Ralph Hancock

1. We want to be at home, and we want to be free. We want to fit into something larger than ourselves, something real and meaningful and permanent; and we want to control our destiny, to create something meaningful and to express our unique personality. We want to be a part, and we want to be a . . . . Continue Reading »

Recent, appalling local news involving sexual abuse of youth (in a school setting) and abuse of religious and moral authority, as well as published “charitable” responses to these crimes, prompts the following distressed thoughts on “applying” Christianity. Shockingly to me, . . . . Continue Reading »

A recent visit to my Southern, rural paternal roots could not help but nourish reflection related to recent discussions here. Raised a suburban Westerner, I fondly remember childhood visits to what was in effect very much a “front porch” village, where anyone swaying in a suspended . . . . Continue Reading »

As I awoke this morning I was treated to a most light-hearted remembrance of Bastille day on NPR. Nothing is so merry, it seems, as stringing up a few “aristocrats” from light poles. Not that the jovial announcers at NPR are particularly to blame; their casual notice of what could be . . . . Continue Reading »

I would note a couple of complications for the Front Porch discussion of Strauss in relation to an Alternative Tradition in America. Discussion of these complications might help to clarify what, if anything stable and substantial, is really at stake between a Front Porch and a Pomocon position . . . . Continue Reading »

Theory must rule practice, and yet it cannot. Thinking is called to assume and to represent Being, but thinking is always preceded and exceeded by Being. This very excess of Being with respect to thinking – transcendence —- reason necessarily configures along two axes of significance or . . . . Continue Reading »

“All we ask is that decisions be based upon reason.” The speaker was a political scientist, addressing other political scientists. The subject was the role of the American judicial branch. But the frustrated assertion of the authority of simple reason is a familiar one in contemporary . . . . Continue Reading »

The Lawler/Deneen exchange is a good occasion for me to explain where I stand on some of these fundamentals . . . or for me to start figure it out, rather. The “don’t worry, be unhappy” is a delightful and memorable caricature of Lawler’s Pascalian-Tocquevillean position. . . . . Continue Reading »

Astute observations and important reflections by James, Will, and Ivan just below nourish my ongoing reflections on the meaning of reason’s responsibility today. The left’s appeals to “scientific” or otherwise purely “rationalist” reason appear more and more febrile . . . . Continue Reading »

(continued from 6/1/09) As little inclined as is Charles Taylor to connect the pre-ontological with the metaphysical, religious “experience” with cognitive assertions, he cannot finally avoid making certain claims about the way things are, or at least the way human things are: We all see . . . . Continue Reading »