The most compelling alternative to the twin perils of genealogy and fideism, radical immanence and radical transcendence, involves a hermeneutics of tradition.

Thomas Pfau develops a Christian Hermeneutics of Tradition

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers keep up. Here are some routes we found in December on what it means to be modern and how we became that way.

The old ways have not died. Enchantment remains. The very soul of baseball seems up for grabs, with mystery, enchantment, and superstition on the one hand, and science, disenchantment, and statistics on the other.

Jeffrey Waldon on Christopher Beha’s The Index of Self-Destructive Acts

We have asked some of our writers from this past year to select some of their favorite books from 2020. Perhaps some of these books will end up source texts for future genealogists. So, if you are looking for a last-minute gift for your favorite genealogists, or making reading resolutions for 2021, we have you covered!

Contrary to Foucault’s account of genealogy, Nietzsche characterizes his enterprise as the discovery of the true (singular) origin of intellectual and cultural phenomena. Genealogy, in his disparaging account, gets it wrong.

Ryan McDermott develops an answer to the question: what is genealogy?

Karoline von Günderrode’s contributions to the history of ideas have been occluded and forgotten. When she wrote, women’s intellectual efforts went unacknowledged, meaning that we may never know the extent of her influence on the people around her.

Anna Ezekial recovers the philosophical insights of Günderrode

Fratelli Tutti offers an alternative to such modern forms of domination and points to fraternal service as a way of countering its love of money, the desire that so often presents itself as development.

Trevor Williams reviews Pope Francis’s latest encyclical

“To apprehend the point of intersection of the timeless with time is the occupation of the saint.” -T.S. Eliot

A video conversation between Thomas Pfau, Brenna Moore, Cyril O’Regan, and Maria Cecilia Ulrickson

Montaigne was charting new, and uniquely modern, territory. We embrace ourselves, as ourselves, and try to learn to be ourselves, rather than striving to become something other.

Erik Dempsey reviews Pierre Manent’s Montaigne: Life Without Law

In the parallel spiritual journeys of its characters, Endo’s The Samurai reflects a typically postmodern yearning for transcendence and synthesis of values beyond the conflict of cultures.

Katy Carl on Shūsaku Endō’s The Samurai and finding transcendence beyond the postmodern

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking right now and how writers are trying to keep up. Here are some routes we found in November that opened up new vistas on what it means to be modern and how we became that way.

By reaching back to Venerable Bede’s description of righteous conquest, Mather casts American origins as something deeply rooted in time and tradition—an inheritance that cannot be revoked.

M. Breann Leake on continuity from Venerable Bede to Cotton Mather

Given all the transformations wrought and about to be wrought by COVID-19, we will see much more attention paid to the role of plagues, pandemics, and pestilences in shaping human affairs.

Andrew Latham looks to microbes to explain macro-changes in history.

By observing the patterns in history and finding the hidden unity behind them, we can formulate ideals and new futures based on a better understanding of what humanity is.

Henriikka Hannula develops Dilthey’s philosophy for life.

Three recent action films—Kingsman: Secret Service, Avengers: Infinity War, and Tenet—face down climate change by pointing to a supposedly new threat: a new crop of Malthusians, out to exterminate parts of the human race for the greater good.

Brice Ezell on the persistence of a bad idea.

What is remarkable about Hagia Sophia’s transformations is the ways in which it was architecturally transformed in line with the politico-spatial turning points in the region’s history… These architectural changes have the power to reinforce, and even ignite, historical change.

Emre Çetin Gürer maps the space of historical change in the Hagia Sophia

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking right now and how writers are trying to keep up. Here are some routes we found in October that opened up new vistas on what it means to be modern and how we became that way.

The rediscovery of neglected texts has made it increasingly clear that women have always done philosophy, even where this work has been obstructed, lost, forgotten, or misattributed.

Anna Ezekiel on the excision of women from philosophical memory

Food can have a transportive quality that can transcend where or when you are and take you somewhere and sometime else. However, food’s histories and transcendent qualities are never only personal.

Krystal Marsh eats her way across history

The term ‘folk opera’ draws attention to Hadestown’s connection with other Orphean music dramas, placing it in a genealogy with earlier operas that take the myth of Orpheus as their subject.

Jacob Martin follows Orpheus’s song through the ages