About Jack Gist

Jack Gist has worked on ranches, in greenhouses and nurseries, as a freelance writer and editor, and as a security guard. He graduated from the University of Wyoming with a BA in English and Philosophy and an MFA in Writing from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Mr. Gist has published books, short stories, poems, essays, and opinion pieces in Catholic World Report, Crisis Magazine, The New Oxford Review, Galway Review, and the St. Austin Review.

Orestes Brownson & the Limits of Freedom

By |2026-04-16T15:05:04-05:00April 16th, 2026|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Freedom, History, Poetry, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

If a democracy drifts into unlimited notions of freedom, the best course of action is not to strip citizens of freedom, but rather to educate them, so that they can correct any constitutional abuses that contributed or led the way to the abyss of nihilism. Introduction This essay will revisit the age-old concern with the [...]

Clarity as Charity

By |2025-08-26T20:39:54-05:00August 26th, 2025|Categories: Charity, Christianity, Philosophy, Reason, Timeless Essays|

Critical theorists seek to confuse concepts through the manipulation of language and promote ideas that fail to correspond to reality. Academic theories designed to confuse rather than to clarify must be confronted with calm reason. This is the most charitable thing we can do for those who will come after us. Self-evident Truths It can [...]

Less Than Nothing: The World Without Mystery

By |2025-08-05T11:39:01-05:00August 4th, 2025|Categories: Christianity, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernity, Mystery, Timeless Essays, Truth, Western Civilization|

Only by recognizing the divine mystery that predicates existence in the world can one reclaim his individuality. Only then will he be capable of searching for meaning generated outside the human intellect. Humans can never be gods, but they need God to live meaningful lives. Most students I teach believe that reality is subjective and [...]

Anthropology & the Death of the Individual

By |2025-07-28T17:44:36-05:00July 28th, 2025|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Death, Friedrich Nietzsche, History, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas, Timeless Essays, Truth, Walker Percy|

Do you believe in a higher power, something that transcends the “human organism”? If this question is trivialized or ignored, we enter the very sound and soul of despair. Anthropology is the scientific study of human beings. Philosophy, literally translated, is the love of wisdom. Philosophical anthropology, then, is the scientific study of humans for [...]

“The Yewberry Way”

By |2023-04-13T19:55:25-05:00April 13th, 2023|Categories: Books, Christianity|

I read in a book—when there still were books—the kind of books you hold in your hands and turn the pages, that God is omniscient. That’s the main reason the System targeted God for Erasure. That’s what it said in the book. If there was a God, the System couldn’t control It because they couldn’t [...]

“Harrison Bergeron” and the New Middle

By |2022-12-21T18:36:07-06:00December 21st, 2022|Categories: Equality, Literature, Politics|

Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” is a cautionary tale about the horror of totalitarianism. It matters little from which camp the horror originates: Left, Right, Democrat, or Republican. Horror is horror. As the Left and, increasingly, the Right continue to turn their backs on all things sacred, they are left only with themselves. In October of [...]

Reason in the Making: Artistic Vision in Albert Camus’ “The Guest”

By |2019-08-08T12:54:16-05:00August 1st, 2019|Categories: Culture, Literature, Morality, Philosophy|

Albert Camus was a gifted writer, and though he approaches the edge of beauty, he fails to make the leap. In doing so, he condemns his stories, ironically, to the role of featureless individuals, accidents of energies. Artistic vision, Flannery O’Connor insists, takes place in a space where, “The writer’s moral sense must coincide with [...]

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