thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb I just finished reading Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. In spite of its title, the book is less a discussion of the “New Atheism” (Dawkins, Dennett, et. al.) than a wonderfully clear overview of Thomism. As such, it emphasises its response to the insights and inadequacies of … More ...
Zenit, the international Catholic news agency, just published an interview with me about the topics I cover in my book.
I just finished reading Allan Carlson’s Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies – And Why They Disappeared. It’s a really excellent collection of short case studies of 20th century attempts to create, recreate or maintain local, familial, distributist or agrarian economic forms in the face of commies, … More ...
Commenter Alice, with whom I’ve had a couple of exchanges at her husband’s weblog, carries her battle into the opposition’s territory. The pile of arguments is getting unmanageably high, so I’ll set up my response as a new entry:
… More ...Dear Alice,
I agree that not all ways of viewing the world are equal.
I’ve added arguments and responses made in a discussion of the issue elsewhere to my recent entry on faith and reason. For convenience’s sake I’ve added them in the form of comments.
The discussion has clarified for me why modern secularists and antimodern traditionalists view each other as crazed tyrants. Each inhabits in thought a … More ...
Razib Khan, a.k.a. “David Hume,” responds to my comments on the mission statement of the weblog Secular Right. His basic rejoinder is that a “morality grounded in the reality of God” may indeed have more consistency and power than one based wholly on this-worldly human inclinations, but only if it’s already admitted that … More ...
I suppose the Puritan’s (and maybe Plato’s) hesitation about something like Delacroix’s Basket of Flowers is that its excellence and this-worldly self-sufficiency seem to divert beauty from a better function. (I’m no doubt making too much of this, but the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom and all that so I’ll pursue … More ...
According to George Weigel, the big issue in the fuss over the Society of Saint Pius X (the traditionalist group whose bishops just got de-excommunicated) is religious freedom: whether “coercive state power ought … be put behind the truth-claims of the Catholic Church or any other religious body.”
That obviously can’t be the issue. If … More ...
While visiting the Metropolitan Museum this past weekend we wandered through one of the galleries devoted to French painters of the post-Revolutionary period. It looks like they mostly wanted a return to normalcy. Hence Ingres’ portraits of extremely self-possessed and incredibly well-tended notables and their wives. All the storms in the world couldn’t affect … More ...