Renewing and Rejecting: Comparing Architecture and Music
It has been widely accepted for a hundred years, and in any case since Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, that ‘the West’ denotes a comprehensive form of…
Building Communities With Music
Editor’s Note: This essay was presented as the opening address at the Future Symphony Institute’s 2018 symposium in Seaside, Florida. So, why would a research institute focused on…
Beauty, Home, and the Concert Hall
Hot on the heels of what was surely disappointing news for Maris Jansons and Munich’s musical community—that, despite their protracted efforts, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra will not…
Ghettoside: High Homicide Environments
Jill Leovy wrote her 2015 book Ghettoside after spending years embedded in the homicide division of a police department in LA and observing the detectives working in…
What is the Relationship between Liberal Education and a Free Society?
In Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky finds himself lying injured in the grass after barely surviving his first battle against Napoleon’s forces. As he…
A commentary on Rémi Brague’s notion of secondarity and the Roman inferiority complex
It is a widely accepted view in modern political philosophy that European civilization contains at its core a dichotomy of Judeo-Christian theological understanding of the world, on…
37th International Meeting of THE ERIC VOEGELIN SOCIETY (Final Program)
37th International Meeting of THE ERIC VOEGELIN SOCIETY, 2021 American Political Science Association Meeting September 28-October 2 Seattle, WA David Walsh, Meeting Director [email protected] Friends,…
Smiles from Reason Flow
So wrote Milton, describing the love between Adam and Eve, and its expression in their faces. The smile, for Milton, was proof that we are made in…
The True, the Good and the Beautiful
Let me say a few things about art and truth first of all. The Enlightenment — by which I mean that mass of thinking and idea-mongering that…
Our Hearts Are Restless… Until They Rest in Meta-Luxury
In the first part of this series, I acknowledged that there may be something wrong with the pursuit of luxury as exclusionary and materialistic, and that orchestras,…
Is Luxury a Bad Thing?
It shouldn’t surprise up that orchestras are distancing themselves from the idea of luxury. We generally, and perhaps rightly, sense that there is something wrong with it. The…
For the Love of Wisdom
When I first began my graduate studies in philosophy, I’d be told – in so many words as well as body language – that any residual hopes…
The Crack in Everything
You can add up the parts But you won't have the sum You can strike up the march There is no drum Every heart, every heart To…
Christianity and Globalism
Human culture owes its existence to the shedding of innocent blood. However, Christianity reveals the scapegoat mechanism. The supporters of Jesus defied the majority and vocally protested…
Call for Papers at Le Mans University in association with the University of Latvia May 19-20, 2022
International Conference at Le Mans University in association with the University of Latvia May 19-20, 2022 Transcultural Perspectives in Language, Literature and Culture in the 21st…