Notes Toward the Definition of Honor

By |2023-12-03T15:14:34-06:00November 3rd, 2023|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Christianity, Honor|

Honor is a catch-all term that is closely allied with the cardinal virtues: justice as fair play, fortitude, prudence, and temperance. Recent events and public responses demonstrate that the concept of honor still has some life left in it and a role to play for the commonweal, on behalf of the worthy traditions and institutions [...]

Leviathan, Inc.: Robert Nisbet & the Modern Nation-State

By |2023-09-29T17:48:04-05:00September 29th, 2023|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Nisbet, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Robert Nisbet feared that modern totalitarians had succeeded in undermining the very foundations of goodness, truth, and morality. They had not only redefined liberty as power, but they had transformed the modern political state into a secular church, exchanging real religion for civic religion, creating a “New Leviathan.” Like most Americans during the Great Depression, [...]

Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society

By |2023-06-28T17:58:13-05:00June 28th, 2023|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Books, Christianity, Civil Society, Featured, Timeless Essays|

It is only through re-infusing the political order with Christian truths and reconnecting it to its transcendent sources that the renewal for which we hope can be achieved. Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, by R.R. Reno (256 pages, Salem Books, 2016) In 1939, as the storm clouds of World War II were gathering [...]

How Modernity Diminishes the Human Person

By |2023-06-22T17:04:34-05:00June 22nd, 2023|Categories: Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Apple, Capitalism, Community, Democracy, Democracy in America, Featured, George Stanciu, St. John's College, Technology, Timeless Essays|

Because of the strong secular faith instilled in us by education, most of us trust that science and technology, democracy, and capitalism, the three legs of Modernity, can bring about only good ends and fail to see that these three triumphs of humankind can diminish the human person. With the publication of the book The [...]

Individual & Community in “The Scarlet Letter”

By |2023-06-09T15:36:51-05:00June 8th, 2023|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Community, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Nathaniel Hawthorne does not furnish a plan for reorganizing society according to Scripture or enlightened reason or sociological research, so that all strife will be eliminated. His tale suggests, to the contrary, that tension between the individual and the community can never be resolved, nor should it be. Alexis de Toqueville, a friendlier Frenchman than [...]

Andrew Carnegie, Equality, & American Progress

By |2023-05-29T19:52:04-05:00May 29th, 2023|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Equality, History, Ted McAllister, Timeless Essays|

To Andrew Carnegie, equality meant a way of being, a condition that shaped the soul of the individual and thereby the soul of a people or nation. Equality not only unleashed the energy of the American people so that they would become the most prosperous in the world, but it shaped their moral condition, it [...]

“Equality” and the Tyranny of the Majority

By |2022-10-12T17:11:10-05:00October 12th, 2022|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Equality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau|

In order to flourish, democracy must be firmly grounded in principle. In order to remain stable, power must be decentralized, and therefore liberty and equality under the law must be valued over abstract and ambiguous ideals such as “equality” or “progress.” I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think [...]

The Moral Center & America’s Future: James Bryce’s “American Commonwealth”

By |2022-10-04T14:31:09-05:00October 4th, 2022|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Featured, George W. Carey, James Bryce, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

James Bryce’s relatively optimistic view of America’s future relies on the tacit premise that its people will retain the moral center, inherited largely from their English forebears. His work, then, is valuable, if only to remind us of that heritage. It is also foreboding in suggesting that without this moral center troubled times await the [...]

Beyond Mere Measure: Eva Brann on Equality

By |2022-10-03T18:56:02-05:00October 3rd, 2022|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Books, Equality, Eva Brann, St. John's College|

It is no mean feat to bring together the thought of Thucydides and Tocqueville when discussing the topic of equality, a concept seemingly so ancient and timeless. In her new book, Eva Brann has crafted a bridge beyond these revered sources onto the banks of newer, gleaned insights; it is a bridge that invites the [...]

A Restless Tocqueville

By |2023-07-28T15:45:34-05:00July 28th, 2022|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Books, Bruce Frohnen, Liberalism, Peter A. Lawler, Philosophy, Politics, Timeless Essays|

At the heart of Alexis de Tocqueville’s thought lies the “restless mind”—a mind that sees the essence of humanity in the realization that each of us “dies alone” and that life is but a fleeting moment hedged in between the abysses of the pre-born and the dead. The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the [...]

A Reading of the Gettysburg Address

By |2023-05-21T11:28:56-05:00November 18th, 2021|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Civil War, Declaration of Independence, E.B., Essential, Eva Brann, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Liberal education ought to be less a matter of becoming well-read than a matter of learning to read well, of acquiring arts of awareness, the interpretative or “trivial” arts. Some works, written by men who are productive masters of these arts, are exemplary for their interpretative application. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is such a text. Liberal [...]

A Love Letter to the Perrin Platoon

By |2021-07-17T08:23:02-05:00July 16th, 2021|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Community, Culture, Culture War, Democracy in America|

The American community that I, a Chinese national, discovered on Perrin Avenue in Lafayette, Indiana, offers its members a supportive and loving world in which religious and cultural traditions are preserved and shared beliefs venerated. It embodies many meaningful elements indicative of the original form of the community, which are absent in the ersatz ones [...]

Car Repair, Self-Interest, & the Benevolent Investor

By |2021-05-19T10:43:50-05:00May 19th, 2021|Categories: Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Christopher B. Nelson, Happiness, Liberal Learning, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

The figure of the universally benevolent man seems in many circles to have taken a back seat to the stunted, self-centered Economic Man. We ought to ask ourselves: Are we losing a nuanced sense of self-interest rightly understood? I have been reminiscing a lot lately, probably a sign of my age. But I recently came to [...]

Is Equality An Absolute Good?

By |2023-05-21T11:29:04-05:00March 8th, 2021|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Declaration of Independence, E.B., Equality, Eva Brann, Philosophy, Senior Contributors, St. John's College|

Fairness is an acknowledgement of just desserts, and therefore implies equality in dealings with similarly entitled partners. So it is indeed equality adjusted to circumstances that I desire. Thus there is an intimation that equality will come into play when justice is administered communally. Regarding the title: 1. The question mark expresses a genuine perplexity [...]

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