thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb I’ve been reading Nikos Salingaros’ Twelve Lectures on Architecture: Algorithmic Sustainable Design. It’s a somewhat expanded set of notes for a series of lectures he gave a couple of years ago on architecture and urbanism. As such, it gives a clear if rather spare presentation of ideas he’s presented in his other books. … More ...
Another recommendation for my book, this one from the president of the Modern Language Association: “a book that gets right to the core of the matter: immanent tyrannical elements in the political philosophy that first challenged tyranny” (it’s in the next-to-last paragraph on the linked page). The review Berman refers to is unfortunately not available … More ...
I’ve been reading The Problem of Democracy, a new translation of a short book by the French writer Alain de Benoist.
“Democracy,” even more than “inclusiveness” or “social justice,” is viewed as an incontestable fundamental good today. Everybody seems to agree it’s how things have to be. Nonetheless—or maybe therefore—most people don’t think about … More ...
[The following review appeared in the January 2011 issue of Chronicles.]
The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism, by Pascal Bruckner, translated by Steven Rendall. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 256 pp., $26.95
Pascal Bruckner is a French version of the Cold War liberal, updated for the age of jihad. … More ...
A recent discussion with Bruce Charlton on knowledge, society, and the Eastern and Western Church provokes reflection.
It’s notorious that involvement in particular activities makes it hard to keep their connection to the whole in mind. Standard examples include making money, attention to the opposite sex, and attempts to control things generally. Hence the monastic … More ...
[The following review appeared in the October 2010 issue of Chronicles.]
Neoconservatives: The Biography of a Movement by Justin Vaïsse, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 376 pp., $35.00
There are very few neoconservatives, people disagree on who they are, and they have no popular following or definite organizational structure. Even so, … More ...
The mathematician and architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros has written a useful account of “seven tactics for denying the truth”: Cognitive Dissonance and Non-adaptive Architecture. (PDF here.)
It’s a good summary of how people maintain their views when they don’t have an argument and don’t want to change what they think. In many cases—like … More ...
A note related to my recent entry on homosexuality:
Modernity is marked by rejection of knowledge as contemplation in favor of knowledge as technology—to use philosophical jargon, by rejection of essence and formal and final cause in favor of efficient and material cause. It’s all about using things to get what we want. The result … More ...
My review of Daniel Mahoney’s recent book has provoked a response from Professor Mahoney, which appears (along with my rejoinder) in the current (March 2011) issue of First Things.
Various correspondents have proposed or at least asked about Christian justifications for homosexuality. Here’s a sort of canned response that seems to address most concerns:
… More ...I don’t view the issue as basically a question of authority. We need a definite way of life, and that requires authority, but legitimate authority is normally rational. It asks