Jeffrey Polet

Jeffrey Polet
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Jeffrey Polet grew up in an immigrant household in the immigrant town of Holland MI. After twenty years of academic wandering he returned to Holland and now teaches political science at Hope College, where he also grudgingly serves as chair of the department, having unsuccessfully evaded all requests. In the interim, he continues to nurture quirky beliefs: Division III basketball is both athletically and morally superior to Division I; the Hope/Calvin rivalry is the greatest in sports; the lecture is still the best form of classroom instruction; never buy a car with less than 100,000 miles on it; putts will still lip out in heaven; bears are the incarnation of evil; Athens actually has something to do with Jerusalem; and Tombstone is a cinematic classic. His academic work has mirrored his peripatetic career. Originally trained at the Catholic University of America in German philosophy and hermeneutical theory, he has since gravitated to American Political Thought. He still occasionally writes about European thinkers such as Michel Foucault or the great Max Weber, but mostly is interested in the relationship between theological reflection and political formation in the American context. In the process of working on a book on John Marshall for The Johns Hopkins University Press, he became more sensitive to the ways in which centralized decision-making undid local communities and autonomy. He has also written on figures such as William James and the unjustly neglected Swedish novelist Paer Lagerkvist. A knee injury and arthritis eliminated daily basketball playing, and he now spends his excess energy annoying his saintly wife and their three children, two of whom are off to college. Expressions of sympathy for the one who remains can be posted in the comments section. He doesn’t care too much for movies, but thinks opera is indeed the Gesamtkuntswerk, that the music of Gustav Mahler is as close as human beings get to expressing the ineffable, that God listens to Mozart in his spare time, and that Bach is history’s greatest genius.

Recent Essays

An Irrelevant (and Irreverent) Celebration of Hope and Fun

After fifteen largely joyful years of existence, it seems appropriate to ask whether we have retained our relevance. The struggle to catch and hold...

Whither Brexit?

Debates over the fate of the nation-state are largely driven by the fundamental problem of how we respond to guilt in a post-Christian age. Our politics will thus reflect the growing division between those who still believe the Christian message about forgiveness and those who will deal with guilt either by scapegoating or by denial.

Moots Family

These are difficult times for everyone, but for some more than others. As you may know, two dams broke in mid-Michigan causing severe flooding....

Being Present on the Porch

I was not on board the FPR train early enough to be considered one of its engineers. I met Mark Mitchell at a conference...

Podcast Recommendation – Crim and Potts

Chuck Marohn over at Strong Towns does some interesting podcasts, but none more so than a recent one with FPR regulars Elias Crim and...

Peter Lawler: R.I.P.

Peter Augustine Lawler passed away on Tuesday, leaving a significant void not only in the lives of his friends, family, and students, but in...

VoegelinView: Call for Papers

  VoegelinView (https://voegelinview.com/) is an interdisciplinary and international website dedicated to the thought of Eric Voegelin as well as to political philosophy as public commentary that...

Charles Taylor’s Front Porch Democracy

In the wake of the election, Taylor (and the New Yorker!) advocate for some of the central ideas of "Porchism." http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/how-to-restore-your-faith-in-democracy

Gene Logsdon, RIP

The Porch lost a part of its patrimony yesterday with the passing of Gene Logsdon. News of his death can be found here, and...

Evangelicals and Monasteries

Jake Meador has a nice piece over at Mere Orthodoxy discussing the value of monasteries to any well-ordered community, and what evangelicals might learn...

Benedict Option in Baltimore

The Academy of Philosophy and Letters 2016 Conference Contact me if you need more information. polet@hope.edu

Academy of Philosophy and Letters Conference

The Academy of Philosophy and Letters will be holding its annual conference at the BWI in Baltimore on May 27-29. The Topic this year...