Humanitas articles from September 1999

Humanitas archives from September 1999

The Politics of Transcendence: The Pretentious Passivity of Platonic Idealism.
September 22, 1999... Plato and Aristotle are still approached with deference by many political thinkers who have not abandoned the notion of moral universality. Some of them treat Plato as the ultimate philosophical authority and even regard substantial criticisms...

Augustinian Radical Transcendence: Source of Political Excess.
September 22, 1999... The relationship between Christianity and politics is paradoxical. On one hand, many Christians are inclined to shun politics and to wash their hands of the evils of the world, but, on the other hand, they cannot resist the temptation of...

Her Inspiration and A Fateful Flight.(Poem)
September 22, 1999... An afterthought's refracted glimmer swims To her, minnow-darting under reflections Leaping patternless; the flames of rage pillage Recurring dreams for Reason's sake. She breathes To speak, to spurn the fire, to hum unease ...

Literary Study and the Social Order.
September 22, 1999... Determining how literary study relates to the social order has occupied the best minds at least since Plato excluded poets from his ideal republic. The subject has been so thoroughly aired that it seems difficult, in Samuel Johnson's phrase, to...

The Deceitful Artwork: Beautiful Falsehood or False Beauty?
September 22, 1999... Formalists such as Dziemidok, Greenberg, Fry, Bell, Prall, Fried, Fiedler, Kant and others separate the aesthetic and the ethical. In this article I argue that moral considerations may play a decisive role in our appreciation of particular...

The Ontology of Culture-Way-markers.
September 22, 1999... This essay works towards a rough explication of the ontic-ontological difference as it emerges in the early chapters of Heidegger's Being and Time. It then goes on to use that difference to open up a possible ontology of culture. If the...

An Emblematic American.(Review)
September 22, 1999... The Critical Legacy of Irving Babbitt, by George A. Panichas. Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1999. 235 pp. $24.95. I have seen only three portraits of Irving Babbitt. The first was the photograph reproduced in the...

The Humbling of the Pride.(Review)
September 22, 1999... The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation, by Nicholas Capaldi. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. xiv + 532 pp. $176. Since some humanistic readers might be somewhat puzzled as to exactly what analytic philosophy...

Shadows: Comments on the Modern Cave.(Review)
September 22, 1999... American Beauty 1999. Director Sam Mendes. Producers Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks. Screenplay Alan Ball. Cinematographer Conrad L. Hall. Music Thomas Newman. Cast Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari, Peter...