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Universal v. Universal
“Western history is not, John Milbank argues, an evolutionary progress away from religion and toward human freedom…
Living in Illusion
Thomas Nagel reviews Daniel Dennett’s latest, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, in the NYRB. It’s a…
Chopin – Miniaturist or Master?
Charles Rosen celebrated Chopin’s birth in June 2010 with a NYRB essay on the composer. Rosen observed…
Of Teenagers and Humans
In a New Yorker profile of filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester By the Sea), Rebecca Mead calls attention…
Sacred/Secular and the Triumph of Lent
In his history of popular culture in early modern Europe, Peter Burke traces what he describes as…
God’s Defenseless Omnipotence
In his recently-published Sign and Sacrifice, Rowan Williams notes the continuity between the post-Maccabean theology of martyrdom…
Optimism at CPAC’s Pro-Life Panel
This past Friday, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) hosted a panel on sanctity of life…
Plato Among the Poets
Helmut Kuhn begins his 1941 article on “true tragedy” by noting the chronological proximity of Plato and…
New Face for the World
Rowan Williams (Sign and Sacrifice) summarizes the Anselmian understanding of the atonement using the categories of sacrifice,…
Spirit and Form
On this episode of the First Things Podcast: Editor Rusty Reno and associate editor Julia Yost are…
At the Parbar
Describing the assignments of Levite gatekeepers, the Chronicler records that there were four at the “highway” at…
Silence for Silence
“Scorsese is coming for all of the Oscars.” So proclaimed the digital magazine Paste, a regular haunt…
Mass v. Manners
Catherine Pickstock claims that the rejection of liturgy is central to modernity. Having refused the integrations of…
China – Guardian of Western Civ
David Goldman compares “transgressors” Milo Yiannopoulos and Yuja Wang. Milo’s transgressiveness is his essence; Wang, a thirty-year-old…
Weak Nationalism?
Pete Spiliakos makes the counter-intuitive point that Trump’s nationalism will fail politically unless it can become more…
