Remembering the Real Halloween
As a teller and writer of ghostly tales, I celebrate Halloween with enthusiasm. Every October 31, as many as 400 trick-or-treaters have found their way to our…
Ten Spooky Classical Music Favorites for Halloween
It’s Halloween, and you’re looking for that perfect, spooky Halloween music that’s a little more sophisticated than “The Monster Mash” and “Thriller” and “Werewolves of London.” Look…
Alienism and the New Orientalism: A Review of Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’s “Persians: The Age of the Great Kings”
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Persians: The Age of the Great Kings. New York: Basic Books, 2022. When does enthusiasm for the foreign become too intoxicating that one ends…
Haunted by Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Organ Symphony”
Being haunted by music sounds like something I should be writing about in late October, but I think it will still work. And there’s no better way to…
Determinism and the Good Life Are Incompatible
This article is a continuation of an interaction with a blogger calling himself Robot Philosopher. RP is a polemicist and likes to pepper his arguments with snide…
Liberalism: A Poem
I retreat, yet I never quite escape. Hellish hounds, so familiar with our scent, Exhaust us till our very soul is spent, Then drink the spoils of…
In Isaiah’s Sandals: A Poem
Thus spake the herald: Look upon this holy hill; Where the sun spills over ever so brighter, Where waters leap over rock like flying buttresses Where the…
A Genealogy of Christianity: Why I Teach Nietzsche at a Christian University
For this semester I’ll offer my reflections on an introductory, freshmen-level course on western core texts that I am teaching. Christianity for Nietzsche was the greatest…
God, Democracy, and Tocqueville: A Review of Olivier Zunz, “The Man Who Understood Democracy”
Olivier Zunz. The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis De Tocqueville. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022. Alexis de Tocqueville’s name is synonymous with democracy.…
Milton as Metaphysician: “Paradise Lost” as a Map of Heaven and Hell
John Milton published Paradise Lost in 1667. The epic poem consisted of ten books. What we know today as the complete, twelve book version of the epic,…
Creating Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony
While a longtime fan of Tchaikovsky, I must confess that, up to a year ago, I’d never heard his Symphony No. 1, subtitled Winter Daydreams. Further, a lot…
from Spiking the Canon: A Poem
Ulysses The critics give it ten out of ten, the literary equivalent of Zen. Is it Joyce’s folly or his ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’? Perhaps you should…
Questioners of the World, Unite!
For this semester I’ll offer my reflections on an introductory, freshmen-level course on western core texts that I am teaching. Maybe the most influential text written…
Are We Destined to Democratic Despotism and Meaninglessness? David A. Eisenberg’s “Nietzsche and Tocqueville on The Democratization of Humanity”
David A. Eisenberg. Nietzsche and Tocqueville on The Democratization of Humanity. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022. In today’s political rhetoric, “democracy” is the abracadabra phrase bandied…
An Argument in the Metaxy: Lionel Trilling and Henry Rosenthal
For Eric Voegelin, the realm of the “in-between” is humanity’s proper habitat. Temptations to depart this realm, which may be termed the historical condition, come at us…