Witherspoon Institute
2026 Summer Seminars
Held in Princeton, NJ
For rising high school juniors and seniors, undergraduates, and graduate students.
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Book Reviews
Hobbes’ thin conception of natural law cannot sustain all the activities of a fully flourishing community, but it does appeal to those who live in fear of losing their basic security. Many people are possessed by that fear today, as many were in Hobbes’ time. But we have much to lose if the Hobbesian view of law prevails.
While autonomous vehicles sound freeing at first, they also have the potential to increase passivity and decrease human agency.
Sixty years after its publication in America, Wilhelm Röpke’s “A Humane Economy” remains a model for engaging classical liberal economics with conservative insights into reality.
Christian Wiman’s new collection of poetry creates a world in which the human being is never one thing or the other—believer or unbeliever—but both at once. As the speaker in the book’s first poem, “Prologue,” puts it, “I need a space for unbelief to breathe.” Survival Is a Style creates that space.
Abigail Shrier’s new book is an outstanding investigative report on the diagnostic craze of rapid onset gender dysphoria that has swept over adolescent girls in the past decade. It is an invaluable resource for parents, educators, church and community leaders, and anyone else who cares about the well-being of young women.
True encounters with demonic activity ought to make today’s neopagans reconsider whether they should do more than cultivate eclectic spiritual identities.
The intellectual life and political life are distinct elements of the human good, but they mutually support one another.
The humanities matter because human life matters. Rightly lived, the intellectual life is an ascetic one that calls for renunciation and sacrifice. Most of all, seriousness demands that we continue to pursue the truths of human existence and align our lives with them.
A new book systematically defends the American Founding against those who believe it was destined to end in nihilism.
