- The untimely death of my hard drive, which I shall mourn until the replacement arrives.
- My badly bruised (but luckily not broken!) scaphoid, which has made it difficult to type. (I’ve been walking while reading for fifteen years now, and this is the first time I’ve fallen. I think that’s a pretty good record.)
- A paper on postmodernism and tradition.
The only answer we have yet found to the argument—perhaps the only answer there can ever be—is in the value of the argument itself. Our telos can be found, if nowhere else, in continuing our search for it. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill the heart of a man. One must imagine the Humanities student happy.
- A paper on how Socrates killed beauty.
It is our belief in beauty as a thing in itself that prevents us from being beautiful. (In other words, “it is five a.m. and I need sleep. This paper is terrible.”)
- A paper on the definition of conservatism.
Tonsor claims that “the Right that is born of modernity is a radical, a revolutionary Right,” and though he is referring with scorn to the neoconservatives he is entirely correct. We stand athwart history not because we would like history to stop where it is, but because it is going the wrong way. In modernity, any ideology that lays claim to an intellectual tradition shared by Burke and Buckley can only be radical or revolutionary. As conservatives, we cannot be conservative about our conservatism.
- An as-yet unfinished paper on the history of astrology in medieval Europe.
From this last, I bring you what is possibly the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read: John Calvin opposed the practice of astrology because he thought it taught people that they had no control over their ultimate fate.
Take a moment to let that sink in…
I really enjoy this blog.
I would love to know where to read about Calvin’s opposition to astrology. Any chance you could tell us the source?
I ran across the Calvin reference in Astrology in Shakespeare’s Day (Carroll Camden, Isis 19, No. 1 (1933): 26-73). It’s very brief and gives no citation, but when I’ve got some free time I’m going to go look it up.
If it makes you feel any better, I broke my wrist when I was at summer camp after 7th grade by tagging a fat kid in Capture the Flag.
1. “Our telos can be found, if nowhere else, in continuing our search for it. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill the heart of a man.” How very Straussian!
2. Tonsor’s piece is elegant, but catastrophically outdated. I should write my own piece on this, but let one example suffice. He writes:
“When the New York intellectuals turned from the beguilements of left-wing revolutionary utopianism, they did not in fact become Conservatives but attached themselves to positions that were neoliberal, in the sense that Mises and Hayek were neoliberals; and just as Mises and Hayek are philosophical and cultural modernists, so too New York intellectuals who now call themselves neoconservatives are modernists.”
But who are the Mises freaks now? The paleo-est of the paleocons (cf. Ludwig von Mises Institute). Meanwhile the main rap against today’s neocons is that they aren’t neoliberal enough, that they’re too comfortable with big government. The fault-lines have shifted radically since 1986.
I was just chatting with my coworker about this last week at Outback steak house. Don’t know how in the world we landed on the subject actually , they brought it up. I do remember having a wonderful chicken salad with ranch on it. I digress…