Tag: History
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Indiscriminate Benevolence In A Society Without God
When I was living in St. Louis around 2006, I re-read Theodor Adorno’s darkly acerbic Minima Moralia. I recalled, just today, one of his searing lines about “indiscriminate benevolence”: Indiscriminate benevolence towards all constantly threatens that coldness and remoteness against each, which are once again communicated to the whole. Francis Fukuyama and Phil Zuckerman (in…
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Whatever Happened To Work, Friendship, & Family?
Charles Taylor argued quite convincingly in Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989) that one of the hallmarks of modernity is “the affirmation of ordinary life”: immanent goods like family, friends, and work are to be embraced. This marks the turn toward worldliness that is a fundamental feature still of the…
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Courage Is The Most Important Virtue For Our Time
In 2012, I argued, “The most important virtue for our time is courage.” Yesterday, I read Christopher Rufo’s manifesto, “New Right Activism,” in which he states, “The most important virtue of our time is courage.” Despite the fact that Rufo’s claim is situated within a particular political context–for him, it’s the New Right’s attempt to…
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Where Are These Elders Of Which You Speak?
I’m currently reading Shannon Vallor’s fine book Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (OUP, 2016). I’d like to pick up on a minor theme, one that frequently puzzled me when I’ve been reading certain kinds of academic books. It goes something like this: The theoretical discussion of the kind…
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America’s Volksgeist And The Actuality Of Redemption
In “Is America a Creedal Nation” (First Things June/July 2025, pp. 33-8), David P. Goldman offers a fascinating take on America’s Volksgeist. Just what is that glue, that something, that underlying creed that holds the American people together? Goldman’s answer: “Uniquely among the cultures of the world, it [American culture] is monothematic. It is obsessed…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 