David Bentley Hart

Bhutan conforms better than any other modern state to my criteria for national greatness: a sane way of life, a thriving ecology, civilized aesthetic and ethical principles, an absolute prohibition on strip malls, and general harmlessness. Continue Reading »

King K’inich Kan Bahlum II reigned in Baalak from 685 AD to 702 AD. Like his father, the great K’inich Janaab Pakal, he was responsible for many of the most glorious architectural and artistic achievements of Mayan civilization’s “classical period;” it was he who oversaw the completion of the great pyramidal Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, on one of whose walls he left a legend predicting that his dynasty would last until 21 October 4772… . Continue Reading »

I was fairly close to both Angela and Jacob throughout our teens; at least, we were all part of the same circle. I briefly entertained the hope of something closer between Angela and myself, and for a few weeks she was more or less my girlfriend; but Jacob “swept her off her feet,” and they were at one school and I at another, so I had no chance. It made no difference to our friendship, though… . Continue Reading »

When he died from a spear wound in June 363 AD, while on campaign in Persia, the Emperor Julian was only thirty-two years old. His reign as Augustus had lasted just nineteen months. His great project to restore the ancient faith of the “Hellenes” and to turn back the inexorable advance of the “Galilean” religion perished with him … Continue Reading »

In his later philosophy, Heidegger liked to indulge in eccentric etymologies because he was certain that there are truths deeply hidden in language. It is one of the more beguilingly magical aspects of his thought and therefore—to my mind—one of the more convincing. Consider, for . . . . Continue Reading »

As I write this, the first two of what I expect will be three theatrically morose sighs have just issued from my lips; they’re all quite inaudible to you, I know, but they would wrack your heart with pity if you could hear them… . Continue Reading »

I think I am very close to concluding that this whole “New Atheism” movement is only a passing fad—not the cultural watershed its purveyors imagine it to be, but simply one of those occasional and inexplicable marketing vogues that inevitably go the way of pet rocks, disco, prime-time . . . . Continue Reading »

Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri’s Mission to Tibet by Trent Pomplun Oxford, 320 pages, $29.95 How many of history’s most fascinating tales go untold for want of the right teller, I wonder. There are some events that can be appreciated, or in fact even noticed, only by persons . . . . Continue Reading »

We are now a few weeks into the Chinese New Year (a year of the Tiger, elementally specified as metal, metaphysically specified as yang), and this seems a fairly auspicious time to pay tribute to one of my favorite of Chinese culture’s immortals … Continue Reading »

The ever slightly oafish Pat Robertson (you remember him: that fine Christian gentleman who just a few years ago defended China’s infanticidal one-child policy, lest he imperil his own lucrative business relations with the PRC by publically criticizing the regime) has opined that the earthquake in Haiti is only the most recent result of a curse that the nation contracted back in the days of Toussaint Louverture, when “they” (that is, apparently, all the Haitians and their posterity) conducted a ceremony in which “they” made a deal with the devil, promising him their allegiance in exchange for liberation from the French… . Continue Reading »