Secularity, objectivity, and reason
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 ...
More ravings about art, morality, religion, and what not else
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 ...
The ship of state is never in neutral for long
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 ...
Do pretty flowers mean the French are totally immoral?
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 ...
O tempora
I found the to-do over the New York Post “chimp” cartoon unbelievably depressing.
The idea that there are all those racists out there is extremely useful to some people. It explains why black people have problems and our rulers have the right to rule us. They are, after all, morally superior, and the rest of … More ...
Mentions around the web
Crunchy con Rod Dreher gives a long excerpt from my “terrific” book. R.R. Reno quotes it at First Things. Isn’t it time you got your copy?
Is techno-transhumanism our future?
At the ISI Conference I spoke at in November a student asked me whether reliance on tradition will continue to make sense if genetic engineering makes human nature more malleable.
My reply was that at this point the potential of genetic engineering is probably overstated. No doubt it will be possible to fix specific defects, … More ...
Life of a Pope-to-be
From discussing America I decided to move on to Rome, or at least to Bavaria and the threshold of Rome. With that in mind, I just read Milestones, then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1998 memoir of his life until he became a bishop. It’s not a major work, but it does give a vivid impression of the … More ...
Same rant, continued …
What we see around us, and my last entry points to, is a perfect storm of compulsory unreason:
- The identification of reason with a scientism that rejects tradition, faith and the ability to recognize what things are—which involves belief in essential natures—as irrational, and therefore oppressive. As I note in the last entry, the result