Mixed Polity

Last updated on: October 4, 2017 at 11:03 pm By Peter Leithart

John Milbank argues (Crisis of Global Capitalism, 29) that societies tend to be mixed – combining a necessary hierarchical element with elements of democracy and oligarchy. He begins from the Augustinian premise that “sort of human association defined by ‘the object of its love.’ This permits us to see (against the entire normal run of modern political theory) that any human association (including in reality the state and market) is always at once hierarchical and democratic, involving what antiquity referred... Read more

Corporations and Contracts

Last updated on: October 5, 2017 at 5:29 am By Peter Leithart

John Neville Figgis (Pluralist Theory of the State) acknowledges that corporate persons exist. The key question is: “how is this personality to be conceived? Is it a natural fact, the expression of the social union; or is it merely something artificial imposed upon the body for its own convenience by the state? Is it real or fictitious, this legal personality?” (117). On the current theory, these associations are either contractual or are created by the state: “it is necessary to treat... Read more

Separation and Embrace

Last updated on: October 4, 2017 at 7:12 pm By Peter Leithart

Writing in 1942, Christopher Dawson already recognized (Judgment of the Nations, 52) the inner contradiction of the international principles embodied first in the League of Nations. “Self-determination” was the ideal for every people; yet at the same time technology was bringing nations into ever-closer intimacy. Dawson wrote, “The modern world is being driven along at the same time in two opposite directions. On the one hand the nations are being brought into closer contact by the advance of scientific and... Read more

Measuring Musical Excellence

Last updated on: October 5, 2017 at 3:49 am By Peter Leithart

Philosopher James Ross explores “Musical Standards as a Function of Musical Accomplishment.” It’s a radical idea: We don’t measure music by anything outside music itself. Music is assessed and valued by standards that are internal to the performance of music. It sounds like relativism, but it isn’t. Ross insists that “performative and compositional excellence are objective, interpersonally assessable, and preceptually accessible.” Still, “the basis for justification and appraisal has to be vantaged within the historical (and hermeneutical) circle of refined... Read more

Motiveless Malignity

Last updated on: October 6, 2017 at 7:48 pm By Peter Leithart

I’ve been checking the news more often than usual for the past week to find out if there’s a breakthrough in the Las Vegas massacre. I imagine I’m not alone. When horror strikes, we look for explanations. We want to classify. Most often, we’re looking for some kind of immanent, materialist explanation for evil: He’s a political fanatic, mentally ill, a convert to Islam, mistreated as a child. Conspiracy theories thrive on our desperation find reasons. Natural as it is,... Read more

The Military-Athletic Complex

Last updated on: October 6, 2017 at 5:36 pm By Peter Leithart

Stephen Beale argues that the NFL’s real problem isn’t protests against the flag but the league’s militarization. He asks the question few have asked: Why is the anthem played at football games in the first place? According to Beale, “The singing of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ was mandated during . . . World War II, when the NFL commissioner at the time mandated it for the league.” Requiring players to be present for the anthem, and to stand, is much more recent:... Read more

Greek Types

Last updated on: October 6, 2017 at 5:35 pm By Peter Leithart

From the earliest times, Christians have offered typological interpretations of ancient myths. According to Marie Cabaud Meaney (Simone Weil’s Apologetic Use of Literature), Weil revives this tradition in a new intellectual milieu: “Weil uses Christology as the hermeneutic key to these mythological texts at a time when people such as Durkheim had reduced religion to a sociological phenomenon, when Bultmann was demythologizing the Gospels, and after Higher Criticism had been looking at the Bible through a positivistic lens since the previous... Read more

The Inevitability of Empire

Last updated on: October 6, 2017 at 5:34 pm By Peter Leithart

“All political power,” write John Milbank and Adrian Pabst (Politics of Virtue, 332-3), “tends to become imperial.” They see three reasons for this: “either to stabilise volatile ‘backyards’ (e.g. the United States in Central and Latin America; China in the South Chinese Sea; Turkey and Russia in the wider Caucasus and Eurasia), or to secure natural resources and market outlets (e.g. the United States worldwide; the European Union’s trade agreements; China’s expansion in Africa) or else, again, to pursue a... Read more

Here Comes the Judge

Last updated on: October 9, 2017 at 7:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Judge Roy Moore hasn't kept up with the swirl of the cultural revolution. He isn't cool, and that's the cardinal sin. Read more

Diseases of Speech

Last updated on: October 1, 2017 at 8:18 am By Peter Leithart

One driving interest behind Rosenstock-Huessy’s grammatical method is hissuggestion that speech the means for integrating the demands of the Cross of Reality, and for meeting the crises that arise at each pole of the Cross. Rosenstock-Huessy wants to rescue grammar from the grammarians, and restore grammar and language to their fully social and political status. Social evils, he says, can be reduced to four main types – war, revolution, anarchy, and decadence. Each of these is a crisis in regard to one... Read more