A Philosophy of Prudence and the Purpose of Higher Education Today
In the past decade there have emerged several books that have spoken about the crisis in American higher education. However, what this crisis is and how do…
If Music Be Food For Citizenship
Aristotle and America As Aristotle observed in Book 8 of his Politics, the education of children is the preeminent concern of the state, for the cultivation of…
The Relevance of Political Philosophy and Political Science
Unlike other disciplines in the humanities, American political science since the 1950s has been concerned with establishing a scientific identity, drawing from the philosophy of logical positivism…
Why the Humanities Matter
The decline of the humanities in American higher education – literature, history, philosophy, classical studies, linguistics, and foreign languages – is most recently evident in the drop…
I’m Awake, Are You?
One of the latest fads in the university is being “woke”: a recognition of one’s privilege and therefore the need to empathize with those groups who have…
Eric Voegelin’s Contribution to Political Science
Compared to other European émigré scholars of the same period–Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt, Hans Morgenthau, and Leo Strauss–Eric Voegelin’s contribution to the discipline of political…
Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World
Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World. Christopher de Hamel. New York: Penguin, 2017. Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts is a magnificent achievement in…
Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation
Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation. The Multigraph Collective. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2018. Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading…
New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre
New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre. Martin Shuster. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Martin Shuster’s New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of…
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. 20th Anniversary. Neil Postman with a new introduction by Andrew Postman. New York: Penguin Books,…
Privacy and How to Get It Back
Privacy and How to Get It Back. B.J. Mendelson. London: Curious Reads, 2017. With the ubiquity of information technology in our lives, the question of privacy…
Technology as the Oracle of Today
In the past people looked to religion or the arts for divine inspiration and a sense of wonder; today we look to technology, the gods of our…
Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities
Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities. Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. The crisis of the humanities…
The Novel After Film: Modernism and the Decline of Autonomy
The Novel After Film: Modernism and the Decline of Autonomy. Jonathan Foltz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. What is the novel after the invention of cinema?…
Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel
Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel. Clayton Childress. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. In Under the Cover, Childress examines the novel…