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 [...]
Who loves employee codes of conduct? Given how sprawling and lawyerly many of them are, who can even read them? If you’re a boss who is thinking of scrapping yours and embracing one that reflects the values embodied in your company’s slogan, like Google’s “Don’t be evil” or Zappos’ “Be humble,” your employees will certainly [...]
Not so very long ago, Best Beloved, it was a gray February afternoon, near about tea-time. The winter seemed to have ended, but the spring had not quite arrived; and so there, at the edge of the forest, the animals were in a quandary. The crocus had come and gone; while, running late from somewhere, [...]
Daniel Larison on how hawks use credibility as a bludgeon: The “credibility” argument is almost exclusively used by foreign policy hawks, and they pay no attention to negative international reactions to U.S. behavior that contradict their assumptions about “credibility.” If other states react to provocative and confrontational policies by becoming more assertive in their respective [...]
Nothing is a Matter of Course Reports on the life and mission of orchestras and other institutions of classical music in our time make for vexed, sometimes dispiriting, reading. If you attend to them, as I have of late, you are likely to come across ledes like the following: Orchestras Feeding America is a project [...]
Taking offense certifies the modern man as one who cares. If we take offense on behalf of another, we can number ourselves among the sensitive and loving. If we take offense personally, we can brandish a stop sign declaring to all that the offense must cease. In either case, the offending words must stop and [...]
If there is any literary film adaptation worth adding to one’s library it is the Granada TV version of Brideshead Revisited. It really is the most perfect screen adaptation of any novel ever. The scenes in Venice, Oxford and Brideshead capture the book sublimely, and each character is played to perfection. Evelyn Waugh referred to [...]
I often wonder what benefit is derived from the obsession so many of us have with cable news. From my observation, the byproducts of watching and listening to the pundit class drone on are anger, mistrust, and, if we are honest, abject hatred for the opposing opinion. All that is offered on these channels are the superficial views of [...]
Friends, “I should like to have a word with you, here, on this very spot. We shall be parting soon. Let us agree here that we will never forget one another. And whatever may happen to us later in life, even if we do not meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember” what [...]
No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hetacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of [...]
Stars in the Water, by Rosie Caldecott Traditionally, truth, goodness and beauty are properties of all being, of everything that exists, in one degree or another. Truth is being as known– the correspondence and coherence of the idea and the reality. Goodness is being as willed–acting in accordance with the fullness of that [...]
Political correctness identifies a syndrome we all recognize, but is hard to define. It can be best described as a set of attitudes rather than an ideology, since viewed philosophically it is completely incoherent. It can perhaps be traced back to the French Revolution, in the aftermath of which various slogans became fashionable—mostly involving “Liberty” [...]
Joseph Pearce Quid est veritas? What is truth? Pontius Pilate’s question is one of the most famous ever asked. It is also one that has proved very difficult for many people to answer. It has baffled and confused some of the world’s most celebrated philosophers. It remains the most important of all questions, [...]
Over the years I’ve seen countless book lists and there are two books on “must read lists” that speak to the modern world insightfully, but in differing manners. As dystopian works, people have tended to see them both as “prophetic” and yet, of the two, most think that the one literary vision was closer to [...]