Intellectuals and Democracy: The Case Against Radical Ideology
I Introduction: Revel and Popper on a “Way of Being for Man in the World” The first chapter of Jean-François Revel’s incisive 1983 book How…
Nihilism
The Year in Review: 2019, Started as Tragedy, Ended as Tragicomedy
Every year for the non-Boomer right seems like a watershed, and 2019 was no exception. The year that passed was marked by shattered hopes and…
Past and Future Gulags
Vladimir Solovyov’s insightful The Crisis of Western Philosophy can enlighten us today as to the importance of re-telling history to educate subsequent generations. With its…
A Manifesto of Neo-Romanticism
He is thinking: “See how God writes straigh on crooked lines.”1 What realistic form can a manifesto of neo-romanticism take in a positivistic age? How…
Sam Harris: The Unconverted
René Girard argues that all the great tales are conversion stories; the sinner redeemed. This is why Dostoevsky novels are ultimately uplifting. As someone commented,…
Keats’ Negative Capability and Ontological Mystery
In December 1817 the romantic poet, John Keats (1795-1821), wrote a letter to his two brothers, George and Thomas, where his now famous expression negative…
Aesthetic Knowledge
Aesthetic subjectivism, or “relativism,” is the view that beauty is solely in the eye of the beholder. The term “relativism” is sometimes used to indicate…
Consciousness: What is it, and Where is it Found?
It is a common-place assumption that brains generate consciousness. The fact that brain damage, drug use, sleep deprivation, etc., impair thinking seems to confirm the brain’s generative capacity….
Globalism, Don Juan and the Perennial Philosophy
The perennial philosophy involves the notion that there are certain metaphysical truths that transcend any particular culture: that there is essentially just one wisdom tradition…
2017 Symposium – Richard Cocks
Philosophy and The Crisis of the Modern World To find a way out of the current confusions and rifts in modern Western societies, and for…