Various

Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective by Alice M. Ramos Catholic University of America, 259 pages, $64.95 In his 1960 Elements of Christian Philosophy, Etienne Gilson called beauty the “forgotten transcendental.” The appellation was again . . . . Continue Reading »

Christian Societies “In the long run Christians by culture could hardly exist without some communities of actual believers,” notes Andrea M. Maccarini in his review of Marcello Pera’s indispensable Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies . . . . Continue Reading »

Problematic Premises In response to John Haldane’s argumentum ad consummationem (“Against Erotic Entitlements,” April): Why shouldn’t it be made into a formally valid syllogism? 1. Determinants of human happiness should be consummated; 2. But sincere sexual attraction and love, . . . . Continue Reading »

Tradition and the Rule of Faith in the Early Church: Essays in Honor of Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J. edited by Ronnie J. Rombs and Alexander Y. Hwang Catholic University of America, 351 pages, $39.95 Fr. Joseph Lienhard made his name sorting out the theological positions in the Arian controversy, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Theology From The Bench Richard Garnett celebrates the clarity that the Supreme Court’s recent Hosanna-Tabor decision purportedly brought to religion-clause doctrine (“Things Not Caesar’s,” March). Far from clarifying the doctrine, however, the court has muddled it, and there is . . . . Continue Reading »

Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity by Raymond Tallis Acumen, 388 pages, $29.95 While acknowledging the progress neuroscience has made in helping us understand the brain, in his new book Aping Mankind Raymond Tallis directs his fire at neuroscience’s . . . . Continue Reading »

• We write this on Shrove Tuesday, with Ash Wednesday and Lent arriving tomorrow, and you will be reading this, those of you in liturgical churches, a few weeks into Lent. We hope you’re advancing in holiness. William F. Buckley is said to have answered someone who asked if he liked . . . . Continue Reading »

The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture by Gary Saul Morson Yale, 352 pages, $30 Perhaps it was as a diversion from writing books on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky that the author, a professor of Slavic languages at Northwestern, decided to write on the shortest of literary genres, the quotation. . . . . Continue Reading »

Disorder & Diseased As Stanton Jones shows (“Same-Sex Science,” February), the position that “gay is good” is a philosophical, not scientific, conclusion, and so must be argued on philosophical grounds. However, he makes a mistake in framing the question of the psychological . . . . Continue Reading »

Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet ?by Donald Weinstein ?Yale, 400 pages, $38 No prophet is born in a vacuum. That is one of the many offered learned in Donald Weinstein’s excellent new book, Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet . Weinstein, a professor . . . . Continue Reading »