thoughts in and out of season
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 deals with basic issues in an intelligent way.
Like any book it has certain limitations. … More ...
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. The result in each case is that the latter gets debunked in favor of the … More ...
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 been looking for a good way to resist liberalism for a long time, and judging … More ...
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 how it acts in connection with other things. On the other hand, it is also … More ...
Real Physics, the weblog of an Aristotelian physics PhD, has an interesting post on Climategate as a manifestation of Baconian science—that is, of “science” oriented toward control rather than truth.
My take on the problem is that modern scientific thought emphasizes experimental verification and tries to pare down references to things that can’t be … More ...
There are any number of decline-of-Western-Civ books. Since I just wrote one myself, I ought to talk down the competition. In the case of John Carroll’s book, The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited, I just can’t. It’s too brilliant.
Carroll’s basic point is that man needs a place to stand, and humanism—the attempt … More ...
In my discussion of Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition I commented that “functional pattern” (my usual term) seems to cover the same ground as Thomistic “formal cause” and “final cause” taken together. In each case the point is to describe the thing missing in modern thought that makes it go haywire, most strikingly in connection … More ...
Rod Dreher sent a note asking how trads should argue with “gay marriage” proponents, and posted my reply at Beliefnet.
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 ...
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 ...