What Adam Smith’s Strange Essay on Language Teaches about Commerce
Prior to his death Smith had most of his papers and manuscripts burnt. Apart from his two seminal works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth…
Fashion and Vanity: Max Scheler and Craft Fashion
Max Scheler is, without question, one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century. With Husserl and Heidegger, he is a founding father of phenomenology, the…
Fashion: Rhetoric of Death?
The anarchist, Proudhon, argues that Rome fell because she was incapable of changing her “objects of public veneration.” Rome’s gods, he says, were blood and luxury. The…
Roger Caillois is a Better Guide to the Sacred Foundations of the West than Giorgio Agamben
The mystery of the liturgy coincides totally with the mystery of operativity - Giorgio Agamben In my opinion, Giorgio Agamben is the most important contemporary European…
French Eyes on HBO’s Succession
"The father saw from afar the limits at which his authority had to expire; and when time has brought him to those limits, he abdicates without difficulty."…
Luxury: Where Beauty and Morality Meet in Adam Smith’s Economic Theory
What is a luxury face? A London plastic surgeon speaks about the Beautiful Face, a composite of the requests he gets from clients.[1] The chin most desired…
Gardening and Nobility in Tolkien
In his Letters, Tolkien often mentions working in his garden. He was a keen plantsman: "I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like…