Edward T. Oakes

Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition” an essay by charles taylor with commentary by amy gutmann (editor), steven c. rockefeller, michael walzer, and susan wolf princeton university press, 112 pages, $14.95 Last summer a man was arrested in Germany for walking down the street . . . . Continue Reading »

As is well known, teachers are often in the habit of giving pop quizzes, and I indulge the habit here. Quick, who said the following? “Ordinary language … is the only language in which we can be sure of really grasping the phenomena.” Even people who have only a passing acquaintance with . . . . Continue Reading »

Along with Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein is generally considered to be one of the two greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. But as with the field of twentieth-century philosophy itself, Wittgenstein has never seemed to be a very accessible thinker to the nonspecialist. Those, it . . . . Continue Reading »

In his witty and affectionate autobiography, Ours: The Making and Unmaking of a Jesuit, the Islamicist F. E. Peters has this to say about his Jesuit training: “It was a marvelous nineteenth century English university education of the type that Arnold Toynbee believed he was among the . . . . Continue Reading »