Category: Books
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On Books and Gratitude
Wherein I say something nice about Howlin' Wolff.
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Sebastian Haffner: Totalitarians Intolerant of Private Life
Among the dozen or so books I am currently reading is Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir (Picador, 2003). Written in 1939, it was first published in German in 2000. The Third Reich is no more, but the following passage remains highly relevant at a time when the main forms of totalitarianism are Chinese Communism,…
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Anthony Flood Reviews David Horowitz, Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win
An Amazon review by our long-time correspondent. I award it the plenary MavPhil endorsement. Tony coins a brilliancy, 'academedia complex.' I would add a qualifier, 'academented.' Anthony Flood 5.0 out of 5 stars The Blitzkrieg the Berserkers Have Coming to Them Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2020 “The virus and its…
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Reading Now: Leszek Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing
I'm on a Kolakowski binge. I've re-read Metaphysical Horror (Basil Blackwell, 1988) and Husserl and the Search for Certitude (U. of Chicago, 1975). I purchased the first at Dillon's Bookstore, Bloomsbury, London, near Russell's Square in late August, 1988. Auspicious, eh? I was in the U. K. to read a paper at the World Congress…
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A Reader has a Request. Suggestions Solicited
I hope you are doing well. I am a regular reader of your blog for quite a few years and I thank you for doing this. When you have time, could you recommend books/articles written by thinking people who became believers (were not born into religious setting) and describe the processes that led them…
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Up with Free Speech! Down with the History-Erasing and Deplatforming Left
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Reading Now: Lev Kopelev on the Horrors of Communism
While completing an invited essay for a collection of essays by dissident philosophers, I pulled down from the shelf many a volume on Marx and Marxism, including Steven Lukes, Marxism and Morality (Oxford UP, 1987). In the front matter of that very good book I found the following quotation from the hitherto unknown to me…
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Reader Requests Book Recommendations
Kevin writes, I enjoy your blog, but am very much a neophyte to philosophical thinking. Background is B.A., major in Pol Sci, minor in English Lit. I'm currently reading Introduction to Philosophy by Daniel Sullivan. Any other good books for beginners that you could recommend? Does anyone have any suggestions for Kevin?
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A Monk and His Political Silence
Mary Gordon, On Thomas Merton (Boulder: Shambala, 2018, 118): By the late fifties Merton was deeply disturbed about his political silence. Should he have been? This world is a passing scene. The temporal order is next to nothing compared to eternity. That is the old-time Roman Catholic teaching that justifies the world-flight of monks and…
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Dallas Willard, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge
Dear Dr. Vallicella, Knowing your appreciation for the work of the late philosopher Dallas Willard, I thought I would draw your attention to his posthumously published work, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. There is an excerpt consisting of the foreword (by Scott Soames), editor's introduction, preface, and chapter 1 available for free at the Taylor and…
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Sunday Morning Sermon: Like a Moth to the Flame
Jean van Heijenoort was drawn to Anne-Marie Zamora like a moth to the flame. He firmly believed she wanted to kill him and yet he travelled thousands of miles to Mexico City to visit her where kill him she did by pumping three rounds from her Colt .38 Special into his head while he slept.…
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Time Was . . .
. . . when I had space for books, but no money. Now it's the other way around. So I allowed myself only two purchases today at the antiquarian Mesa Bookshop in downtown Mesa, Arizona, Gary Wills' slim volume, Saint Augustine, Viking 1999, and Joseph Agassi's Faraday as Natural Philosopher, University of Chicago Press, 1971. …
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To Understand the Religious Sensibility . . .
. . . two books are essential: Augustine's Confessions and Pascal's Pensées. If you read these books and they do not speak to you, if they do not move you, then it is a good bet that you don't have a religious bone in your body. It is not matter of intelligence but of sensibility. "He didn't have a…
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Responses to Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option
A tip of the hat to Karl White for sending us to Nine Most Intelligent Takes on Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option. I haven't yet read the book, though it ought to be arriving today. (What sort of 'ought' is that?) Nor have I read the above-linked responses. So I don't know whether they are the…
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Spencer Case Reviews Larry Alex Taunton, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens
Well-written and even-handed, our friend Spencer's review makes me want to read the book.