Humanitas articles from March 1999

Humanitas archives from March 1999

Antigone's Flaw.
March 22, 1999... Some theorists define politics as who gets what, when and how. Alasdair MacIntyre defines it as "civil war carried on by other means." I prefer a more hopeful definition, and lean toward Michael Oakeshott's definition as "attending to...

Realism, Romanticism, and Politics in Mark Twain.
March 22, 1999... Mark Twain and Irving Babbitt Imagination shapes society and politics. According to Irving Babbitt, the imagination plays an "all-important role in both literature and life." For Babbitt, society and politics are shaped by the...

On Wu Mi's Conservatism.
March 22, 1999... Although broad tendencies that may be labeled "conservative" can be traced throughout history, to categorize any group of intellectuals as "conservative" is to invite philosophical debate. Karl Mannheim maintained that conservatism as an "ism"...

Russell Kirk and the Prospects for Conservatism.
March 22, 1999... Russell Kirk (1918-1994) is widely regarded as one of the architects of the postwar conservative intellectual revival. The publication, in 1953, of his The Conservative Mind, a monumental 450-page history of conservative ideas from Edmund Burke...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Romantic Roots of Modern Democracy.
March 22, 1999... Political theorists have paid too little attention to the role of literature and the arts in the shaping of political ideals, and of no period is this more true than Rousseau's. This is a great shame, for "conceptions of the nature and purpose...

Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: Early Christian Forerunners to Chronic Ennui.
March 22, 1999... This article focuses on the relevance of early Christian writings on acedia and tristitia to the primary modern and postmodern maladies of the subject, i.e., chronic ennui, alienation, estrangement, disenchantment, angst, neurosis, etc. The...

The Metaphysics of Postmodernism.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Fleeing the Universal: The Critique of Post-rational Criticism, by Carl Rapp. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. 272 pp. $65.50 cloth. $21.95 paper. Are we all postmodernists now? At first glance, it seems implausible:...

Religion and the Constitution.(Review)
March 22, 1999... The American Myth of Religious Freedom, by Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr. Dallas, Texas: Spence Publishing Co., 1999. 226 pp. $27.95. This book provides a good example of the distortion of reality, not to mention mind-torturing confusion, that...

The Humanities and Substance.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools, With a Curriculum for Today's Students, by Robert E. Proctor. Second Edition. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. 264 pp. $35 cloth....