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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 Falcon’s Children: Ross Douthat’s (Mostly) Fantastic Fantasy 

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Science, Embryonic Autonomy, and the Question of When Life Begins

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A new study demonstrates that human embryos autonomously direct their own development from the very earliest moments of life—even when they are not in their mothers’ wombs.

Madisonian Thomism

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Though it is often criticized as being based on Hobbesian principles, James Madison’s constitutional theory is basically Thomistic.

Families, Schools, and Churches: The Building Blocks of a Healthy Social Ecology

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To create a society in which human beings can flourish, we must support child-raising families, schools that intentionally cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues, and local church communities. The second of a two-part series.

Safeguarding the Conditions for an Authentic Human Ecology

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If we are to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology we must take far more seriously the care, nurture, and cultivation of children and young people in virtue. The first in a two-part series.

Higher Education in Hell

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A politicized education is illiberal by its own inner compulsions. It has almost the hideousness and chaos of hell itself, so inextricably coupled it is with the mire and passions of the passing day.

A Nine-Year-Old Boy is Spreading a “Contagion of Mass Delusion”

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National Geographic’s cover photo is exploitation. The health and well-being of a child are being sacrificed to advance a political and cultural crusade.

Race, the Legacy of Slavery, and American Promise

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A new documentary about the Thirteenth Amendment and the disproportionate imprisonment of African Americans is a wake-up call to conservatives who feel threatened by apparently unpatriotic protests or demands for racial justice.

Rebuilding Cultural and Intellectual Life: An Invitation to Witherspoon’s Summer Seminars

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The Witherspoon Institute’s summer seminars help the university accomplish its purpose: to teach students to work together to pursue truth with humility and dedication.

Against Pious Nihilism: C.S. Lewis on Natural Law

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For many, the Narnia stories were their first exposure to the goodness of God and his creation. While they called us to move “further in and further up” to things that were more real and solid than these Shadowlands we now inhabit, they did so by calling us to attend to the traces of the divine already present in the created order.

Love, Liberal Education, and the Secret of Human Identity

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True liberal education should teach us that we do not only give ourselves away: we become ourselves by the gift. We become who we are by forgetting to think about who we are.

Universities and the Dangers of Docility

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We need docile teachers and students, those unafraid of the fundamental questions and the highest things: those who want truth.

Reason and the Existence of God

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Are traditional arguments for the existence of God at least suspect—if not false—in the light of what modern philosophy tells us about the limits of human understanding?

Common Core Catastrophe

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It is time to refocus President Trump’s attention upon Common Core and persuade him to ignite a national movement to roll it back. Catholic education, in particular, is undermined by adopting these national standards.

Modern Virtue Ethics Isn’t Really Aristotelian

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Jonathan Sanford argues that contemporary virtue ethicists ought to return to the work of Aristotle as a foundation for moral judgments.

Science: What Went Wrong?

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Since the seventeenth century, Rousseau’s influence has changed the way scientists approach their discipline—ironically, given that he based his theories on emotion and conjecture rather than observation and data. A return to rigorous standards of inquiry, unbiased by personal agendas, would restore science to its former position of strength.

Tea Party Elegy

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Our Constitution alone will not be adequate protection if we allow the left to sweep through our mainstream culture and our institutions.

Unmasking Liberalism

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A new book reveals the crumbling foundations of the myth of liberalism and urges the challenging task of rehabilitating virtue.

Life Worthy of Life: Down Syndrome, Equality, and My Son Silas

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Those of us blessed by the love of someone with an extra twenty-first chromosome look forward to October. October invites me, along with all other parents of children with Down Syndrome, to proclaim loudly that our children live lives worthy of life.

The Future of Pro-Life Legislation and Litigation

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In her landmark 1971 paper, Judith Jarvis Thomson tried to defend abortion by appeal to norms of justification consistently applicable in a range of other cases. By contrast, the courts in and after Roe and Casey have treated the right to abortion as an unquestionable legal principle. This inverted approach is doomed to fail as it continues to reveal the anomalous character of abortion rights.

No, We Should Not Legalize Recreational Marijuana Use

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Legalizing recreational marijuana use would hurt not only those who smoke—it also hurts children and society as a whole. As a country, if we encourage and profit from this vice, we will be undermining the very foundations of our government.

Hijacking Science: How the “No Differences” Consensus about Same-Sex Households and Children Works

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The claim that there are no differences in outcomes for children living in same-sex households arises from how scholars collect, analyze, and present data to support a politically expedient conclusion, not from what the data tend to reveal at face value.

Pronouns, Ordinary People, and the War over Reality

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Do not dismiss the pronominal wars as nonsense or assume that its warriors are merely daft.

Autonomy or Worthiness? How to Find Dignity in Death

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There is dignity in living and dignity in dying, because the concept of “dignity” is inseparable from our humanity. Even when our autonomy is lost, all people can still undergo suffering and death with a noble and dignified serenity.

Joseph Boyle, Public Discourse, and the Kingdom of God

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Joseph Boyle was a colleague, mentor, and friend to many associated with Public Discourse and in the broader academic community. He will be sorely missed.

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