Calvinism

• David Bentley Hart: Defining Socialism

  I just came across this NY Times op-ed written by Hart in 2019. It’s a useful retort to Hazony’s anti Neo-Marxism, and worth the read because, if nothing else, it shows why Neoplatonists like Hart (and me) are naturally drawn to a ‘genuine’ Left politics. Here’s a shortened version— … It may be amusing to

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• Taking a Step Back: Here’s an Overview of My Argument

  What I’m trying to do here is probably not ideal for blog or Newsletter, but should rather be in a book. I’m not particularly motivated to write a book that nobody is going to read, but it might be useful exercise for me and for the few people who are interested to try to integrate

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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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• More on the Puritan Mind

  In the Anglo-American experience there were three bloody civil wars–the one in England led by Cromwell, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. Each was a phase in a long-term struggle of the Puritan “moderns” to defeat the Tory “premoderns.”  I have come to think of the American Revolution as the Puritans' finishing a

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• Left & Right Wing Puritans

  Moby Dick is our national national myth. It's cognate with the story of Marduk and Tiamat. It's the story of the attempt to repress the forces of chaos with a violence that justifies itself in the righteous quest to impose law and order, but instead creates even more lawlessness and disorder.  It's a myth that's

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