About Claes G. Ryn

Claes G. Ryn is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America (C.U.A.) and Distinguished Senior Fellow and Founding Director at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at the same university. Dr. Ryn taught also at Georgetown University, the University of Virginia, and Louisiana State University. In 2012 he was named Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal University. He was a doctoral and undergraduate student at Uppsala University in his native Sweden but took his Ph.D. at Louisiana State University. His many books include America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire; A Common Human Ground: Universality and Particularity in a Multicultural Age; Democracy and the Ethical Life: A Philosophy of Politics and Community; Will, Imagination and Reason: Babbitt, Croce and the Problem of Reality; and the novel A Desperate Man, a moral-political drama. His book The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Taken is forthcoming from Republic Book Publishers. Dr. Ryn was for 35 years Co-Editor of the academic journal Humanitas and was Chairman and co-founder of the National Humanities Institute, President of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters, and President of the Philadelphia Society.

How Conservatives Failed “The Culture ”

By |2019-04-07T10:52:26-05:00October 10th, 2011|Categories: Claes Ryn, Conservatism, Culture, Featured, Film, Irving Babbitt, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr.|Tags: |

Many supposedly intellectual conservatives seem to consider ideas and culture from afar, as it were, feeling no deep personal need for or intimate connection with them. Some are in a way attracted to the arts or even to philosophical speculation, but see no significant and immediate connection between these and the life of practice. Ideas and [...]

Imaginative Origins of Modernity: Life as Daydream and Nightmare

By |2017-06-27T15:42:26-05:00March 17th, 2011|Categories: Claes Ryn, Conservatism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Moral Imagination|

Claes G. Ryn Intellectuals of very different persuasions relate many of society’s present troubles to so-called “modernity.” In that respect, traditionalists and postmodernists are in broad agreement. A problem with both groups is that they typically define “modernity” in a reductionistic manner, as if the modern world were moving in a single general [...]

Not by Politics Alone: Arts and Humanities

By |2017-06-27T11:25:29-05:00March 3rd, 2011|Categories: Claes Ryn, Conservatism, Culture, Film, Jean-Jacques Rousseau|

That leading politicians wield great power nobody will deny. What is not so well understood is how limited that power is. Over time, especially, politicians are superceded by forces largely beyond their control. They must yield to those who mold the fundamental ideas and sensibilities of a people, those who affect their hopes and fears, [...]

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