thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb [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
That’s the title of my review of Daniel Mahoney’s The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy Against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends in the current issue of First Things.
Over at Alternative Right I had a discussion with a participant who—like a lot of people who comment there—tended toward a sort of action-oriented tribal relativism. His basic thought seemed to be that social order doesn’t go very deep but comes out of crude drives plus choice, with this and that expedient added in to … More ...
I’ve done paintings and movies recently, so why not music? Here—if you’re in the mood—is a Buxtehude setting of Psalm 41:2-3, Quemadmodum desiderat cervus, ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea, ad te, Deum. Sitivit anima mea ad te, Deum, fontem vivum. Quando veniam et apparebo ante faciem tuam? (“As the deer longs for the … More ...