Art & Literature
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More on Eudaemonia
[Alasdair MacIntyre seems to be having a moment, and if you want a succinct overview of his thought, David Brooks’s piece today in The Atlantic is pretty good. I’m going to get into the MacIntyre weeds later this summer as part of my longer term Utopian Thinking project. The problem with conservatives like Brooks is
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Toward a Participative Ontology and Epistemology
Q: What’s the question this post is attempting to answer? A: Why has our late modern experience for more and more people become so flat, one-dimensional, and with each passing decade so much more meaningless? Q: Do you have a short answer? A: Yes. It’s because the way we use language—and other symbolic representations—has come
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Mountainhead: Some Quick Thoughts after Watching It
I'm glad it’s a movie rather than a full, multi-season series. I gave up on Succession half way through the first season, and I would have given up on this, too, if I had to watch much more of it. That doesn't mean it fails–the writing is clever, and the humor burns–but that there's just
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Taboo and Ontological Dizziness
Some years ago, I saw a very good student production of Edward Albee's The Goat or Who Is Silvia? It's the story of Martin Gray, a successful architect and gentle, loving husband and father, someone that typifies the kind of educated, cosmopolitan person who would go and see an Edward Albee play in Blue America.
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When God died, he took poetry with him
The problem is not that Eliot put poetry on the wrong track. It’s that he went as far down that track as anyone could, exhausting its possibilities and leaving little or no work for those who came after him. It is precisely this mystique of belatedness that is the source of Eliot’s considerable power. What
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Some Thoughts on ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’
Martin McDonagh's movie opens with Padraig walking at the edge of the world in the paradisal beauty of western Ireland. As he makes his way toward his friend Colm's modest, oceanside cottage, we hear a haunting women's choral piece full of longing in a language I don't recognize. Is that Gaelic? I would expect it
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Fantasy and Escape: Thoughts on Tolkien’s Quest Saga
Instead of watching TV in the evenings this summer, which for lack of energy in my evenings has been the only thing I have felt capable of, I decided to listen to Lord of the Rings and The Silmarilion on Audible. Listening requires less energy than reading, and the narrators are quite good. I was not