To commence as a writer for the pulp-magazines is no advantage; nor is writing film scripts in Hollywood, decade after decade, generally to be recommended for those who would be men of letters. Such was Ray Bradbury’s background. He had the advantage, however, of never attending college—which salutary neglect preserved him from many winds of [...]
The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling, by Gertrude Himmelfarb. The Moral Imagination is a very engaging collection of a dozen essays on a dozen authors by a historian in the appreciative mode. Some pieces go back to the ’60s, some are recent, all are substantially revised even to the point of recantation. [...]
The battle for our future is being fought within the imaginations of men. This has always been so. Russell Kirk explained: “All great systems, ethical or political, attain their ascendency over the minds of men by virtue of their appeal to the imagination; and when they cease to touch the chords of wonder and mystery [...]
You have studied the very best things, have done so with discipline and with rigor, and you have accomplished much. My sincere congratulations to each of you. I’m honored to have been asked to address you today, but I must tell you that framing this message has been difficult. You enter a troubled world. And [...]
While studying at the University of Dallas in the early ’90’s, I was taught and influenced by a few notable professors, such as Janet Smith, Frederick Wilhelmsen, Wayne Ambler, Leo Paul de Alvarez, along with a few others. Following Prof. Wilhelmsen after many class lectures back to his office or at least to the university mall, I [...]
Russell Kirk In the franchise bookshops of the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred eighty-one, the shelves are crowded with the prickly pears and the Dead Sea fruit of literary decadence. Yet no civilization rests forever content with literary boredom and literary violence. Once again, a conscience may speak to a [...]
Few conservatives–with the notable exception of John Lukacs–remember or cite Owen Barfield any longer. This is a shame, and Barfield should really stand with the great Christian Humanists of the previous century. Perhaps his best work is his first, Poetic Diction, originally his undergraduate thesis at Oxford (1922). Published commercially in 1928, it has never [...]
Russell Kirk The moral imagination is the principal possession that man does not share with the beasts. It is man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, in the seeming chaos of many events. Without the moral imagination, man would live merely day to day, or rather moment to moment, as dogs do. [...]
Edmund Burke To resist the idyllic imagination and the diabolical imagination, we need to know the moral imagination of Edmund Burke. Cato the Elder told his friends, “I had rather that men should ask, ‘Why is there no monument to Cato?’ than that they should ask, ‘Why is there a monument to Cato?’” [...]
Yet trees are not ‘trees’, until so named and seen– and never were so named, till those had seen who speech’s involuted breath unfurled, faint echo and dim picture of the world, but neither record nor a photograph, being divination, judgement, and a laugh, response of those who felt astir within by deep monition [...]
Historical Consciousness: The Remembered Past by John Lukacs, Transaction Publishers (Library of Conservative Thought), 1994. Applying a philosophical intellect to the study of history, Dr. Lukacs believes that historical studies may become the principal literary form and way to wisdom in the dawning age. This does not mean that he endeavors to present a “philosophy [...]
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 [...]
Mantel in Russell Kirk’s Library The moral imagination is the principal possession that man does not share with the beasts. It is man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, in the seeming chaos of many events. Without the moral imagination, man would live merely day to day, or rather moment to moment, as [...]
We thank the University Bookman for allowing us to offer their interview with Gary L. Gregg, II, who holds the Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville, where he directs the McConnell Center. He is the author or editor of nine books, including a new series of young adult novels called The Remnant Chronicles. On [...]