Techno-capitalism

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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Continuists vs Discontinuists: Setting Up a Critical Look at Yoram Hazony

Let me start by saying that I don’t think that Yoram Hazony is an ideological hack, even if he's associating with hacks that I think diminish his credibility with the non-hack community. Nevertheless, I think he's writing in good faith, and his ideas have to be taken seriously if for no other reason that they
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Herder Office Hours

Q: I think I kind of get it, but could you clarify why you’re spending so much time talking about two ancient Germans that hardly anybody has heard of? A: There are several reasons. First, I thought that all my talk about Aristotle and Neoplatonism needed to be balanced by something more down to earth
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J.G. Herder’s Nationalism

Those in the traditionalist group, insofar as they have retained some sense of their living tradition, see modernists as the American Indians saw the white man–as people who have no understanding, people who have become crazy and disoriented, people who have lost their souls because in their uprooted individualism they have lost any experiential connection
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Hazony v. Klein v. Me

I listened to Ezra Klein’s podcast interview with Yoram Hazony shortly after posting “Taking a Step Back" yesterday about the Good Society. This is a very interesting conversation, and I encourage you to listen to it. Hazony and Klein in their different ways would find my ‘Rescuing Aristotle’ argument weird, so I thought it might be
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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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Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing

Q: In our last conversation, you said that there is no such thing as an uninterpreted fact. Are you saying that there is no objective ‘something’ that we have to measure the accuracy of our perceptions and knowledge against? A: No. But we have to frame the way we understand the relationship between the knower
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Getting to the Big Story

[If readers here are too busy or shy to ask questions, I’ll ask them for you. If you have better ones, ask them in comments.] Q: Here's what I don't get so far. You say metaphysics is best understood as story or a narrative. That makes no sense to me. Stories are things we make
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Is Moral Maturity a Thing?

[Inspired by David Bentley Hart’s All Things, I’m going to use this dialogic form from time to time in hopes that it will make some of my arguments easier to engage with. In this post, I’m attempting to set up why it’s important to understand the argument that Alasdair MacIntyre is making in his After
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One Last, Quick Thought on ‘Mountainhead’

Some might find this movie unwatchable, and for good reason. As I said, it didn’t work for me, and it was hard to sit through. Nevertheless, it’s unwatchable for the same reason the news has become unwatchable; neither presents a reality that is untrue nor exaggerated, and neither is believable for relatively normal, sane people
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