How does one find the obstinacy, the calm, the strength to glow with the Beautiful and the True in the midst of a raging storm? I think about a small argument in chapter 13 of the “Summa Contra Gentiles,” the work which, when my heart slows its hammering, gives my mind peace. I am at [...]
Who can save us amid our current intellectual messiness? I would offer Aquinas. His philosophy doesn’t get as much attention as other philosophers, but it was he who synthesized the ancient Greek into a unified Western philosophical system that will stand the test of time. The 2016 data breach of the personal Gmail account of [...]
Is acceptance of the death penalty contrary to the modern understanding of the dignity of the human person? The anthropology of René Girard allows for a rereading of Thomas Aquinas’ defense of capital punishment. The Catholic Church’s recent definitive revocation of the death penalty[1] suggests that something in the zeitgeist demands a rethinking of one [...]
Virtue is what the good city aims to achieve as part of the common good. Since humans are social animals and creatures of actions, the call to cultivate virtue within civil society is a fundamental aspect of the good society and the good regime... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the [...]
The danger today is not that too many are selectively and dishonestly quoting Thomas Aquinas to advance their own political agenda in ways that are unfaithful to his beliefs and intentions. The real point is that Christians have fallen into an appalling habit of censoring the very voices from the past that should be helping [...]
The liberal rage against the border wall has much to do with the nature of boundaries. Walls, borders, and fences are manifestations of restraint. Fallen humanity naturally resists the restraints of order that keep the unbridled passions under control. Walls are needed to keep the peace… “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote [...]
Except for mystics, the goal of Western philosophers and theologians has been to find the right ideas, whereas Eastern thinkers seek the direct grasping of the first principles and the inner essences of natural things. I wish to suggest that the Western and Eastern paths to the true, the good, and the beautiful can be [...]
The concept of bearings and distances, or the orientation of man, was understood with illuminating lucidity by St. Thomas Aquinas. The ability to see anything clearly, he tells us, is connected to the presence or absence of humility. If we have humility, our eyes are opened to the presence of wonder… Bearings & Distances by Glenn [...]
Although the potential range of emotional experience is essentially the same in all human beings, each culture exhibits its own patterns, inculcating certain feelings while discouraging others, promoting either expression or restraint, and defining variously the place of the emotions in everyday life. Americans believe that every person’s interior life is unique; consequently, an individual’s [...]
The beginning of a new year gives us a symbolic opportunity to mark the passing of the old and to look ahead. But the renewal of one’s soul and the growth of one’s character do not result from a mere calendar change. Happy New Year! It’s a ubiquitous wish and a proper one. We extend [...]
Members of democratic nations, especially Americans, have almost unlimited personal freedom because the constraints of class, local communities, and family have been greatly weakened. But we are also free to choose to step off the consumer treadmill, refuse to seek material success for us alone, and attempt to serve others, materially, emotionally, and spiritually. In [...]
To attain virtue in solitude defeats the communitarian instincts of human nature. The avenue of politics is one of the mediums by which moral excellence can, and should, be practiced—for there are tremendous benefits wrought to the rest of society as a result… “We see that every city is some sort of community, and that [...]
The core of René Girard's thought seems to center around the fundamental conviction that mimetic desire is the desire for God. In a recent essay in this journal, Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski makes the bold claim that “the work of René Girard would not seem all that relevant to Thomists.... However, in my estimation, Girard’s thought [...]
It is hard, as a modern, to know the right questions to ask, to know when all questions fall silent in the presence of absolute Truth, of Revelation. In his final book, The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis writes about the Mediaeval world view: “All the apparent contradictions must be harmonised. A Model must be built which [...]