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…
Post-Modernism
Imagination, Innocence and Postmodernism
Maybe from all your mental somersaults will come a system that will satisfy you in the realm of pure signs, but it will be a…
Can Great Poetry Survive the Post-revolutionary West?
This is the text of a presentation given to the Sydney Traditionalist Forum on 27 September 2019 by Prof. Barry Spurr, as part of the…
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…
Scientism, Existential Reflection and God
I Scientism, Science and Technology Scientism is not science. Instead, scientism is an ideology that reduces man’s hope and aspirations to the scientific method. Scientism…
Marxism and Secularism’s Cultural Overreach
I God is the “Opiate of the People” For Karl Marx, God is what he calls the “opiate of the people.” That is, belief in…
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…
2017 Symposium – M. W. Davis
Fogeyism: in Theory and Practice “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his…
2017 Symposium – James Kalb
Identity and the Civilization of the West Identity has become a problem today. No one seems sure where it comes from, what it is for,…