The Genealogies of Modernity Journal
Authority and Its Counterfeits: A Conversation with D.C. Schindler, Part IV
To dignify means to show something as not being a mere instrument—to show that the dignified thing has a value in itself… There is a connection between dignifying and allowing something to stand forth into the True. This very concrete, aesthetic sense of authority is, I take it, what allows us to think properly—in a free way.
Lucas B. Carroll interviews D. C. Schindler on the crisis of authority
Authority and Its Counterfeits: A Conversation with D.C. Schindler, Part III
The most important role of the authority is, actually, to make truth possible and accessible to everyone. To allow things to stand out not only in their particular usefulness in this or that way, but indeed to show themselves as they are, to allow them to stand forth most fundamentally in their being.
Lucas B. Carroll interviews D. C. Schindler on the crisis of authority
Authority and Its Counterfeits: A Conversation with D.C. Schindler, Part II
You eliminate the symbolic presence of God in the world when you kill the king. Let me be clear that this does not mean that we need to have a king…But what we do need to have is a sense of political authority that includes a metaphysical-theological dimension, and whatever form that might take in the future.
Lucas B. Carroll interviews D. C. Schindler on the crisis of authority
Authority and Its Counterfeits: A Conversation with D.C. Schindler, Part I
[A]uthority is concerned with a sphere of existence that far exceeds the merely pragmatic order. It ultimately includes the order of thought, and, ultimately, the order of being simply.
Lucas B. Carroll interviews D. C. Schindler on the crisis of authority
Jacques Maritain on Modernity: Maligning Sovereignty and Salvaging Freedom
Despite claims of working for this moral good or that concept of order, the Personalists observed that political inscriptions of sovereignty often end up as examples of absolute power exercised without accountability. As such, there is no room for singular sovereignty within a philosophy centered on the well-being of persons.
Marty Tomszak on Maritain and sovereignty for our forum on Personalism and the Catholic Worker
Eichenberg at “The Catholic Worker:” A Radical Vocation
Eichenberg’s wood engravings defied the visual regime of commodity culture, which directed the public’s desire ever more toward consumer individualism. In an increasingly mechanized society, his work bore witness to human dignity.
Arthur Aghajanian on the art of Fritz Eichenberg for our forum on Personalism and the Catholic Worker
Steering Clear of Sycophants: Flatterers and the False Friend of AI
In most areas, Machiavelli and Erasmus disagree, but both adamantly warn princes against flatterers. Though medieval princes are rare in the present, warnings against flatterers may be more widely applicable than ever before because of AI.
Elizabeth Stice on genealogies of flattery
Religious Demagogues and Grifter Capitalism from “Sweet Daddy” Grace to Donald Trump
Two films of the past fifteen years, The Book of Eli (2010) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), dramatize this confluence of grifter capitalism and religious demagoguery in the years immediately prior to Trump’s real-life rise to power.
J. Laurence Cohen on the fusion of religion and politics in the US
Schmitt and Technological Friendship
Schmitt’s interpretation of politics as fundamentally being a fight between friends and enemies may well, at its core, be correct. Yet, Schmitt’s trying to tie this claim to space is a failure which cannot be ignored.
Sam Mace on Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy dichotomy
Cruel and Unusual: A Supreme Dilemma of Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence
Evidently, the language which would be assumed under the Eighth Amendment originates from the intent of delegates to secure proper respect for the unalienable rights of all people.
Jackson Jannell on liberty and death
Is Liberalism Dead? Part II
The convergence of liberalism and gnosticism has fundamentally reshaped our political landscape.
Andrew Latham glimpses a “Gnostic Leviathan”
Is Liberalism Dead? Part I
[T]he particular form of liberalism we see today is influenced by what can be described as a contemporary form of gnosticism.
Andrew Latham on the myth of post-liberalism
Exploring “Off-Liberalism”
Liberalism is often taken to be essentially about the promotion of radical individual autonomy, but might this understanding of liberalism be only one kind of liberalism?
Beatrice Institute interviews Fred Bauer
Uncorking Some Scruton
Scruton, looking at our days “sub specie aeternitatis,” even thinks that this time of decay gives us an opportunity to work on the behalf of religion, morality, and culture that “no previous generation has been granted, and which no future generation may desire.”
Julian Kwasniewski reviews Against the Tide
Critical Theory and Ancient Political Philosophy: Part III
Philosophy does not point toward an abstract transhistorical truth for humanity, but rather to a murky, historically contingent truth… the truth of historical and material conditions.
Joseph Natali on Horkheimer’s Discontinuity with the Ancients
Critical Theory and Ancient Political Philosophy
It is only through the practice of an explicitly critical philosophy that a wholly stagnant self-affirming social order can be avoided.
Joseph Natali on Horkheimer critical theory and the meaning of philosophy
Critical Theory and Ancient Political Philosophy: Part II
For Horkheimer, his method of critical theory, are the truest continuation of the initial philosophic project of the Western tradition.
Joseph Natali on Max Horkheimer and the critical role of Socrates
What is the Task of Political Theology?
The political is a lived medium through which we gain insight into the theological concepts that inform the political as one human hierarchy amongst others (economic, social, and so on).
Ali Harfouch on recovering the political through political theology.
Modernizing the Monarchy
Past writers have updated Arthur for new audiences without sacrificing his essential kingship. If that's possible for Arthur, it should be possible for Charles and the British monarchy.
—Gabriel Schenk on what King Charles can learn from King Arthur.
A Poet of Philosophy and Prayer
Reading her poetry, one follows Pinkerton’s journey away from Eros and the self through prayer and philosophy and the contemplation of existence, time, the physical world, and faith.
Mary Grace Mangano’s review of Helen Pinkerton’s poems