Christopher Dawson’s “Beyond Politics”

By |2024-03-10T18:20:24-05:00March 9th, 2024|Categories: Books, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, History|

“Old books” speak to the times, often in more profound ways than “new books.” Christopher Dawson's "Beyond Politics" is just such a book. It diagnosed in 1939 the cultural situation in which the book appeared, and its diagnosis is apropos to the cultural situation today. Here’s the front story followed by the more important back [...]

The Great Debate: Edmund Burke vs. Thomas Paine

By |2024-02-08T20:22:39-06:00February 8th, 2024|Categories: Books, Edmund Burke, Timeless Essays|

Yuval Levin’s “The Great Debate” does a valuable service in working toward promoting more reflection in our political debates, by examining the all-too-often unspoken assumptions implicit in our political discourse. The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, by Yuval Levin (296 pages, Basic Books, 2013) When Russell Kirk [...]

T.S. Eliot: The Light Invisible

By |2024-01-26T05:55:11-06:00January 25th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Books, Featured, Literature, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

The modern secularist, T.S. Eliot argued, finds meaning either in the brute forces of the physical world or the arbitrary freeplay of the mind or the passing consensus of the human tribe. Looking for meaning in these places has not only led individuals to a sense of nihilism but has led whole nations to slaughter [...]

Edmund Burke: Old Whig

By |2024-01-11T18:34:15-06:00January 11th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, Classical Liberalism, Edmund Burke, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

In the Whig view to which Edmund Burke subscribed, the validity of law is independent of its source; who makes a rule, whether the people or a tyrant, is irrelevant. The Old-Whig Burke denied that the exercise of will, whether arbitrary or rational, has anything to do with the determination of law. Edmund Burke, the passionate defender [...]

The End of Literature

By |2024-01-10T18:21:33-06:00January 10th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Edmund Burke, Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays|

There have been theories about literature nearly as long as there has been literature, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. But the ancient theorists all assumed that they were thinking about something that had its own functions and ends, which they might help to explain. When the new professors think of theory it is exclusively more [...]

Russell Kirk’s “Saviourgate”: Timeless Moments & the Paradisical Journey

By |2024-01-04T13:45:35-06:00January 4th, 2024|Categories: Dante, Ghost Stories, Literature, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot|

Set in Yorkshire, England on Christmas Eve, Russell Kirk’s short story “Saviourgate” is a story about the soul’s journey through the afterlife. Whereas many ghost stories explore only the diabolical imagination, “Saviourgate” opens up creative possibilities for thinking about life’s timeless moments and how they may be glimpses of paradise. Ghost stories were standard Christmas [...]

Permanent Things: T.S. Eliot’s Conservatism

By |2024-01-03T21:50:31-06:00January 3rd, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Conservatism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

T.S. Eliot’s conservatism is “pre-political,” offering no simple formula for the modern polity. He reminds us that even if we could have our way in the political arena we would be unable to create a perfect society, given our own fallen nature. Such a wise mixture of hope and humility is what can keep conservatism [...]

The Power of Ideology: Christopher Dawson on the Modern Age

By |2023-11-28T19:58:56-06:00November 28th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, History, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Since the Renaissance, Christopher Dawson feared, Western culture and society had embraced an arrogant form of humanism, one that places too much emphasis on the goodness of the human person. With the loss of the Medieval beliefs in the Economy of Grace and the Great Chain of Being, culture had adopted two radically dangerous institutions: [...]

The Joys of a Reflective Life

By |2023-11-22T11:40:59-06:00November 6th, 2023|Categories: Culture, Michael De Sapio, Senior Contributors, The Imaginative Conservative, Writing|

The essayist’s head is always in the clouds, his feet are never on the ground. What keeps me going is cultivating an inner joy. A sort of contemplative trance is for me the most blessed state in which to find oneself. Sometimes it even leads to prayer, the highest form of reflection and communion. As [...]

The Great His­to­rian of Cul­ture: Christo­pher Daw­son

By |2023-10-25T19:05:58-05:00October 25th, 2023|Categories: Books, Christian Humanism, Christopher Dawson, Timeless Essays|

"Christopher Dawson viewed the disintegration of Western culture as a far worse disaster than that of the fall of Rome," biographer Christina Scott writes. "For the one was material; the other would be a spiritual disaster which would strike directly at the moral foundations of our society and destroy not the outward form of civilization [...]

Russell Kirk & Pope St. John Paul II on the Redemption of Man

By |2023-10-22T07:38:12-05:00October 21st, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Conservatism, Faith, Featured, Hope, Imagination, Russell Kirk, St. John Paul II, The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays, Truth|

Pope St. John Paul II and Russell Kirk defended freedom within the limits of truth and its authentic or right use. They knew it was crucial to distinguish license and liberty. But they have different approaches to truth. As we discussed the work of Russell Kirk, written in 1954, revised in 1962 and 1988, I [...]

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