Living in the Post-Rational Age
During these last three centuries, politics has corrupted Man more than during the whole of pre-History. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline The news is ominous. We are living a…
Spirit and Essence in The Prelude of William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold A Rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So it is now I am a Man;…
Existential Subjects in Sinister Situations
Providence and chance, how these relate to appearance and reality, are staple themes of Eric Ambler’s (1909-1998) novels. Ambler resists the modern and postmodern urge to intellectualize…
Dissonant Qualities of Form: The Music of Ligeti, Messiaen, Strauss and Arvo Pärt
Reflection on the essence of music can take many forms. From reflection on the nature of particular musical forms, formal interpretations of composition, and the experience of…
The Future of Innocence, Beauty, and Dissent
At the core of the cycle of life, corruption of innocence and beauty followed by the necessary corrective that makes life whole again, we encounter the self,…
The Time We Have: Life and Ideas
Close observers of contemporary postmodern philosophy will notice that postmodern philosophy is commensurate with pack animals, for both operate on a deterministic model. How so? Consider that…
Good and Evil in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings
For readers of Tolkien, one of the most interesting and rewarding aspects of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings is their apolitical approach to human…
Milton as Metaphysician: “Paradise Lost” as a Map of Heaven and Hell
John Milton published Paradise Lost in 1667. The epic poem consisted of ten books. What we know today as the complete, twelve book version of the epic,…
Albert Camus and Existential Gravitas
When I was young, I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they…
Czeslaw Milosz: Tradition Confronts Postmodern Nihilism
Czeslaw Milosz issues from a time and place when making a distinction between the ethos of a poet, essayist or philosopher seemed an unnecessary and imprudent indiscretion.…
Essence and Constancy: Why “Essence” Matters
The classical attitude, then, has a great respect for the past and for tradition, not from sentimental, but on purely rational grounds. It does not expect anything…
Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher’s Thought and Work
The American philosopher, Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), is a rare thinker. He is a philosopher in the classical sense of the word. Hoffer asks concrete and pressing questions…
Ortega y Gasset’s Philosophy of Existence in The Modern Theme
The man of the West is undergoing a process of radical disorientation because he no longer knows by what stars he is to guide his life.1 -…
Viewing Reality Through an Impressionistic Eye
"Nature here sets, even to the universal genius, a limit which it cannot pass, and truth will make martyrs so long as philosophy still holds it to…
Philosopher’s Adagio (Part II)
"I have said, in the first volume of my Gifford Lectures, The Mystery of Being, that we are living in a world which seems to be founded…