I’ve just finished correcting the page proofs for The Devil Reads Derrida–and the proofs for Desiring the Kingdom are now staring at me from the desk with an accusatory glare. This is my favorite stage of book production. The manuscripts were sent off months ago with a “Good riddance!” of exhaustion and frustration, cast out…
The Immanent Frame is staging an interdisciplinary symposium on Nicholas Wolterstorff’s magnum opus, Justice: Rights and Wrongs–in part, no doubt, because Wolterstorff argues that there can be no sufficient secular grounding of rights. I’ll be contributing several posts to the symposium. The first–“The Paucity of Secularism?”–is online today. The next couple will appear throughout this…
As yet another sign that I’m getting old, crotchety, and increasingly conservative, I resonated with Mark Bauerlein’s reflections on David Horowitz’s recent visit to Emory. Horowitz is an itinerant conservative provocateur who just loves to raise the hackles of soppy liberals. But Bauerlein’s observations resonate with what I’ve seen, too: Most of them [attendees] were…
A colleague pointed me to this obituary for Gerald Myers, who held what sounds like a delightful post: Philosopher in Residence at the American Dance Festival. Sounds like a sweet gig. This got me thinking about some other creative possibilities I could imagine taking up with joy: Philosopher in Residence at the Franciscan Winery Philosopher…
When Stanley Hauerwas was told that Time magazine, in 2001, had chosen him as “America’s best theologian,” he quickly retorted: “‘Best’ is not a theological category.” That ‘category’ discomfiture came to mind as I was reading David Orr’s provocative piece, “The Great(ness) Game,” in this weekend NYTBR. Orr raises the carrot that teases the aspiring…
There have been some wonderful tributes to Updike around the horn, but I think my favorite feature so far has been the Guardian‘s moving montage, “John Updike: A Life in Pictures,” a chronological journey that well captures Updike’s charm and humanity. But I thought Nicholson Baker’s terse, profound comment on NPR best captured the sense…