Shock Doctrine

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:01 am By Peter Leithart

Jonathan Chait – no Bush-loving right-winger he – doesn’t at all like Naomi Klein’s popular Shock Doctrine . Her thesis is that Milton Friedman is the evil genius behind the history of global economics and politics in the last three decades. The idea is to disorient the public by “wars, coups, natural disasters, and the like,” in order to seize the opportunity to promote pro-corporate policies and extend free market dominance. Chait criticizes Klein for low-level inaccuracies. She criticizes neoconservatism... Read more

Divine humanity

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Hamann opens his Will and Testament of the Knight of the Rose-Cross with “If God is supposed to be the origin all effects in great things and small, or in heaven and in earth, then every numbered hair on our head is as divine as the behemoth, that chief of the ways of God. The spirit of the Mosaic law extends from there to the most disgusting discharge of the human corpse. Consequently, everything is divine, and the question of... Read more

Intoxicating reading

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Augustine on John 2: “Read all the prophetic books without perceiving Christ: what will you find so insipid and so silly? Understand Christ there, and what you are reading not only becomes savory but intoxicates.” Hamann quotes this in his Aesthetica in nuce : Intelliges ibi CHRISTUM, non solum sapit, quod legis, sed etiam inebriat. Read more

Politics of style

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:04 am By Peter Leithart

MacMullen again, on the style of late Roman communications (written in purple ink): “It was extremely conscious, the late descendant of centuries of rhetorical art, marked by many poetical tricks: avoidance of hiatus or of inelegant words; metrical terminations of sentences and clauses; variation through an apparently limitless vocabulary of periphrasis. The least note of of anything politically embarrassing disappeared in Brahmsian harmonies; aimlessly rich orchestration obscured the theme, if any; inauspicious rich orchestration piped in vain against the drumrolls... Read more

Most Holy Place

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

Ramsay MacMullen describes the proper approach to a late Roman emperor: “Few saw him, for few were admitted to his presence. Properly searched first for weapons, one passed through rows of guards and rows of ponderous pillars to some more specially solemn portal, opening to a hall fifty, a hundred, or two hundred feet long. At the far end, an apse screened off by a curtain; everywhere, silence. The visitor was escorted to the screen, spoke through it, and received... Read more

Reverse Revisionism

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

Leon Aron reviews Putin’s views on Russian history in a lengthy article in TNR (September 24). At a conference, for instance, Putin admitted that there have been “problematic pages in our history,” but goes on: “what state hasn’t? And we’ve had fewer of such pages than some other [states]. And ours were not as horrible as those of some others. Yes, we have had some terrible pages: let us remember the events beginning in 1937, let us not forget about... Read more

Sanctimony and Resistance

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am By Peter Leithart

Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll is based on the arguments between Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera concerning the way Czech intellectuals should pursue resistance to Soviet domination. One exchange in the play draws on a letter that Havel circulated asking Gustav Huzak to release Milan Hubl and others who were jailed for disseminating “provocative printed matter.” Kundera objected to the letter on the grounds that it was “moral exhibitionism” and “playacting.” Havel later admitted as much. Writing about Stoppard’s playin... Read more

Religion of Sex

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

In a review of several books on Henry Miller for the TLS , Karl Orend highlights Miller’s religiosity and his sense of religious mission. He “was Buddhist for most of his life,” and considered his task to be a continuation of Whitman’s plant “to write new Bibles for our times.” Orend writes, “Miller likened his own novel [ Tropic of Cancer ] to the erotically charged cave temples of India.” Even his apparently formless literary architecture was religiously motivated: “Miller... Read more

Magnetic Bovines

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

The Economist (August 30) reports on research by a team from the University of Duisburg-Essen on animal magnetism – not animal charisma, but animals responding to the magnetic polarities of the earth. Studying pictures from Google Earth, they “concluded that cattle do generally align themselves in a north-south direction. Moreover, at high latitudes – where the geographical and magnetic poles are perceptibly separate from one another – it was to the magnetic pole that animals pointed. Unfortunately, even the high... Read more

The Being of God

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:56 pm By Peter Leithart

Jenson’s discussion of the “Being of the One God” at the end of the first volume of his Systematic theology is intriguing both as historical and as systematic theology. He summarizes the Greek answer to the question “What is Being” in three steps. Being is “immunity to time”; it is “what does not come or go, and therefore divinely is and therefore truly is, is ‘form’” and “what satisfies the mind’s longing for absolute assurance, for transcendence over time’s surprises”;... Read more