John Henry Newman: A Step Closer to Sainthood for a Modern Intellectual
The beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman by Benedict XVI on his recent visit to England might seem to be a locally Catholic affair. Newman had founded…
David Walsh’s The Modern Philosophical Revolution: Nietzsche and the Modern Philosophical Revolution
Thus Spake Zarathustra Philosophy can only be lived, not explained, as the powerful concreteness of Friedrich Nietzsche's Zarathustra makes clear. The limit of aphorism is reached in…
John Stuart Mill and the Minimum Consensus
The Question Posed by Locke For John Locke, the foundation of the social contract was not a problem because it was identical with the moral law. The…
Utopian Forgetfulness of the Depth (Part II)
All of the critiques point toward the fundamental objection that Nietzsche was to express so powerfully. That is, that liberal politics had cut itself off from its…
Utopian Forgetfulness of the Depth (Part I)
Customary Liberal Silence Discussion of an existential depth to our discourse inevitably engenders a degree of methodological discomfort. This is particularly the case among theorists whose occupation…
The Growth of the Liberal Soul (Part II)
Tumbling Liberal Defense An awareness of the depth of the critique ranged against liberal theory is what has inspired its late flowering in our own time. Viewed…
The Growth of the Liberal Soul (Part I)
In one sense liberal theory and politics have always been in a state of crisis. Even in its earliest appearance in the reflections of John Locke and…
Cultural Transparence: Meaning in a Postmodern Age
Cultural Transparence The intense but narrow beam of liberal political principles cannot constitute the meaning of a civilization. There are simply too many questions left unaddressed. Despite…
The Politics of Liberty: Meaning in a Postmodern Age
The Politics of Liberty The summary essence of a liberal political order, which has remained fairly stable up to the present, sounds astonishingly spare. Generations of liberal…