tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post5693155036449327800..comments2023-08-03T10:39:35.671-04:00Comments on Anti-Climacus: Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-10754874388475867862012-09-26T23:35:33.350-04:002012-09-26T23:35:33.350-04:00The adult Catholic converts I know are either Medi...The adult Catholic converts I know are either Medieval Studies PhDs, or disillusioned evangelicals who found their sects insufficiently theologically serious, and all these people seem to know about theology. But that's probably different from undergrad dithering. As for the Orthodoxy, usually when people want mystical exoticism, they take a trip to India that "changes their lives."Miss Self-Importanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04477849823290773026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-6181121676027623582012-09-26T20:07:58.286-04:002012-09-26T20:07:58.286-04:00I'm teaching Classics in the Core, though not ...I'm teaching Classics in the Core, though not as a H-S. I'm interested to see how the students differ from Duke students, if at all.<br /><br />The catch for these variations of past-as-salvation is that none of them involve any serious engagement with history. So it's perhaps not a world of no problems that they envision, though it's certainly a world of fewer problems, and, in Nicholashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-49859286103979675172012-09-26T15:42:33.402-04:002012-09-26T15:42:33.402-04:00I don't know. These kids are not so obtuse tha...I don't know. These kids are not so obtuse that they would swallow the idea that prior to 1789, there were "no problems." Perhaps religious wars and the struggles of the aristocracy against the king seem more noble to them and more worth fighting over than our welfare state problems, but I can't really believe that they are so naive as to believe in a world of no problems. The Miss Self-Importanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04477849823290773026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-59230630213736130492012-09-26T01:14:56.230-04:002012-09-26T01:14:56.230-04:00Pretty much, yes. It's the Charles Taylor A Se...Pretty much, yes. It's the Charles Taylor <i>A Secular Age</i> argument: they want to live in a time they in which they conceive that stance (Catholic, monarchist) to have been the reflexive common sense of everyone. But, we being modern secular liberals, the only way to do so is to consciously enact it.<br /><br />I should also be clearer that while I think this is an attempt to return to Nicholashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-16706142427248631982012-09-26T01:06:11.432-04:002012-09-26T01:06:11.432-04:00So conservatives wish to return to a time before c...So conservatives wish to return to a time before conservatism? To absolute monarchies? Or even further back, to feudal ones?<br /><br />I just assumed these Harvardians were already Catholics (well, some are evangelicals and seem to become Anglicans over time), and at Chicago, we were already Jews. So we went neocon while at Harvard, they go theocon.Miss Self-Importanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04477849823290773026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-90799214610631234962012-09-25T20:58:36.828-04:002012-09-25T20:58:36.828-04:00"surviving, inciting, and accepting suffering..."surviving, inciting, and accepting suffering" is what I meant to write.Nicholashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-14779592941048708692012-09-25T20:57:10.404-04:002012-09-25T20:57:10.404-04:00Well, leaving the Austrian economics aside for a m...Well, leaving the Austrian economics aside for a moment, the combination of Catholic and monarchist is the sort of thing I would expect to appeal to people who identify the French Revolution as The Point At Which It All Went Wrong. As I recall (though it's been many years now), the problems of the French revolution were a common theme of National Review-like 'think pieces,' and I Nicholashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-50830819721824647472012-09-25T15:55:34.146-04:002012-09-25T15:55:34.146-04:00Ok, sure, but why these two? I was also a conserva...Ok, sure, but why these two? I was also a conservative in college, and my desire to resist the status quo was satisfied by pretty mainstream right-wingedness (as one of my students once called it). Why no regular conservatism for Harvardian bowtie-wearers? Why not even neoconservatism, or communitarianism, or the various conservatisms that exist only on the internet like crunchy cons or pomocons?Miss Self-Importanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04477849823290773026noreply@blogger.com