Philosophers & Saints

Will Wendell Be Jailed?

Claremont, CA. Wendell Berry, writer and farmer and hero to the people, might move from the farmhouse to the big house. Speaking at one of...

What’s Modernity Marx Got to Do With It? (FPR vs. PoMoCon,...

Wichita, KS Blogger though I am, I can't deny that there is a major advantage to arguments conducted through the slower media of paper (to...

Aristotle and the Cult of the Immediate

In the current economic and political crisis, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is not likely to be one of the first places that Americans go looking...

Robert Nisbet’s Quest

Seattle, WA Robert Nisbet's 1953 book The Quest for Community has rightfully achieved that rare and estimable status of "classic."     What Nisbet saw more...

Descartes, Algebra, and Alienation

Democratizing eighth-grade algebra promotes social justice. (Brookings Institution) Money, mechanization, algebra. The three monsters of contemporary civilization. Complete analogy. (Simone Weil) Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. ...

Is the Devil From Paris?

Irving, Texas. Is the devil from Paris? Many people seem to think so. And if not the devil himself, then at least a particular...

Brave New World Reconsidered: A Tale of Two Gnosticisms

Many who are alarmed at the prospect of the “abolition of man” have found in Huxley’s Brave New World a dark and salutary warning...

Hospitality in a World Immune to Grace

Media, PA. Ladies and gentlemen, Ivan Illich is dead. Long may he live. I don’t mean Tolstoy’s famous fictional decedent, Ivan Ilyich, although he...

Communitarianism, Conservatism, Populism and Localism: An Updated Survey

Wichita, KS Michael Sandel's giving of the prestigious Reith Lectures for the BBC (hat tip: the ever-watchful Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber) has prompted me...

Workaday Morals

Henry County, Ky.    Those of us foolish enough to call ourselves “conservative” are forced to admit that culturally and politically at least we live...