“What the university of today tends to forget is that man has other hungers which the lower animals do not possess and that, if he is not taught how to satisfy those hungers too, he remains individually distrait, socially dangerous, and disruptive, no matter how well he has learned to sate and does sate his lesser appetites. The true business of a university is to see to it that men and women learn to give primary consideration to how to feed the extra-animal hungers. These human hungers are three: the hunger for meaning, the hunger for love, the hunger for creative craftsmanship. By feeding these hungers—or trying his best to do so—man can arrive at life of a sort that makes sense in spite of the frustration which ends every human career, in spite of death which comes surely, swiftly.”—Bernard Iddings Bell Crisis in Education (1949), 154-155.
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We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an on-line journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism (Visit our Bookstore to find books by/about these men) .
We address a wide variety of major issues including: What is the essence of conservatism? What was the role of faith in the American Founding? Is liberal learning still possible in the modern academy? Should conservatives and libertarians be allies? What is the proper role for the American Republic in spreading ordered liberty to other cultures/nations?
We have a great appreciation for the thought of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Irving Babbitt and Christopher Dawson, among other imaginative conservatives. However, some of us look at the state of Western culture and the American Republic and see a huge dark cloud which seems ready to unleash a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways. Others focus on the silver lining which may be found in the next generation of traditional conservatives who have been inspired by Dr. Kirk and his like. We hope that The Imaginative Conservative answers T.S. Eliot’s call to “redeem the time, redeem the dream.”
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