The Unnamable Present, by Roberto Calasso, is curious and compelling. The first half is about the features which render the post-millenial age “unnameable.” In it, Calasso connects otherwise disparate strands of thought, in very interesting ways. The presentation of these series of connections together characterize the unnameable present. In the second half, Calasso presents […]
Read more...Tag: Roger Scruton
Power Struggle
I sit up and pay attention when Roger Scruton speaks. He recently considered the significance of the worldview evinced in books by Uval Noah Harari, who is a biological determinist in the same vein as Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins. Harari acknowledges the philosophical consequences of the humanist rejection of transcendent truth. He goes a step […]
Read more...Metaphysical Vibration
I’ve often said that modern culture is essentially materialistic, in the philosophical sense that material (physical) things are deemed to be all there is. And yet, materialists routinely invoke language of the transcendental to explain what’s going on around them, including the word “transcendent” itself. It’s confusing. It has the effect of masking the absence of […]
Read more...Pollution and Purification
You may not know of Mark Steyn, a political and cultural commentator. He’s got a blog that I commend to you, here. I get his weekly summaries, usually on Sunday. In last Sunday’s, he wrote about Tucker Carlson, a commentator on Fox and author of Ship of Fools/How A Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the […]
Read more...Rebellion
We’ve come to think of teen rebelliousness as a natural rite of passage, wherein a young man or woman chafes against family restraints on freedom. It seems to be an inevitable result of every person’s desire to be free. Is it inevitable? Yes and no. Yes On the one hand, there is a kind of […]
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