Modern Age articles from June 2005

Modern Age archives from June 2005

Restoring the meaning of conservatism.
June 22, 2005... EDITOR'S NOTE: The following commentary will be the first in a series to be appearing in Modern Age. It is occasioned by what can be discerned as a distinctly serious problem in the usage of the term "conservatism": its definition, its...

Louis Hartz and the Liberal Tradition: from consensus to crack-up.(ets)
June 22, 2005... THE VIEW THAT LIBERALISM is the self-evident dominant ideology of democratic capitalism has been repeated frequently by many different social scientists and historians. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., declared this to be as a matter of American policy...

Max Scheler and the psychopathology of the terrorist.
June 22, 2005... THIS STUDY REFLECTS an effort to cast some unconventional light on the issue of terrorism. I say "unconventional" because accounts of terrorism reach the general public today mostly through the mass media and convey more often than not social...

The cosmos as memento mori: the ultimate significance of modern science.
June 22, 2005... "IN TERMS OF FULFILLMENT of declared intentions," writes medical researcher and Nobel laureate Peter Medawar, "science is incomparably the most successful enterprise human beings have ever engaged upon. Visit and land on the moon? A fait...

Conservatism and creativity in A.E. Housman.
June 22, 2005... I As TOM STOPPARD'S The Invention of Love begins, A.E. Housman "aged seventy-seven,... stands on the bank of the Styx watching the approach of the ferryman, Charon," who tells him they have to wait for another passenger. (1) Charon...

Meeting in meaning: philosophy and theory in the work of F.R. Leavis.(Bibliography)
June 22, 2005... WILLIAM WILKINS'S BUILDINGS of Downing College, Cambridge, in his Attic style, are mainly of a warm Ketton stone, from Lincolnshire. Spare of ornament, and enclosing three sides of expansive lawn and broad gravelled pathways, they mark the...

Matters of church and state.(The Early Reformation on the Continent)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... The Early Reformation on the Continent, by Owen Chadwick, Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press, 2001. 446 pp. MY CORRESPONDENCE WITH Professor Owen Chadwickled eventually to several enjoyable meetings at Cambridge University, where we discussed...

Origins of presentism.(Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism, and History)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism, and History, by J.C.D. Clark, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004. 336 pp. HISTORY RETAINS A PROFOUND HOLD on the human imagination as individuals and societies alike define...

Self against being.(Equality by Default: An Essay on Modernity as Confinement)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Equality by Default: An Essay on Modernity as Confinement, by Phillipe Beneton; translated by Ralph C. Hancock, Wilmington, Del.; ISI Books, 2004. xix + 217 pp. THE SHELVES OF traditional conservatives are weighed down by the many...

New thoughts on an old idea.(The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture, by Louis Dupre, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. RUMOR HAS IT that when Peter Gay published The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (the first volume of which won the...

Understanding revolutionary and Jeffersonian America.(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: The Tuckers of Virginia, 1752-1830, by Phillip Hamilton, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003. xiv + 250 pp. JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, St. George...

A poet-cleric's "little booke".(Waking Up in Heaven: A Contemporary )(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Waking Up in Heaven: A Contemporary Edition of Centuries of Meditations, by Thomas Traherne, edited by David Buresh, Spencerville, Md.: Hesed Press, 2002. xxv + 323 pp. WHEN EDMUND SPENSER prefaced The Shepheardes Calender (1579) with a...

Dante's divine comedy in America.(The Dante Club)(Inferno)(Dante's Gallery of Rogues)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl, New York: Random House, 2003. 400 pp. Inferno, by Dante Alighieri; edited by Matthew Pearl; translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, New York: Modern Library, 2003. 432 pp. Dante's Gallery of Rogues:...

Between conservatism and reaction.(Critics of the Enlightenment: Readings in the French Counter-Revolutionary Tradition)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Critics of the Enlightenment: Readings in the French Counter-Revolutionary Tradition, edited and translated by Christopher Olaf Blum with a Foreword by Philippe Beneton, Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2004. 357 pp. DEMOCRACY IS THE...

Problems of identity in America: two views.(COMMENTS)(Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... I THIS IS A RARE BOOK -- erudite and readable, analytical but urgent, a work of political science which the author admits he wrote as "a patriot." While few political theorists outside of certain radical circles are likely to admit that...

Renunciation.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Trust And it will be restored to you In a tranquil and purified form. But now a clean cutting out, A sharp excision is necessary. Cut. It will steady you, And the Lord's grace will ease the pain. Your reward will be a new...