The Virtues, which were once the foundation of all serious moral thought, have been reduced by modern philosophers to a set of abstractions that mean little to men and women wrestling with the problems of everyday life. In this podcast, listeners are introduced to the robust and living conceptions that animated Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Thomas Aquinas
The problem, from the beginning of the postwar conservative movement, was not merely the incompatibility of conservative instincts with liberal individualism, but with liberalism’s failure to understand the nature of man (to say nothing of the nature of woman).
No, the title of this brief announcement does refer to the birth of a baby, trailing clouds of glory, into the abyss of human life in the New America. It is the title of a Charles Williams novel that has been termed a “theological thriller.”
This is the text of a little speech I gave at the New York City Yacht Club in 1992. Yes, don’t say it, a rather unusual venue for a professional trouble-maker.
I don’t know how many of our readers know enough French to work through this brief poem, but for them, I shall give a few notes as well as the bald translation. If anyone knows of a good translation, I shall add it to the post.
In the next elections–and for succeeding elections in the foreseeable future, the propaganda campaigns of opposing candidates and parties will certainly seek to portray many of the races as a conflict between liberals and conservatives. Perhaps it would not be a waste of time to explore some of the implications.
The play is a veritable choreography of vengeance. A negative appraiser might find the complexities tedious and contrived, but we might, by examining some of the characters, come to a more positive conclusion;
Since there are no questions or comments on Act I of The Revenger’s Tragedy, we can move on to October’s book: Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams. Williams, as I think everyone knows, was a friend of Tolkien and Lewis, and with them he helped both to vitalize Christian fiction and to lend respectability to supernatural tales.
White bread America is gone, and if it is replaced with corn pone, tortillas, and sticky rice, there may be a little room left for scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream.
The search for a rationally perfect society always leads to tyranny. Morality and politics are rooted not in pure reason but in our attachments by love or strife to others. The Greek mystical philosopher Empedocles is a better guide than the abstract reasonings of Descartes and Kant.
