Thanks to the legacy of Bernays and his proteges, our culture continues to be permeated by a broadly existentialist view of human nature, a view in which the universe is valueless apart from human consciousness.[1] Value is instead created, on this picture, by individual human subjects attempting to come to terms with an indifferent cosmos; …
After spending enough time with graduate students and ‘professional’ philosophers, one is bound to come across the sad story. The sad story is usually told while intoxicated and with a sense of embarrassing nostalgia, as if admitting to having once been devastated upon learning that there was no Santa Claus. The story admits to multiple …
Purported miracles and the testimonies concerning them are essential to many religious traditions. They can not only define a religion’s conceptual content, but can also serve as evidence for that content. For example, consider the following early Christian credal formulation recited by St. Paul: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached …
In my last post, I examined René Guénon’s account of the Crisis of the Modern World. I will now examine an interesting response to his account set forth by his student Julius Evola. Whereas Guénon held out some hope for the survival of the West, Evola offers none.[1] Evola believes that the forces of dissolution …
There is little doubt today that the Western world is in crisis. Regardless of where one falls on the political or theological spectrum, one has the sense that our culture is collapsing. Philosophers argue about the intellectual and historical roots of this crisis (e.g. the emergence of nominalism, the enlightenment, capitalism, Marxism, the religious right, …
The emergence of “quit lit” over the last several years has done much to reveal the deep distress of academics in the corporate university. The articles that compose this genre often take the form of a now familiar Bildungsroman about the lost illusions of academic life: A naïve young scholar is lured into academia by …
In his book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions, Johann Hari contends that our culture’s dominant model of depression is flawed. According to this familiar model, depression and anxiety are chemical imbalances in the brain and so can be cured only by chemical means (i.e. anti-depressants). This reductivist account identifies …
For us intellectuals, there is something unseemly about the very idea of unreason; confronting it face to face always brings a visceral shock. For example, I can still remember my first job interview for a pastoral position in vivid detail. Things started off well. I was excited about the church’s mission, and they seemed to …
Soon the new semester will be starting, and I am once more pondering how to motivate undergraduates to pursue a philosophical life. Motivating students is a challenge for any teacher, but it is especially problematic for philosophers working under the gaze of the neo-liberal university. Student expectations are here governed by the fact that they …
There was a time when the word “postmodern” functioned as a shibboleth in Christian circles. Growing up in conservative evangelicalism, I was taught that postmodernism was the root from which all the baser aspects of contemporary culture grew. By abandoning the concept of absolute truth and the demands of a transcendent moral law, postmodern philosophers …