Here and There

• Why I’m Not a Cosmo-Globalist and other Musings of a Politically Homeless Philosopher, reflections from Daniel A. Kaufman (The Electric Agora):

  ... The subjects around which the most contentious political disputes revolve are extraordinarily complex and the views one takes are heavily dependent not just upon “the facts” involved but on the values one brings to the table, which themselves are contestable and contentious. Even more so than in philosophy itself, rarely if ever is there a demonstrably “correct” view on such matters and regardless, in a democracy — in which we all should be so lucky to live — one’s views may not prevail on this occasion or, perhaps, ever. It is not just inadvisable, then, but flat-out stupid to hold one’s relationships hostage to political agreement, and our increasing and lamentable inability to recognize this is just a further testament to the collective juvenility that seems to have descended upon us, like some horrible, disfiguring fog.

  Speaking of which, I find his 2018 assessment of the pathetic state of the political life of this nation is remarkably on-point going into the 2020 electoral season.

• From the Age of Persuasion to the Age of Offense Los Angeles Review of Books 12/23/19. Colin Marshall reviews David Bromwich's American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us:

  ... Bromwich falls squarely into the generation of professors now watching in astonishment as their students, most of whom grew up in the 2000s and 2010s, blithely dismiss and even display undisguised contempt for what once seemed like the settled values of liberal democratic society. He ascribes this state of affairs to several recent developments; one of the most important and least surprising is "the soft despotism of social media," that distinctively 21st-century technology almost as enthusiastically resented as it is adopted. ...

• Philosopher in the Ring: The Existentialist's Survival Guide" by Stephen Knepper. Commonweal 12/21/19:

  Gordon Marino teaches philosophy at St. Olaf College and curates the Hong Kierkegaard Library. He has spent decades writing about the existentialists. His passion for them did not begin in the classroom, though. After a failed relationship, with derailed careers in both boxing and academic philosophy, a young Marino struggled with suicidal thoughts. While waiting for a counseling session, he spotted a copy of Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love on a coffee-shop bookshelf. He opened it to a passage in which Kierkegaard criticizes a “conceited sagacity” that refuses to believe in love. Intrigued, Marino hid Works of Love under his coat on the way out the door. He credits the book with saving his life. ...

• The Historian of Moral Revolution by David Brooks. Gertrude Himmelfarb 12/31/19. David Brooks' fitting tribute to the late Gertrude Himmelfarb, who passed December 30th:

  ... Accordingly, Himmelfarb didn’t fear immorality so much as demoralization, the sense that our age has lost a moral vocabulary and with it the ability to think subtly about moral matters. A great deal, she wrote, is lost when a society stops aiming for civic virtue and is content to aim merely for civility.

• The post-Vatican II civil war Catholic Herald 11/20/19. In his new book, The Irony of Modern Catholic History, George Weigel traces the root of debates at the recent Amazon synod to a fracture within reformist theologians at the Second Vatican Council. [Tangential note: does it count as ironic as well, that Weigel continues to praise DeLubac, but especially after reading the likes of Lawrence Feingold my impression of him has been rather more critical in recent years?]

• "From Kung to Catholicism" Russell E. Saltzman on Hans Kung, the relic of progressive Catholicism. Catholic World Report 11/25/19. I too admit to having an initial interest in Hans Kung, born of curiosity, and much like Saltzman becoming bored with the theologian's perpetual entreaties to fashion the Church to his own liking ("I simply didn’t care to read him anymore ... he had begun to repeat himself").

• ‘The Two Popes’: What’s fact and what’s fiction?, by Joseph McAuley (America 11/27/19). The release of "The Two Popes" on Nov. 27 brought renewed attention to the papacy of Benedict XVI (played by Anthony Hopkins) and the 2013 election of Pope Francis (played by Jonathan Pryce). But does the movie get the facts right? Yes and no.
• How a 20th century theologian became a quiet prophet for our distracted age Tim Reidy on Romano Guardini (America 11/1/19).

• Long overdue and warranted: A Catholic Conservative Considers Rod Dreher, by Tom Piatak. The Agonist 12/31/19. (contributing editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and was formerly a contributing editor of The American Conservative).