About Gordon Arnold

Gordon Dakota Arnold is a graduate student at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel School of Politics and Statesmanship. He is a graduate of Regent University, where he studied government, and was a Fellow at the John Jay Institute.

Rousseau’s and Kant’s Competing Interpretations of the Enlightenment

By |2020-12-15T09:27:57-06:00December 13th, 2020|Categories: Great Books, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Philosophy, Political Philosophy|

Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau stand at contrary poles in their assessments of the Enlightenment. As modern citizens grapple with the choice between cosmopolitan integration into the global community and a civic affection for their particular society, they will be forced to confront the arguments advanced by these thinkers almost three centuries ago. Introduction At [...]

The Democratic Impulse of the Scholars in Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”

By |2020-11-25T11:25:50-06:00November 30th, 2020|Categories: Friedrich Nietzsche, Great Books, Philosophy, Science|

Among the critics of the Enlightenment faith in science, Friedrich Nietzsche stands out as among the most profound. In “Beyond Good and Evil,” Nietzsche argues that the enthronement of science has created a new class of elites known as the scholars, who seek to impose the assiduous, calculating, and “objective” spirit of science on every [...]

Plato on Wealth, Poverty, and the Conditions of Happiness

By |2020-01-06T17:39:58-06:00December 29th, 2019|Categories: Community, Conservatism, Plato, Political Philosophy, Politics, Rights|

At least since the time of the ancient philosopher Plato, private property rights have posed challenges to those aspiring to craft a just political society. During the nascent years of American civilization, the Pilgrim settlers of the New Plymouth Plantation followed a partly Platonic model of a commonwealth. The survival of their settlement, they initially [...]

The Moral Project of Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”

By |2021-04-27T20:24:42-05:00June 26th, 2019|Categories: Education, Friedrich Nietzsche, Great Books, Morality, Philosophy|

Friedrich Nietzsche has long been smeared as a ghastly nihilist who repudiated all conceptions of morality. Critics point to the title of his famous work, Beyond Good and Evil, which appears to call for the repudiation of morality, as well as contain his vociferous condemnations of eternal moral standards. With his proclamation that “God is [...]

How Friedrich Nietzsche Changed Philosophy Forever

By |2021-04-27T20:59:07-05:00June 19th, 2018|Categories: Christianity, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernity, Philosophy, Relativism, Science, Truth|

Friedrich Nietzsche sought to change the world, and there is significant evidence that the existentialist philosopher succeeded. Many of the contemporary world’s assumptions regarding the primacy of individualism and the disavowal of universals were exposited by Nietzsche.[1] Yet, one of this thinker’s most important revolutions lay in his complete redefinition of philosophy. The dominant ideas [...]

Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis”

By |2019-09-03T14:27:45-05:00January 12th, 2018|Categories: Books, Christianity, Francis Bacon, Imagination, Literature, Religion, Science|

The New Atlantis is at once a fable, a work of political philosophy, and a religious text. The god that it preaches on behalf of is the humanistic god of the Enlightenment— with reason, knowledge, science, and progress as its sacred values… The spirit of the Enlightenment is vividly captured in Francis Bacon’s unfinished fable, [...]

Jonathan Edwards: Founding Father of American Political Thought

By |2022-03-21T18:02:50-05:00August 26th, 2017|Categories: American Founding, Freedom, History, Leadership, Philosophy, Plato, Politics, St. Augustine|

Jonathan Edwards helped to invent a new America, committed to a national covenant and an unprecedented spiritual egalitarianism. In 1930, the historian Henry Bamford Parkes critically assessed the legacy of America’s most famous Puritan intellectual, Jonathan Edwards. According to Parkes, “it is hardly a hyperbole to say that, if Edwards had never lived, there would [...]

Augustine and Limited Government

By |2019-08-22T15:21:41-05:00July 29th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Civilization, Featured, Government, Order, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, St. Augustine|

Augustine recognized that the flaws of human nature precluded perfection on earth, and he concluded that government cannot save souls by coercing virtuous conduct… Since Augustine’s death in 430 A.D., the world has changed so much that this irreplaceable figure of Christianity would likely find difficult it to recognize. The advent of extraordinary technological advances [...]

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