Remembering Paul Elmer More
I discuss “New Humanist” literary critic and Christian apologist Paul Elmer More in the December issue of Chronicles Magazine.
Philosophy
Merton’s “Unspeakable”
A correspondent sent me the following passages from Raids on the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton:
… Read moreThe Unspeakable. What is this? Surely, an eschatological image. It is the void that we encounter, you and I, underlying the announced programs, the good
Existence as violence
A correspondent referred me to a post by a “progressive Christian” blogger as a sign of a new frontier in inclusiveness. The post picked up on another blogger’s claim that “the self is inherently violent.” The example used was blogging, … Read more
From scientism to PC
Conservatively-minded people who favor the scientific outlook to the exclusion of other sources of knowledge point out that PC, the insistence that human differences don’t exist or don’t matter or shouldn’t be allowed to matter, is anti-scientific.
That’s true, of … Read more
How to live in accordance with reason?
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 … Read more
Addendum for inquiring minds
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 … Read more
The Mohammedan mind and ours
I just finished an advanced review copy of The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist, by Robert R. Reilly. It’s a clear and informative book that quotes lots of primary sources and … Read more
Christianity: Metaphysical boon or bane?
Some commenters at Alternative Right have seconded the complaint of the European New Right that Christianity is responsible for our current metaphysical problems. The reason, they say, is that Christianity separates soul and body, universal and particular, Christ and Caesar. … Read more
The One, the Many, and the alternative right
The respectable right is respectable because it accepts the principles of liberalism and can’t offer serious resistance to liberal conclusions.
That’s why a less respectable “alternative right” is needed. But what is the alternative that would do better? People have … Read more
Stereotype and individual
We describe things by their roles, but they are more than their roles. Iron, for example, has a role in the functioning of the human body, the earth, and the universe as a whole. To describe it is to say … Read more