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Germain Grisez, Christian Philosopher

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The whole of Grisez’s account of this sense of Christian philosophy repays study, not least as an exploration of the shape that philosophic wonder first takes in a Catholic educated by a warmly believing household; and then of the place of audacious questioning in a Christian faith firmly held for love of God and in hope for God’s Kingdom.

The Criminal Mind and the Moral Imagination: What Psychopaths Can Teach Us About Conscience

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Just as evil may be understood as the absence of good, darkness as the absence of light, cold as the absence of heat, the absence of conscience presents itself as profoundly dehumanizing and destructive.

Alexander Hamilton: Revolutionary Conservative Lawyer

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A new book illustrates how Alexander Hamilton used British legal traditions and the American judiciary to give a distinctive constitutional form to a new republic.

Why Senior Faculty Should Teach First-Year Students

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Why aren’t we insisting that students be introduced to the discipline by those who know it best? Pawning these courses off on overworked junior faculty who are so busy grading they have no time to eat lunch, let alone publish or—worse yet—on adjunct faculty who are paid slave wages and have no benefits is unconscionable.

The Philosophical Contradictions of the Transgender Worldview

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The thinking of transgender activists is inherently confused and filled with internal contradictions. Activists never acknowledge those contradictions. Instead, they opportunistically rely on whichever claim is useful at any given moment.

Casualties of a Social, Psychological, and Medical Fad: The Dangers of Transgender Ideology in Medicine

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Dr. Paul McHugh is optimistic that the ascendency of transgender ideology is a passing fad. Yet the damage that transgender ideology can wreak in even just ten or fifteen years—the hormones, the surgery, the irreversible decisions, the mutilated bodies—is considerable.

Can We Stop Fighting Over Schools?

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Most other nations with advanced levels of universal schooling provide public support to faith-based schools with no evident harm to their social fabric and with considerably less conflict over schooling. The time has come for the United States to adopt principled pluralism as the fundamental and equitable structure of our education system.

Orestes Brownson, Being Catholic, and Being American

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The writings of Orestes Brownson can help contemporary Catholics make sense of the American Founding.

The Libertarian Case for Drug Prohibition

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Freedom isn’t just the bare ability to do something; it is the ability to act under the influence of properly functioning cognitive faculties. If you value freedom, then you should oppose the legalization of recreational drugs.

Civic Chaos and the Myth of Autonomy

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A regime that rejects the primacy of truth and attempts to upend our social nature will inevitably create conditions for civic unrest.

Transgenderism: A State-Sponsored Religion?

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Gender dysphoria is a serious mental health issue. By contrast, transgenderism is a belief system that increasingly looks like a cultish religion—a modern day Gnosticism denying physical reality for deceived perceptions—being forced on the public by the state.

LOL: No Laughing Matter for Catholic Universities

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In order to be considered a university at all by those who fancy themselves the arbiters of what counts as knowledge, the Catholic university must abandon its fundamental truth claims and its proper relationship with those entrusted with the proclamation of that truth.

It Stinketh: On the End (and The End?) of the Modern University

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The modern university project, as articulated by the American Association of University Professors, is a project of planned obsolescence. Those who continue to proclaim that the principles of free and open inquiry and the marketplace of ideas are alive and well are fooling only themselves.

Swamp Thing: A Qualified Huzzah for the Party Establishment

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Even when its nomination process is broken enough to give us such a man as Donald Trump for our president, the party establishment has shown a remarkable capacity to fill the voids created by his inattention and to guide many of his most important policy decisions.

Christian Rights: Did Pro-Life Advocacy Turn Conservative Evangelicals into Human Rights Advocates?

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A new book is an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand conservative evangelicals on their own terms. It traces the ways in which pro-life politics has made the Christian Right of 2017 a very different entity from the Religious Right of the 1970s.

What’s Wrong with the New NIH Study on Transgender Kids?

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A new study being launched by the NIH is intended to produce evidence supporting a particular conclusion: that transgender affirmation therapy is safe and effective for gender-dysphoric youngsters. And once the federal government speaks, states and other institutions will fall in line.

The Last Jedi and the Ancien Régime: A Spoiler-Heavy Defense

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The arrogance of the Jedi and the Sith needs to be replaced with a deep sense of failure and humility, out of which fruitful service and sacrifice can grow. In this way, The Last Jedi is the Star Wars film we need right now, even if it isn’t the one we want or deserve.

Grace Builds Upon and Doesn’t Destroy Nature: On First Things, Baptism, and the Natural Family

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We need not parrot old arguments, but we should avoid giving countenance to dangerous and unproductive ones. Being novel, contrarian, and clever is no substitute for the politics of prudence and the sober pursuit of truth.

Harvey Weinstein Isn’t Unusual: Sexual Abuse and Trafficking in the United States

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The latest Harvey Weinstein allegation reminds us that, around the world and here in the United States, sex trafficking is closer than it appears.

The Mortara Case and the Limits of State Power: First Things Should Disavow Fr. Cessario’s Defense of Pius IX in the Mortara Case

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Many people do care—and care a lot—what the editors of First Things think about Christian-Jewish relations, and this time the galloping statism of First Things is doing great damage in the real world. Robert T. Miller calls on R.R. Reno to disavow the position Romanus Cessario takes on the Mortara case and to reaffirm the journal’s historical commitment to the freedom of religion as understood in liberal states.

Can Liberalism Change?

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In a paradoxical new book, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla correctly identifies the defects in contemporary liberalism and identity politics but cannot free himself from them.
philosophy, natural law

Practical Reason, Basic Goods, and Natural Law

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Reason operating without error judges that no human being should ever intend the death of another human being for any reason whatsoever. No achievable good can justify such a choice. And that is the foundation for the case against the death penalty.

The Philosophical Case against the Philosophical Case against Capital Punishment

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It’s three times more likely that you’ll die of lightning than that Aquinas will turn out to be wrong about something. The same cannot be said of New Natural Law philosophy.

Economic Freedom and Economic Opportunity: R. R. Reno Discovers Economic Growth, Blames Capitalism

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Leaders should get the facts straight before they start theorizing.