Law of Nature or Law of Reason? A case for Hungary’s Historical Constitution
Today 188 countries of the world have a constitution. This suggests that without a constitution no nation can aspire to be successful or even survive in a…
007: The Timeless Story of a Blunt Instrument
“James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.” This sentence from Goldfinger…
The Rise and Fall of Númenor
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is one of the greatest achievements of the literary imagination. Over 80 years since its creation, it still fascinates and inspires readers the world…
Eric Voegelin Institute Webinar Series: Voegelin and his Interlocutors
The Eric Voegelin Institute will be hosting a three part webinar series on Eric Voegelin and his interlocutors. The series will include: Voegelin and Heidegger (Feb 8),…
Living in an Age of Boredom
We in the United States have lived in an age of material comfort and relative geopolitical peace for almost eighty years. While there have been wars and…
How to Appreciate Twentieth-Century Music
Twentieth-century classical music is intimidating for many people. I believe this is mainly due to what has been written about it rather than to the music itself.…
The Burning: A Poem
Have you seen the way water In a swimming pool, a pond, Even a little birdbath like this, In its reflection under the eaves - Brushed with…
Meditations on Luke 14: The Essence of Freedom Revisited
Luke 14 invites us to appreciate emptiness as necessary condition for receiving the divine gift of the eternal life of the mind. Ascent to the eternal is…
Community and Rituals: A Review of Byung-Chul Han’s “The Disappearance of Rituals”
Byung-Chul Han. The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present. Translated by Daniel Steuer. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020. Toward the end of the twentieth…
Come, Let Us Reason Together: A Review of “The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale, a Political Fable for Our Time”
George C. Leef. The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale: A Political Fable for Our Time. New York-Nashville: Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press, 2022. With the silencing of…
War and History: Jan Patocka, Martin Heidegger, and the Crisis of History
To read Jan Patocka, the tragically understudied Czech philosopher, one needs to peel back the accretion of post-Cold War rhetoric to fully understand him. Patocka sees modern…
Aaron Copland and Musical Americana
Aaron Copland (1900–1990) enjoys a reputation as America’s most esteemed composer of classical music. Much of his music is also said to embody a sense of Americana,…
A Visit to the Planetarium: A Poem
In the daft heaven of the planetarium, stars and galaxies streaked away from us expanding in multiples of ten ad infinitum, while a…
The Third Adam and the Modern “Higher” Self
The modern world is defined by the rise of a new self that is neither mind, nor body, nor a function of either, but an autonomous entity…
Christopher Dawson’s Cultural Mind
Joseph T. Stuart. Christopher Dawson: A Cultural Mind in the Age of the Great War. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022. The English historian…