Sharon, Connecticut, on 11 September 1960." Olson wanted to get this point across: the statement’s choice of language can also be seen as a deft stroke of . . . . Continue Reading »
Larry Arnhart is surely the best proponent of Darwinian Conservatism, and not just because he has a blog with the same name. In his view, an evolutionary biological account of nature properly captures our intellectual and moral capacities, the emergence of consciousness itself, and grounds a . . . . Continue Reading »
Since I first started blogging at Postmodern Conservative several years ago, I have been picking away, in extremely unsystematic style, at answering this question — largely because I’ve been thinking it through as I’ve been going along. I think that’s a feature, not a bug . . . . Continue Reading »
Adam Kirsch has an extraordinary takedown of Slavoj Zizek at The New Republic, and this is the first of a few things I’ll say about parts of it. So: the passage in Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle where Zizek discusses the ideological function of Nazi anti-Semitism: "one could say that even if . . . . Continue Reading »
Belief in God would change everything — Freddie In response to my due distance postscript, he writes: James is right, of course, that this doesn’t have to be a moment of despair, but merely a moment of opportunity. There are small graces in this kind of world, if we look for them. James . . . . Continue Reading »
Michael Weiss has a fine piece on David Foster Wallace at The Weekly Standard . The Wallace quote I am snipping here, which closes the piece, is nothing very new or groundbreaking (anymore? Rieff had him beat by at least a decade). But note the phrasing I’m putting in bold: The next real . . . . Continue Reading »
Freddie, that ubiquitous ombudsman, has taken me out for a ride for bashing Martin Buber. I get the feeling our disagreement isn’t about Buber anymore, so don’t feel any special pressure to catch up before proceeding. The basic disagreement between us is this: Should we try to love our . . . . Continue Reading »
1. Pinch hitting at Schwenkler’s, William R. Brafford solicits my comment on the friendly R.R. Reno’s latest: I hope it’s clear that I see the problem of stability and dynamism as one of balance, of figuring out where to set limits. And here Reno asserts that it is most important . . . . Continue Reading »
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