In the modern world, terms like “soul,” “spirit,” and the “life of the mind” sound antiquated, and there is no longer any sense that there is anything to life beyond the pursuit of hedonic happiness and the accumulation of money, property, and other markers of worldly success… “To reform a world, to reform a nation, [...]
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels present a world teeming with people groping through guilt for a purpose they do not fully understand, often trading defiance for either despair or determination as the inescapable truth becomes clear: There is, on earth, no alleviation of the human condition… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the [...]
The “purpose of free time,” paradoxical as it sounds, is more than a merely intellectual concern. The misuse of leisure is a living reality, one of great importance to those who suffer from it… What is the purpose of “free time”? The question may seem foolish. If free time is “free,” isn’t it for whatever [...]
The church needs to ensure it is offering the true account of reality, rather than the account that the world is offering. That account, expressed through liturgy and worship, will form the Christian political imagination… Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology by James K.A. Smith (256 pages, Baker Academic, 2017) The present historical moment is a [...]
A living system getting too close to the edge of chaos risks incoherence, but moving too far away risks rigidity, either case leading to extinction. Complex systems flourish at the edge of chaos. For the imaginative conservative, real thought, reflection, and learning often take place at the edge of chaos… Studying history teaches us not [...]
When we begin to refashion things in our image rather than in God’s, we ourselves become displaced and disjointed. Strangely enough, by asserting only our humanity, we lose what makes us essentially and beautifully human… In truth, nature begins to relate to us only when we begin to indwell it, when culture begins in it. [...]
A Catholic, liberal-arts college’s course of study, being an integrated one ordered to and by natural and supernatural wisdom, is an excellent apprenticeship into the contemplative life, which does not replace the active life, but only crowns it and makes it worthwhile… Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for [...]
For students of leadership for a just society, the movie “Ride the High Country” crystallizes beliefs and codes of behavior worth studying, affirming, and claiming today. If you want to know what made the statesman and military leader George Catlett Marshall (1880–1959) great, then watch Ride the High Country (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), and you will receive a taste of [...]
The seemingly insignificant suppression of ladies and gentlemen on New York’s trains represents a giant step backward. It affirms that we need no longer behave like ladies and gentlemen, but rather like whatever we want to be, or happen to be, at the moment... Passengers, customers, or whatever you want to call them are welcome [...]
Reinhold Niebuhr finds that, ironically, we turn our virtues into vices when our virtue is “too complacently relied upon” or naively affirmed or trusted in—maybe even brazenly signaled to others—just as our power becomes problematic if we have an overweening confidence in our wisdom to employ this influence or force justly. The Irony of American [...]
In times of great social and political turbulence, when basic institutions are broken, discourse within them is futile. But it is precisely then that adherence to traditional morality is not only fitting but essential, for the virtues that establish a society are also necessary for its maintenance… In the present state of political and social [...]
Concerned with the intrigues of the cathedral clergy and the landed gentry, Anthony Trollope portrays Victorian English life with all its high moral values and noble ideals as well as its greed, snobbery, and hypocrisy… Anthony Trollope I’ve usually prefer the underrated and unpopular. Buster Keaton not Charlie Chaplin, Dorothy Sayers not Agatha [...]
John Adams never had an optimistic view of human nature, and his experience in the Congress and abroad only deepened his suspicion that his fellow Americans might not have the character to sustain a republican government. In the Spring of 2016, Library of America released John Adams: Writings from the New Nation 1784-1826, the third and [...]
Our civilization needs zealous and dedicated young men and women to convert the barbarians. However, because the barbaric culture is pervasive, we are all barbarians now to a certain extent, and thus, we must first civilize our own souls… Nowadays the devil has made such a mess of everything in the system of life on [...]