Intellectuals

Notes on Sontag and Steiner

Robert Boyers joins the podcast to discuss his new book Maestros & Monsters: Days & Nights with Susan Sontag & George Steiner. Continue Reading »

16 Nov 2023

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon a cult. Browsing in a secondhand bookshop, I picked up R. H. Tawney’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and, remembering a vague resolution to read it one day, took it to the counter. The fresh-faced student at the cash register was delighted. . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2022

Against Genius

by Ephraim Radner

“This is the main road God takes to come to us: our recognition of our own ignorance.” So said Stephen of Muret, a medieval hermit and purported founder of the Grandmontine order of monks that disappeared in the eighteenth century. The idea that wisdom comes from admitting our own ignorance was . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Nov 2022

Alice von Hildebrand, Woman of Valor

by Mark Gottlieb

Let us not lose the opportunity to thank our maker for giving us the gift of Alice von Hildebrand, who arduously defended the truth through her formidable faculties of head and heart. Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2022

Remembering Marc Fumaroli

by Benjamin Storey

Marc Fumaroli was a rare figure: a Catholic intellectual who won the highest honors of European and American intellectual life while resisting its dominant trends. Continue Reading »

13 Jul 2020

Letter to an Aspiring Intellectual

by Paul J. Griffiths

You’ve asked me how to become an intellectual. You’re young, it seems (only young people ask questions of that kind), and you think you might have an intellectual vocation, but you can’t see what to do about it. What should you do in order to become the kind of person an intellectual is? What . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2018