philosophy 18
Tolkien, Philosopher of War
Tolkien offers a cautious approval of brutalist buildings and a full-throated one of trees.
“Ordo Amoris” and ending Burnout Culture
Only then can attention and passion be directed in the most life-giving ways and only then can a healthy culture emerge from a disconnected and attenuated one.
Philosophy in the Ruins
As long as we do live philosophical lives and share in that life with others, we can sprout a philosophical culture from the ruins of the one dominated by the…
Hope Out of Despair: A Review of Byung-Chul Han’s The Spirit of Hope
But I suspect that this stirring book will strike a chord with many readers of Front Porch Republic.
Restoring the Long Run as a Practice of Virtue
As she engages ultimate questions about human life, Little models the pursuit of virtue and the concomitant wrestling with vice involved in this pursuit.
Flannery O’Connor, Incarnational Writer: A Review of Damian Ference’s Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist
...the real artist, for both O’Connor and Ference, is one who sees and expresses gratitude for what is already there, and deals with it in such a way as to…
The Light Eaters
Plant biology seems to be revolutionizing our understanding of what a plant is and can be. This is a gift that may help us grow in wisdom, in reverence, and…
Sisyphus, Don’t Go it Alone
A Non-Believer Ponders Life, Death, and Staring into the Abyss
Staring Into The Abyss
Man must face the reality of his own existence and his ultimate fate. To stare into the abyss of eternity, to examine and grasp the meaning of life, is a…
The Keeper, The Tiller, The Question
A Cain and Abel Story for Modern Man
Craft and Theology: The Renaissance
It almost feels heretical to say that at the center of our religion, indeed our existence, is a God that can be wounded and broken, but this is precisely the…
Fly Fishing and Henry Bugbee
We can never ossify the world because it is always moving and changing like the river. Yet we can open ourselves to this ever fluctuating movement. This is manifested in…
Why We Must Recover Thinking as a Practice
Thinking as a practice places a check upon the self. It offers us a way out of our "res idiotica." If our universities are faithful to their missions, they must…
The Monkey in the Margin: History, Tradition, and Transgression
[T]he early scholastic notion of revelation was more dynamic than the modern one. Revelation does not occur, in the medieval understanding, once and for all in the static letters of…
The Mosh-Pit of Philosophy, the Pedestal of Science, and a Plate of Green Beans
Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of addressing the ISI Conference at Taylor University, “Whose Capitalism? Which Free Market? Exploring the Moral Dimensions of the Market.” My message to the…
Communitarianism, Conservatism, Populism and Localism: An Updated Survey
Wichita, KS [Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 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…
The (“Post-“) Modern Cave: An Allegory of the University
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Imagine human beings brought up from childhood in a cave, bound fast with their heads all facing one direction. On the wall before them they see only…