Graham Harman is hot stuff and the latest pathetic fad in the sinking ship of academic philosophy. The popsicle licking radical likes to present himself as offering something new. He is tired, and mainstream philosophy is tired, with materialist reductionism. Harman, nevertheless, ends up in the same anti-humanist camp that all handmaidens of the empty … Continue reading Graham Harman: Repackaging Dilettante
Month: June 2019
Are we all Augustinians? A Review of William Connolly’s “The Augustinian Imperative”
William Connolly is one of the great contemporary scholars in Augustinian engagement—that is, he constantly contests, utilizes, or criticizes the philosophy and theology of Saint Augustine in formation of his own work, themes, or beliefs. In The Augustinian Imperative, Connolly engages Augustine in relationship to modern politics. Although Connolly could be seen as an Augustinian … Continue reading Are we all Augustinians? A Review of William Connolly’s “The Augustinian Imperative”
The Suicide of Conservatism: Jonah Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West”
Jonah Goldberg is the most recent of a cadre of popular writers and academics, all of a decisively neo-Whig orientation and consciousness, who has written a defense of the greatest myth ever told since the publication of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum. Goldberg’s tale of the “suicide of the West” is nothing new. It is just … Continue reading The Suicide of Conservatism: Jonah Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West”
Catholicism and the Gothic Psyche, (3/3): The Aesthetics of Horror and the Splendor of God
In this final exposition of Catholicism and the Gothic, we shall turn to the obvious in Gothic aesthetics and the quintessential characteristic of the traditional post-Carolingian aesthetic of Catholicism: The aesthetic of horror. “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom is an integral aspect … Continue reading Catholicism and the Gothic Psyche, (3/3): The Aesthetics of Horror and the Splendor of God
Catholicism and the Gothic Psyche, (2/3): Sex, Violence, and the Origins of the Sacred
Gothic horror often deals with sexuality, sexual torment, and graphic violence. One of the common polemical retorts against Catholicism is that it is obsessed with sexuality, sexual violence, and blood imagery. But how did Catholicism arrive at this nexus of the intersectionality of sex, violence, and the sacred? The Biblical account is unclear whether Adam … Continue reading Catholicism and the Gothic Psyche, (2/3): Sex, Violence, and the Origins of the Sacred
Catholicism and the Gothic Psyche (1/3): Depth, Depravity, and the Restlessness of Man
The image of the Gothic is something usually depicted as something dark, depressing, and horrifying. The Gothic was, for a time, nearly synonymous with Catholicism, especially in the Protestant world where Gothic was associated with darkness and superstition like Catholicism was depicted as being—and this was reinforced and propagated by British Gothic horror often being … Continue reading Catholicism and the Gothic Psyche (1/3): Depth, Depravity, and the Restlessness of Man
Hegel and the Archetypes of Individuals
Hegel, as I’ve said elsewhere (and as most historians and philosophers note), is probably the most important modern philosopher and one of the most influential – if not otherwise generally misunderstood – of all time. Hegel’s philosophy has influenced everything from textual criticism, philosophy of history, notions of being, political philosophy, time, the dialectic, aesthetics, … Continue reading Hegel and the Archetypes of Individuals
Giambattista Vico and the Conceit of “History”
Giambattista Vico was a 17th and 18th century Italian lawyer and philosopher. He produced the work The New Science in 1725, one of the most influential and important works of philosophy in the modern Western tradition. In his work, Vico lays out a comprehensive rebuke of Enlightenment philosophy and historicism, and his commentary on psychological, … Continue reading Giambattista Vico and the Conceit of “History”
Al-Ghazali and the Alchemy of Happiness
Al-Ghazali was a famous Islamic-Persian polymath and philosopher of the early medieval era. He wrote a variety of texts but one of his most famous was the Alchemy of Happiness. Islam understands man in through a teleological anthropology: That is, humanity has an end and that end is happiness which comes about by self-knowledge, knowledge of … Continue reading Al-Ghazali and the Alchemy of Happiness
Friedrich Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology
In his series of lectures on the philosophy of mythology, published as the Historical Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology, Friedrich Schelling achieves a paradigmatic revolution in German Romantic and idealistic thought that would be influential for later German philosophy and influential upon the psychologist Carl Jung. Schelling, a student and pupil of Fichte and Hegel, … Continue reading Friedrich Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology
