The Nightstand

Perhaps people defended the liberal arts to me, and I was too dense to hear, but I truly cannot remember anyone ever setting out a vision for the liberal arts

Allen notes that in ancient political thought, “the people” or demos referred not to the whole but to one part of the whole political community, namely the poor. The question of regime…

For Banks, the glory of natality is not that it is a passage into the world for something or someone else, but that birth is a tool for our own self-creation, whether…

Pattinson captured the appeal of Christopher Nolan’s movies: “You can either really, really dig into it, find so many different threads to pull, or you can appreciate it as a big, massive…

These essays unite history, philosophy, and social commentary to say something about the ebb and flow of ideas which shape post-modern accounts of who we are and where we came from.

But if our souls are eternal, why do we not then spend more time with things that habituate us to eternity? If our days are short, and the “days are evil,” as…

Hooten Wilson draws on theological as well as literary works to demonstrate various approaches to a text, leading to the contemplative mode, which she asserts should be “the end of all our…

Our best ally should not be a man or woman who lacks the aptitude to discern right from wrong...one should not draw unto himself or herself a companion like Lady Macbeth, for…

Somewhat surprisingly, this is also McCarthy at his most delighted at everyday joys. There are many tender passages of drinking coffee in porcelain cups in diners, eating tortillas and beans on stops…

There's no place that division would not make things better. I don't say utopian, just better.

So too does my eye for the Creator veiled and present in His evidence. Without them, how could I recognize what was first and larger in what I sense of the present?…

What is more radical, and more conservative, than to cast the ring into the fire? That would be a real “regime change,” would it not?