Ideas Still Have Consequences: Richard Weaver on Nominalism & Relativism

By |2020-12-04T13:00:57-06:00December 6th, 2020|Categories: Philosophy, Relativism, Richard M. Weaver, Southern Agrarians|

Richard Weaver’s book “Ideas Have Consequences” presents the harmful effects of nominalism on Western civilization since it gained prominence in the Late Middle Ages. Many of our modern woes stem from the acceptance of nominalism and the rejection of philosophical realism back in the fourteenth century. By the time of his untimely death in 1963 [...]

Fake or Fact: Discovering the Sources of Truth

By |2020-06-14T17:14:37-05:00June 14th, 2020|Categories: Joseph Pearce, Reason, Relativism, Senior Contributors, Truth|

Examples of the manipulation and misreading of sources illustrate the need to be diligent and disciplined in our reading of the alleged “facts.” A failure in such diligence and discipline will make us believers in propaganda and, which is worse, unconscious disseminators of such propaganda. The only way of standing on the firm ground of [...]

The Roots of American Polarization

By |2019-11-17T23:39:44-06:00November 17th, 2019|Categories: Civil Society, Morality, Relativism, Truth|

The afflictive thing about living in our polarized society is the terrifying thought that there is something permanent in our incompatibility with each other. No one desires the present unpleasantness. We sincerely wish that we could get along. However, most people want a quick fix. They want magic buttons to push that will make the [...]

Return of the Small Gods?

By |2019-11-16T21:29:54-06:00November 16th, 2019|Categories: Books, Civil Society, Conservatism, Dwight Longenecker, Relativism, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Rusty Reno’s recent book, Return of the Strong Gods is an excellent explanation of the roots of relativism. The short version is that two world wars left Western civilization with a huge societal case of post-traumatic stress disorder. With heads in hands, the thinkers concluded that we kill one another because of dogma. We say, [...]

Truth as a Democratic Project

By |2019-04-25T13:09:50-05:00September 18th, 2018|Categories: Democracy, Fr. James Schall, Freedom, Government, Liberty, Philosophy, Reason, Relativism, Truth|

To save democracy from subjectivism, truth must become a democratic project. The greatest of crimes can be enacted in the name of sincerity, authenticity, and “being at peace with oneself.” Each of these criteria looks to one’s own estimate of oneself… During the Presidential Campaign of 1996, in California, President Bill Clinton said that democracy [...]

How Friedrich Nietzsche Changed Philosophy Forever

By |2021-04-27T20:59:07-05:00June 19th, 2018|Categories: Christianity, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernity, Philosophy, Relativism, Science, Truth|

Friedrich Nietzsche sought to change the world, and there is significant evidence that the existentialist philosopher succeeded. Many of the contemporary world’s assumptions regarding the primacy of individualism and the disavowal of universals were exposited by Nietzsche.[1] Yet, one of this thinker’s most important revolutions lay in his complete redefinition of philosophy. The dominant ideas [...]

In Defense of Splitting Hairs

By |2017-08-09T22:30:23-05:00August 9th, 2017|Categories: Culture, Language, Philosophy, Relativism|

We need to draw distinctions. The words we use are crucial to this endeavor. They matter. To deny this is to become a deconstructionist, and engage in self-defeating activities like writing lengthy books on how words have no meaning. Splitting hairs seems a far worthier past time… Our modern means of communication favor brevity, be [...]

Truth, Treasure, Maps, and Traps

By |2019-04-25T12:40:56-05:00July 1st, 2017|Categories: Books, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Featured, Relativism, Religion, Senior Contributors, Truth|

Religious dogma is true— indispensably true—but Truth is truer, and bigger than dogma in the same way that a map is true, but the journey is truer and bigger than the map… Editor’s Note: This essay is an abridged version of a chapter in Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s book The Romance of Religion. When I was [...]

Richard Weaver’s Conservatism of Affirmation & Hope

By |2022-02-23T11:04:16-06:00May 19th, 2016|Categories: Conservatism, Featured, Plato, Relativism, Richard Weaver, South, Western Civilization|

III Richard Weaver reasoned it was the emergence of nominalism, the departure from Plato­nism and Christianity, which produced the intellectual heresies leading to the trauma and anguish of the modern era. “It was,” he elaborated, “William of Occam who pro­pounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence,” and as [...]

The Land that Cultural Relativism Forgot

By |2015-10-20T12:53:08-05:00September 24th, 2015|Categories: Culture, Featured, Relativism, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Cultural relativism is that preferred meta-ethical philosophy of left-wing apologists for barbarities committed by Islamists and other violent fanatics, both at home and abroad. When some old-school liberal like Bill Maher condemns some Middle Eastern theocracy for preventing women from driving, executing apostates, or refusing to prosecute honor killings—for being, in a word, illiberal—he’s barraged [...]

Relativism and the Antichrist

By |2015-05-20T12:30:35-05:00May 10th, 2015|Categories: Christianity, Culture, Dwight Longenecker, Featured, Relativism, Truth|

When Pope Benedict warned about “the Dictatorship of Relativism,” he meant it. Literally. This was hammered home not long ago when I was speaking to a group of students about the issue of same sex marriage. I prefaced the discussion with a description of relativism saying that this non-philosophy was now the mainstream, default setting [...]

Tolkien, Trees, and Tradition

By |2019-11-14T09:56:06-06:00February 2nd, 2015|Categories: Christianity, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joseph Pearce, Language, Progressivism, Relativism|

My wife has just sent me two links showing a linguistic family tree illustrating the relationship of the various modern European and Oriental languages with their Indo-European roots.[1] This use of a tree-metaphor to encapsulate the living traditionalism at the heart of language was one of the imaginative roots of J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation of the tree-like [...]

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