In some respects, Alasdair MacIntyre offers strong arguments in favor of political liberalism. At the same time, he offers critiques for both liberalism’s proponents and opponents.
Author: Nathan Pinkoski (Nathan Pinkoski)
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Hannah Arendt: Thinking Pariah
Hannah Arendt has been unjustly transformed into a political partisan for the liberal causes that are in vogue today. Letting Arendt speak for herself recovers her intellectual independence as someone who defined herself apart from and against the political traditions of her day—including progressive liberalism.
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The Character Gap: Understanding Our Moral Mediocrity
Christian Miller’s scientific approach to understanding moral character is impressive, and it allows him to reach a public that is inclined only to trust the empirical. Yet this method severely restricts the conclusions Miller feels justified to make.
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Neither Straussian nor MacIntyrean: The Politics of Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option”
Ironically, for all his fierce criticisms of it, Dreher operates very much within the school of American conservatism. He follows in the footsteps of the same pessimists who emerged in conservative political thought a few decades ago.
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Leo Strauss and the Pursuit of Knowledge: A Reply to Paul DeHart
Leo Strauss’s statements on philosophy do not deny that knowledge is possible. Rather, they emphasize that philosophy—while motivated by awareness of one’s own ignorance—is a way of life teleologically ordered toward knowledge.
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Brexit: Why Britain Voted Leave
Arguments about the UK’s Brexit referendum were framed in terms of the UK’s global economic and political role. But the real issues for Brits were closer to home: whether they trusted their politicians to safeguard their national institutions and whether they believed that the European Union weakened these institutions.