While I’m recommending philosophers , I should make a particularly enthusiastic plug for Aurel Kolnai .
Kolnai was a Hungarian-Jewish Wunderkind who converted to Catholicism under the influence of G.K. Chesterton. He then proceeded to hop erratically around the western world, publishing volumes upon volumes of brilliant books and essays in several languages before suddenly dying of a heart-attack in 1973 while at Marquette University in Wisconsin. Very few people (even among the well-educated) have so much as heard his name, but thinkers as esteemed as Bernard Williams have named him as among the best philosophers of the last century.
So far, the only works by Kolnai that I have read are The War Against the West (his monumental 1938 polemic against the Nazis), Sexual Ethics , and his insightful pair of essays “On Disgust.” Soon I hope to get to his political writings, which philosopher John Haldane, inter alia , has enthusiastically recommended as a rich “new” resource for contemporary political philosophers—especially Catholics.
It may be, then, that the best is yet to come. But even judging only by what I have already read, I urge anyone who is the least bit curious to explore the works of this exciting, important, and unjustly neglected thinker.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
