Category: Liberal Arts
Julián Marías: Philosophy of the Person
Introduction by Joseph Minich There is a little bit of a story behind this essay that is worth telling. I discovered the writings of Julian Marias (after years of commendation by a dear friend) in writing an essay on the...
“Are You Alone Wise?”: Luther’s Answers for Today’s Protestants
A decade after he began advocating for reform, Martin Luther had become highly attuned to the fundamental issues at stake in the debates with his adversaries. Having made Sola Scriptura his rallying cry, he was forced to face the chaos...
On “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
John Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a poem about the discovery of new terrains of the imagination made possible by the translation of great works into one’s mother tongue.
Latin for Politics: When the World of Spoken Latin Goes Woke
Up until recently, the spoken Latin community has been preserved from the relentless focus on ideology that characterizes much of the academy. Enthusiasts have gathered at small conferences called “conventicula” (a pretty comprehensive list of events in summer 2018 can...
Farmers and Humanists in an Age of Crisis: Technology, Death, and Resurrection
As a teenager at my parents’ small-town church, I heard men in business suits express relief that they made it out of the farm where they grew up. “I got out,” they would say. The implication: I moved up. I...
Beyond Gunpowder: A Rational Perspective on Cloning
By S. Dorman Hunting is either a discipline or a confused slaughter. Walking home this morning I thought first, not of hunting, but of my usual route along the road. I was also thinking about writing a paper on Johannes...
On Pro-Life Incrementalism
I heard a man say once that one’s entire response to Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option hinged on how one thought about the sustainability of the current social order. That the existing social order is hostile to orthodoxy is obvious. But...
The Protestant World of Shakespeare
By E. J. Hutchinson It is a monstrous waste of time to try to convince oneself, rocking anxiously back and forth in one’s pajamas, that William Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic—or a Protestant. It is difficult to imagine a more...
Political Objectives and Policies Are Different Things: On Being Consistently Pro-Life
By Stephen Wolfe It is not enough nowadays to be pro-life; you must be consistently pro-life. If you truly care for life, then you must care for all of life − both in and out of the womb. That is,...
On Marianne Moore’s “Poetry”
By E. J. Hutchinson Why do we read poetry? Why should we? April is National Poetry Month, so it makes sense to take advantage of it to introduce a new series on poetry at Mere Orthodoxy. Its objective is simple:...