Sexual liberation and transhumanism share an anthropology. Both view the human person as an emergent phenomenon, and as something malleable. Both view the self as sovereign, the will as ultimately answerable to nothing other than its own prerogatives. Exploring the intersection between these two movements requires me to give an account of technology. In speaking … Read more
The world is not good enough. It could be better. We all agree about that. There are disagreements over how bad it is, and what causes this inadequacy. A popular explanation is that all of the world’s problems are caused by oppression, the process by which the powerful exercise their supremacy over the weak. It … Read more
Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina doesn’t end with the suicide of Anna. Its final section concludes the story of its other primary character, Constantin Levin. Levin’s situation is very different from Anna’s. He is married to the woman he loves, who has recently given birth to their first child, a healthy son. They live on a farm … Read more
“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” ∼ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy What good will another hatchet job do? It’s easy, I’ve discovered, to invite criticisms ranging from the condescending (“Are you a bad writer, or just poorly educated?”) to the … Read more
Like many bright but impressionable youngsters I was greatly taken-in by the charisma and bravura bombast of the late Christopher Hitchens. In fact, I became a Hitchens groupie. I even own a t-shirt with his likeness on it. His was the first book on atheism I ever read, after losing my fragile faith watching Dawkins … Read more
In his new book Moral Matters, Irish Catholic philosopher Mark Dooley presents a lucid appraisal of the ongoing calamity of liberal modernity, and a passionate and often moving account of the world of meaning that liberalism has so extensively eroded and threatens to completely destroy. At the heart of Moral Matters is the idea of home; homebuilding … Read more
Let us come home at last to you, O Lord, for fear that we be lost. ∼ St. Augustine My recent conversion to Christianity (and although I was raised Catholic I feel the distance I’ve traveled in my spiritual journey warrants the name of conversion) has come about as the culmination of three different levels … Read more