What We’re Reading
Giambattista Vico, The New Science. The New Science by Vico is a landmark work in the philosophy of history, but it is also an important critical framework…
The Bowl of Kumquats
There it sits, on the counter by the sink, a bowl of kumquats, each an owl’s eye, staring into me with equal measures judgment and innocence. I…
A Minor Directive
Drifting into its original rage, the squalor of an unbegotten age breeds banishment, abandon, and decay: evolution with a view to dismay and to persist in its…
How to Read with Christian Eyes
Is there a specific role for the Christian critic? Critics have all but become avatars of the avant-garde, deliberately shocking and scandalous for the shock value of…
If Only He Will Respond. He Must Respond
Tired but undeterred, in that moment all the dreams and efforts finally confirmed for him the true nature of the universe and his existence in it. Fate,…
Rhetorical Craft, Enduring Relevance: The Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In a chapter from his 1973 Autobiographical Reflections entitled “Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality!” Eric Voegelin pointed out how Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn invoked Francis Bacon’s concept of the…
Imaginary Conversation with Borges about Imaginary Writers and Books*
To the other one, to Borges, is to whom things happen. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and I delay myself, perhaps almost mechanically, to…
How to Look
When a man truly perceiveth and considereth himself, … he doth not grieve over his sufferings, for they are right in his eyes, and he hath nothing…
Cultural Politics, Civic Humanism, and Gift-Giving. The Cultural and Social Bond Between the De Medici and the Florentine People
“He who assists and favours, in their noble undertakings, men of rare and beautiful genius, from whom the world receives such beauty, honour, convenience and benefit, deserves…
Listening to the Capucon Brothers
A quick Google search shows that the odds of being a musical prodigy are somewhere between 1 in 100,000 and 1 in 1,000,000. In other words, low…
The End of the “Age of Reagan”
Ronald Reagan is the most consequential American president after Franklin Roosevelt. It was during Reagan’s presidency that our modern world transformed toward the integrated, international, free trade,…
Love it returns
By the way why this heron is walking in a slow motion Slowly looking like a lapwing playing hopscotch Gossmer’s silver slides a beetle Life isn’t easy,…
Rescuing Political Science
As an academic discipline, political science is relatively new, with departments and degrees dedicated to the scientific study of politics emerging only in the preceding century. However,…