Simone Weil 7
Grail and Anti-Grail Quests
"After all, if you are too small to do anything, what need is there to stir!”
Love in the Void: A New Collection of Simone Weil’s Writings
This selection of writings aims to make manifest to the reader Simone Weil’s “intensity in the pursuit of truth” and the “sense of the eternal which Weil had to an…
The Unmaking and Making of Community
The following is a talk given at the annual conference of The Academy of Philosophy and Letters on June 16, 2012 in Baltimore, MD. In her book The Need for…
The Homeless Modern
The disposition that characterizes the modern mind--a disposition that favors as its ideal a skeptical “view from nowhere,”--serves to undermine the very elements that make community possible.
9-11 and the Cloud of Overwhelming Force
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, 9-11-09. Eight years ago today, and in the days immediately following, Americans found themselves bewildered. An unprecedented mood had fallen upon them, an unfamiliar atmosphere surrounded them.…
Why we do not own a Television
April was "Media Awareness Month" at our sons' school. I took a couple weeks off from the Porch, and I also published a first draft of this piece in the…
The Human Meaning of Property
MT. AIRY, PHILADELPHIA. Before I say something rather abstract about concrete things, a few personal words about what (and who) lies behind these thoughts may be in order. The photo…