Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul
Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul

The Western inheritance is under sustained theoretical and practical assault. Legitimate self-criticism has given way to nihilistic self-loathing and cultural, moral, and political repudiation is the order of the day. Yet, as Daniel J. Mahoney shows in this learned, eloquent, and provocative set of essays, two contemporary philosophic thinkers, Roger Scruton and Pierre Manent, have––separately and together––traced a path for the renewal of politics and practical reason, our civilized inheritance, the natural moral law, and the soul as the enduring site of self-conscious reflection, moral and civic agency, and mutual accountability.

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Religion of Humanity, The
Religion of Humanity, The

"Is not modern democracy the finally-found form of the religion of Humanity?" (2007)
     The Religion of Humanity: The Illusion of Our Times is the first anthology in any language of the writings of the contemporary French political philosopher, Pierre Manent, on “the religion of Humanity.” 

This anthology is thus almost unique in its subject matter, and certainly unique in its treatment of the subject. It is a rarity and gem: a first-rate work of political philosophy.

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End of Liberalism, The
End of Liberalism, The

In the fourth title in the Dissident American Thought Today Series, Chilton Williamson takes on liberalism and reveals the 'faith' of the present Democratic Party as its own cultivated version of absurdity. This 'advanced liberalism' is not the liberalism of Mill, and it certainly no longer is the thinking man's party. If it were once true that conservatism is unimaginative and reactionary, the contrary is the picture of our times. Liberalism now asserts that human nature can and must be perfected but without reference to nature. The age of the expert has been thrust upon the United States with the urgency of technique to be applied to coerce the vision of a perfect society and perfect human beings. 

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Descartes's Grey Ontology
Descartes's Grey Ontology

The reader who approaches Descartes's first work “Cartesianly,” that is, epistemologically, is faced with an insurmountable difficulty: the Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii is virtually incomprehensible in Cartesian terms. Indeed, Descartes himself appears to have disowned the work, after having put it aside, never to be completed. In this groundbreaking study, first published in 1975 to accompany an Index to the Regulae published in 1976 and a new French translation published in 1977, Jean-Luc Marion argues that the key to understanding the text – and the genesis of Cartesianism – is to read it as a dialogue with Aristotle. Descartes's Rules for the Direction of the Mind becomes intelligible when the precise correspondence between its themes and various Aristotelian texts concerning science and being is established.

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Ha!
Ha!

 "This book almost didn't exist. I was about to write a serious, heavy book entitled How To Save Western Civilization, as a sequel to my book How To Destroy Western Civilization and Other Ideas from the Cultural Abyss. But writing it was not making me happy, and reading it was not going to make anybody else happy either. And then I stopped just long enough for my guardian angel to squeeze through that tiny window of opportunity that I had opened up by my silence and to whisper this commonsense question into my subconscious: "Why not make them happy instead?" (Angels specialize in common sense.)

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Featured Titles

  1. Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul
  2. Religion of Humanity, The
  3. End of Liberalism, The
  4. Descartes's Grey Ontology
  5. Ha!