Onsi Kamel’s article (“Arabic, A Christian Language,” August/September) reminded me of an experience I had while I was a high school student at the American School of Kuwait. The Kuwait Ministry of Education required all non-Arabic-speaking students in the school to take Arabic as a foreign . . . . Continue Reading »
I was recently sipping on chocolat chaud while visiting Paris, observing life leisurely unfurling in the charming Place des Vosges. I found myself contemplating a very difficult question. Like everything of consequence in French culture, that jewel of Western civilization, this question, . . . . Continue Reading »
No one will say it, but we knowtoday’s fresh-flamed hibiscus flowerreveals in one brief, glorious showour birth, our life, our final hour. Sacrament and synecdochelive in a pot near the atrium door,mirroring holy brevitywhich, in a day, is evermore. —Jane Greer Image by R. D. Smith, . . . . Continue Reading »
I have long known who Mischa Elman was: one of the great violinists of the last century (1891–1967). But only last month did I finally manage to listen to him. He is dead, of course. But there are available recordings of his playing that date back to the 1920s. These are a bit scratchy, . . . . Continue Reading »
What makes a Great Book? When one considers the many Great Books curricula in the United States, one notices an abundance of poets and a smattering of philosophers. Sadly missing from the list at most classically inflected schools are the works of such great mathematical minds as Euclid, Archimedes, . . . . Continue Reading »
Liberals and conservatives disagree less about principles than we often imagine. (It’s common for intellectually inclined, theory-informed people to interpret disagreements about policy as matters of principle.) For example, aside from full-bore revolutionaries, everyone endorses the rule of law, . . . . Continue Reading »
The coronation of King Charles III made for great television: horsemen in breastplates and plumes; a bejeweled aristocracy and the emissaries of empire; a whiff of scandal over the royals who did and didn’t show; and a liturgy as high-church as can be. There were golden copes galore; trumpet . . . . Continue Reading »
In his book God, Philosophy, Universities, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that “neither the university nor philosophy is any longer seen as engaging the questions” of “plain persons.” These questions include: “What is our place in the order of things? Of what powers in the natural and . . . . Continue Reading »
One way of telling the story of Western philosophy over the last few centuries is to present it as the rise and fall of a particular view of language. Gradually, piecemeal, the idea of language as primarily a matter of accurate naming and information-sharing has yielded to a recognition of language . . . . Continue Reading »
A century ago, the most potent moral figure in the West was Jesus Christ. Believers and unbelievers alike accepted him as an ethical exemplar. Not to do so was to make oneself an outcast. But now, our most potent moral figure is Adolf Hitler. In our relativist, pluralist age, he is our one . . . . Continue Reading »
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