On the Deaths of Plato and Eric Voegelin
But there is another sort of old age too: the tranquil and serene evening of a life spent in peaceful, blameless, enlightened pursuits. Such, we are told,…
On the Primary Experience of the Cosmos
The experience of the cosmos existing in precarious balance on the edge of emerging from nothing and returning to nothing must be acknowledged, therefore, as lying at…
Why Precisely Political Philosophy?
Philosophy is to remind us of the necessity in things: not just to the necessities to which we have to resign ourselves, but those we can find…
Socratic and Secular Irony
A Case for Irony. Jonathan Lear (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Today we often misunderstand irony for sarcasm, self-detachment, or cleverness instead as a source…
Poetry Over Positivism: Owen Barfield on the Rational and the Representative in the World
Owen Barfield (1898-1997) was a British philosopher, poet, and solicitor who had a tremendous influence on the likes of C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and Saul Bellow. He…
God’s Most Precious Jewel on Earth
God and Government: Martin Luther's Political Thought. Jarrett A. Carty. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017. These are good times for Luther scholars, or indeed…
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Theory of Democracy and Revolutions
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Theory of Democracy and Revolutions. Michał Kuź. Warsaw: Lazarski University Press, 2016. Michał Kuź’s Alexis de Tocqueville’s Theory of Democracy and Revolutions is…
At the Centre of Government: The Prime Minister and the Limits of Political Power
At the Centre of Government: The Prime Minister and the Limits of Political Power. Ian Brodie. Montréal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018. Having lived both vita contemplativa…
Magna Carta and Christian Culture
The significance of this document is emphasized by a recent controversy: in October of 2015, Chinese authorities blocked an exhibition of a rare parchment copy of the…
34rd International Meeting of the Eric Voegelin Society, Boston 2018
34th International Meeting of THE ERIC VOEGELIN SOCIETY, 2018 American Political Science Association Meeting, August 30-September 2 Boston, MA David Walsh, Meeting Director [email protected] Dear…
The Problem of Theocracy in The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, has rightly earned its place among the greatest books of all time. It warrants this stature in no small part because…
Can a Natural Disaster be a Symbol of Truth? The Indian Ocean Tsunami: a Voegelinian/Desmondian Meditation
“Now the Flood: water is the matrix of all life, but in deluge its creative indeterminacy overwhelms and swamps. Finite beings are flimsy, tossed around as flotsam.…
A Reading and Commentary on Michael Kirwan’s Political Theology
Political Theology: An Introduction. Michael Kirwan. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009. Breadth and suggestiveness recommend this book to us. The breadth is reflective of the map…
John Rawls’ “On Religion”
The discovery and publication of John Rawls’s senior thesis can be compared to the impact of the early writings of Karl Marx. It was only with the…
The Personal Is Always Political: A Conversation with David Walsh
Who is the human person and has modern philosophy given us a truncated understanding of the person? Those are some of the questions put to David Walsh…