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Pillar

Education & Culture

The fourth pillar, education and culture, is built upon the recognition of two essential realities. First, the Western intellectual tradition requires a dedication to and desire for truth. Second, education takes place not only within colleges and universities but within our broader culture, whose institutions and practices form us as whole persons.

The History of Education in Six Words 

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A Philosophical Case Against Capital Punishment

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Arguments against the death penalty can be made not only on the basis of theology but also on the basis of natural law philosophy. The first in a two-part series.

The Fault Lies in Ourselves: Coriolanus at the Royal Shakespeare Company

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Seeing Director Angus Jackson’s Coriolanus should be uncomfortable for anyone who loves republican government, regardless of political leaning.

Michael Novak: A Model for Social Scientists

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The “real human person” was the persistent subject of Michael Novak’s life’s work. Novak wanted real, gritty, ordinary persons, in ordinary life, and he wanted a political and economic order for those real, gritty, ordinary persons.

Embryology and Science Denial

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The HHS has recently—and rightly—described life as beginning at conception. Dr. Richard Paulson’s denial of this claim contradicts the standard scientific position, and his arguments against that claim are fallacious and inaccurate.

Contra Leo Strauss, There’s No Conflict Between Reason and Revelation

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Strauss’s account of reason and revelation seems to depend for its intelligibility on an account of knowledge—upon an epistemic method and a noetic structure—itself ultimately unintelligible.

Radical Autonomy: A Dangerous Metaphysical Myth

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As a bioethical principle, respect for autonomy asks far too little of our minds and hearts. When the moral stakes are highest, we degrade patients by treating them as though they were simply bundles of self-interest.

Catholic Tradition, St. John Paul II, and the Death Penalty

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Four conditions must be met for a teaching of the Catholic Church to be considered infallible. Acceptance of the death penalty meets none of them. St. John Paul II laid down theoretical markers that provide a clear basis for a Catholic teaching rejecting the death penalty in principle. Part two of a two-part essay.

Capital Punishment Is Intrinsically Wrong: A Reply to Feser and Bessette

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Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bessette’s new book asserts that Catholics cannot legitimately reject the death penalty as wrong always and everywhere. They are wrong. Part one of a two-part essay.

Not Hobbesian but Christian: Why Patrick Deneen’s Misinterpretation of the American Founding Matters

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Nothing has so limited the scope of politics as has Christianity by placing man’s end in the transcendent. The Founders did not think that the summum bonum could be reached through political means, not because they were Hobbesian but because they were Christian. The second in a two-part series.

Fools or Scoundrels? A Response to Patrick Deneen

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To suppose that the Founders set up a republic to vitiate the virtue on which its existence depended requires the belief that they were either stupid (by creating a Hobbesian regime and not noticing) or immoral (by doing it while cleverly lying about what they were doing). The first in a two-part series.

An Absurd Fate: What Happens to Abandoned Embryos?

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A recent embryo custody battle highlights the plight of the hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos in the United States today.

Capitalism, Conservatives, and the Intellectuals: A Reply to Matthew McManus

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Not only are there many forms of capitalism, but intellectuals exert great influence in determining what type of economy we embrace—for better and for worse.

Amy Barrett, Augustine, and the Relationship between Religion and Politics

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The irony of media coverage of Amy Barrett’s confirmation hearings is that, in fact, Barrett is the one arguing for the truth that religion and politics need to be separated. She believes this because of her Catholic faith, not in spite of it.

The Playboy Lifestyle and the Death of Sexual Complementarity

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The Playboy account of complementarity is nothing more than an intellectualization of domination and dehumanization. Though some envision Hugh Hefner as a martini-drinking gentleman surrounded by beautiful women, it is better to think of him as a coward.

Christianity and American Founding Principles: A Response to Patrick Deneen and Robert Reilly

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When it comes to Christianity, the Enlightenment, and the American Founding, Patrick Deneen and Robert Reilly are both right.

Betraying Liberal Education: A Response to President Paxson of Brown University

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Today’s universities are allergic to making substantive claims about what it means to live well in a good society. But liberal education, rightly understood, is a long, arduous apprenticeship of self-mastery.

Socratic Reason, Free Speech, and White Supremacists

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Pretending that our government is neutral actually undermines our rights, since a government that enforces manmade “rights” while denying their basis in reality moves dangerously close to using force without right—the very essence of tyranny.

Corrupting the Youth? A Response to Reilly

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There is no distinctive Catholic political philosophy today, and Robert Reilly’s call to man the battlements of classical liberalism is an attempt to short-circuit the possibility of a real revival of Catholic political thought in America.

No Long-Term Harm? The New Scientific Silence on Child-Adult Sex and the Age of Consent

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Two new studies use a small amount of old data to try to undermine the idea that it is abusive or damaging for adults to have sex with minors. Disturbingly, no one seems to be challenging this conclusion.

Richard III and the Machiavellian Madness of Postmodernity

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The reasons for Richard’s demise constitute a warning about a deadly Machiavellian madness to which contemporary society is highly susceptible.

The Wisdom of the Neocons

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Drawing on the wisdom of the neocons might point us towards a harder, but ultimately more fruitful, approach to our current political problems.

The Consuming Self

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Americans increasingly identify with our consumption. When combined with political tribalism, the result is the increasing refusal to do business with members of other political or cultural groups. In the end, an identity based on consumption will only consume itself.

Political Theory, Travel, and the Love of Home

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If we approach it correctly, travel can help us to see the beauty of other cultures and ways of life without denigrating either the primacy of truth or one’s own native country.

The Need for Thick Schools: Classical Education Against Cynicism

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Many of our schools are breeding grounds for cynicism. Schools need to be “thick” institutions that tutor students’ deep human needs of happiness, friendship, approval, and rootedness.

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