My father was first and foremost a true philosopher, a lover of wisdom, a student, a seeker of truth, and in addition to this and as a necessary result, he became a great teacher, and more than that, a converter. Everyone who ever met him, even briefly, was affected by his intense love of truth, [...]
The questions for the West have now become: What it is that we should remember and teach? What are the elements of Western civilization that might sustain what is left and reconstruct what has been damaged or destroyed? In the early twenty-first century, the liberal arts curriculum at our universities is in a peculiar condition [...]
It can be dangerous to depict evil. Accuracy might require getting too close to things best kept at bay. J.R.R. Tolkien once cautioned his friend, C.S. Lewis, concerning Mr. Lewis’ skill in depicting evil. Anyone familiar with Uncle Screwtape or Perelandra’s Un-man will know to what Mr. Tolkien alluded. There is an uncanny comprehension of [...]
Eating together, as a social event, is meant to be time-consuming because it is meant to be an intimate experience where friendship—true friendship—is experienced, rekindled, and love stands at the center of the dinner table. It is, in its own way, a call to sacrifice. Aristotle identified man’s eating habits as one of the cornerstones of civilization—one [...]
Southern ways are held up to ridicule, and Southern virtues are out of fashion. But because Southerners think, believe, live and act within an inheritance, they enjoy a sense of confidence, faith and stability that may prove an invaluable asset as the foundations of our society begin to collapse. Late in August 1965, a young [...]
Society has been reduced to those living in the present; but in being reduced, it has excluded the democracy of the dead and unborn. We, in the present, must fight for this most obscure of all classes. In the abortion debate, one of the pro-choice arguments is based on the idea of “personhood.” Personhood is [...]
None of the works of the Tradition are to be considered old, except insofar as in human works—not so much in human beings—old age often brings beauty. These works are hardly ever doctrinal catechisms or operational manuals but something in-between: places where incitements to ever-active questions and treasures of attempted answers are recorded. Editor’s Note: [...]
Social visits are done for their own sake, for disinterested reasons, for the pleasure of others, and as a gracious act of thoughtfulness that dignifies both the visitor and the visited. In the novels of Louisa May Alcott, a time prior to the invention of the telephone, and even into the middle of the twentieth [...]
Tradition! Tradition! Sing it like Tevye. We all know that not all traditions are healthy or good or right. Fiddler on the Roof, much as I find it entertaining, strikes me on every viewing as just a bit too much in the spirit of the 1960s in its glee at razing traditions sensible or no. [...]
Everything worth conserving is menaced in our generation. Mere unthinking negative opposition to the current of events, clutching in despair at what we still retain, will not suffice in this age. A conservatism of instinct must be reinforced by a conservatism of thought and imagination. A friend of mine, whom we shall call Miss Worth, fell [...]
At a certain stage and for no apparent reason, self-criticism among those of us in the West gave way to repudiation. Instead of subjecting our inheritance to a critical evaluation, seeking what is good in it and trying to understand and endorse the ties that binds us to it, a great many of those appointed [...]
The problem for modern music arose from the way in which ideas came to displace feelings as the source of musical creation. Conscious repetition of learned effects does not amount to real musical content. Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music, by Robert R. Reilly (Ignatius Press, 2016) Robert R. [...]
The dual definition of “modern”—something that is current and something that is done in a certain manner—touches on a problem that is at the heart of the literary and artistic movement of the early twentieth century known as “Modernism”: Is Modernism something that was meant to represent the “just now” or is it something that [...]
Conservatism is confronted by the existential question of its own philosophy: what is left to conserve? Indeed, is there anything worth conserving? I think there are positive answers to this—the nation being the foremost—but that is a concern for another time. Here, I want to make the point that conservatism, beyond the substantive vision of [...]