RSS
Living Together
- Civility & Rhetoric (53) : Discourse, Persuasion, Respect
- Activism & Revolt (16) : Making Change
- Family (1) : The Family
- Government, Law, Politics (57)
- War & Peace (31) : War & Peacemaking
- Journalism (10) : All that's fit to print
- Education (15) : Scholarship and Pedagogy
- History (11) : History and Method
- In/Tolerance (20) : Living With Differences
- Church & State (37) : God & Country
Richard M. Weaver (University of Chicago Press: Sep 1984), 190 pages.
In a nutshell, Weaver takes on the role of doctor — identifying and prescribing a cure for the ailment that had plagued (and still does) the United States, culminating in the barbaric conclusion of World War II. Weaver meticulously describes the ailment, including the chief causes of the crisis: (1) Replacement of transcendent sentiments with utilitarianism & pragmatism; (2) Undermining senses of order and hierarchy (from liberalism/collectivism); (3) Loss of focus and an embrace of fragmentary obsessions; (4) Exercise of raw ego and self-indulgence; (5) Dereliction of media responsibility; (6) Emergence of the spoiled-child phenomena. Despite the rather gloomy prognosis, Weaver does not leave the reader without hope. In the final three chapters, he proposes corrective actions that he believes will get America back on track away from the path of self-destruction: (1) Preserve the sanctity of private property; (2) Use of meaningful language and rhetoric; (3) Embrace notions of piety and true justice. After the elapse of fifty years, Weaver's estimation of the crisis as well as his proposed corrective actions are as relevant and useful today as when they were first written. I highly recommend this book to historians of American conservative thought as well as those who wish to be inspired by one of the best authors that conservatism has been blessed to have. ~ A Customer @ Amazon.com
"Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" in “On History” (The Bobbs-Merrill Co: 1963; orig. 1784).
The difficulty which the mere thought of this problem puts before our eyes is this. Man is an animal which, if it lives among others of its kind, requires a master. For he certainly abuses his freedom with respect to other men, and although as, a reasonable being he wishes to have a law which limits the freedom of all, his selfish animal impulses tempt him, where possible, to exempt himself from them. He thus requires a master, who will break his will and force him to obey a will that is universally valid, under which each can be free. But whence does he get this master? Only from the human race. But then the master is himself an animal, and needs a master. Let him begin it as he will, it is not to be seen how he can procure a magistracy which can maintain public justice and which is itself just, whether it be a single person or a group of several elected persons. For each of them will always abuse his freedom if he has none above him to exercise force in accord with the laws. The highest master should be just in himself, and yet a man. This task is therefore the hardest of all; indeed, its complete solution is impossible, for from such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be built.
David Brog (Encounter Books: July 2010), 376 pages.
Religious faith is under assault. In books and movies and on television, militant secular critics attack religion with a renewed vigor. These “new atheists” repeat a two-part mantra: that religious faith is hopelessly irrational and that those possessed of such faith are responsible for the hatred and bloodshed that has plagued humanity. Abandon religion, they urge us, and the world will at last live in peace. In Defense of Faith examines this proposition in the context of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition and asserts that, far from encouraging hatred and violence, the Judeo-Christian tradition has easily been the most effective curb upon the dark defects of human nature and our best tool in the struggle for humanity. From the Christian activists who fought to stop the genocide of Indians in South America and their ethnic cleansing in North America, to the abolition of African slavery on both sides of the Atlantic, and on to modern human rights activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to the rock star Bono — In Defense of Faith rebuts the fashionable arguments against religion and presents the strong and lasting record of the Judeo-Christian idea. History has not been as kind to the atheist model: every time it is put to the test, we have reverted to the most base, violent instincts of our selfish genes. ~ Production Description
Robert P. George (Oxford University Press: April 2001), 360 pages.
In Making Men Moral, his 1995 book, Robert George questioned the central doctrines of liberal jurisprudence and political theory. In his new work he extends his critique of liberalism and goes beyond it to show how contemporary natural law theory provides a superior way of thinking about basic problems of justice and poltical morality. It is written with the same combination of stylistic elegance and analytical rigor that distinguishes his critical work. Not content merely to defend natural law against its cultural critics, he deftly turns the tables and deploys the idea to mount a stunning attack on predominant liberal beliefs about such issues as abortion, sexuality, and the place of religion in public life. Readers interested in law, political science, and philosophy will find George's arguments both challenging and compelling. ~ Product Description
Popular in Books
- Boston College's MA Philosophy Reading List
- How People Poison Everything
- Librarians' Top 100 Novels of 20th Century
- What's So Great About Christianity
- Faith of the Fatherless
- Oxford Handbook of Skepticism
- The Persecuted Atheist?
- Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics
- The Victory of Reason
- What Is a "Scientific Fact"? Won't Plain Ol' Facts Do?
Popular in Quotes
- Lt. Col. Mervin Willett Gonin DSO on the Holocaust
- Friedrich Nietzsche on Fighting Monsters
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (as Ivan Karamazov) on Evil
- Karl Marx on Religion
- J.P. Moreland on Postmodernism and Anger
- Mark Twain (as Huck Finn) on Ethics
- John Stuart Mill on Fallibility and Free Speech
- J.P. Moreland on Postmodernism
- Angus Menuge on Inference to the Best Explanation
- J.P. Moreland on Rival Worldviews
Popular in Papers
- The Euthanasia Debate: Understanding the Issues
- Aquinas versus Locke and Descartes on the Human Person and End-of-Life Ethics
- Utilitarianism and the Moral Life
- Philosophical Apologetics, the Church, and Contemporary Culture
- Scientific Creationism, Science, and Conceptual Problems
- Is Science a Threat or Help to Faith?
- Argument from Consciousness
- Complementarity, Agency Theory, and the God-of-the-Gaps
- Scientific Naturalism and the Unfalsifiable Myth of Evolution
- The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for Morality
Random
- Richard Swinburne on the Resurrection
- Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics
- Vincent van Gogh, on his painting, "At Eternity's Gate"
- PJ O'Rourke on Humanity
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on Love
- Composition
- Thomas Huxley on the Agnostic Principle
- Disbelief.net
- Tim Folger on the Fine-Tuned Universe
- Stephen Jay Gould on Being Human
