http://www.newpantagruel.com/ A Quarterly Journal of Riot & Misrule en-us dan@newpantagruel.com 2006-12-04T20:48:47+00:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/12/hick_con.php 588@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Fiction 2006-12-04T20:48:47+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/09/an_open_letter.php The following was submitted to Comment and accepted for publication but subsequently dropped due to a "lack of space." 579@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Correspondence 2006-09-22T19:40:55+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/09/will_in_the_voi.php Reviewed in this essay: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt (Norton, 2004), 430 pp., $26.95. In the sixteenth century does not begin, as is conventionally phrased, a separation or differentiation of politics from a religious context; what actually begins is the elimination of the life of the spirit from public representation and the corresponding contraction of politics to a secular nucleus. In this process again we cannot distinguish clear-cut phases; we can speak only of a trend toward such contraction. ---History of Political Ideas, vol. 5, Religion and the Rise of Modernity, vol. 23 in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1998): 23-4. The psychological boundaries by which the old culture had sought to understand the nature of man and predict his behavior were useless when he was no longer inhibited by the pressure of traditional community; and, experienced concretely in a more complex setting, human acts proved too ambiguous for neat classification. […] When man still clung to the old culture, he seemed to have become, in spite of himself, a trespasser against the order of the universe, a violator of its sacred limits---literally no man’s land---he had been conditioned to avoid. But his predicament was even worse if this experience had taught him to doubt the very existence of boundaries. He then seemed thrown, disoriented, back into the void from which it was the task of culture to rescue him. And this, I suggest, is the immediate explanation for the extraordinary anxiety of this period. It was an inevitable response to the growing inability of an inherited culture to invest experience with meaning. ---William J. Bouwsma, "Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture" 578@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Reviews 2006-09-22T18:41:14+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/08/only_a_man_harr.php 572@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Reviews 2006-08-11T22:22:36+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/06/on_what_is_not.php "'All manner of things shall be well'; for He wills that we be aware that the least little thing shall not be forgotten." --Julian of Norwich1 "But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God." --G. K. Chesterton2 "The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught." --Henry Adams3 I. 565@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Articles 2006-06-19T20:59:32+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/06/post.php After reading Micah Hayes' recent essay, "The Early Syriac Poets and Cognitive Science," I would suggest that in casting light on one blind spot (St Ephrem and the Syriac tradition), Hayes has inadvertently exposed another... 555@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Correspondence 2006-06-02T16:32:06+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/06/cakewalk.php 554@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Fiction 2006-06-02T02:17:03+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/06/sacred_ordersoc.php Reviewed in this essay: Philip Rieff's Sacred Order/Social Order, Vol. 1: My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, University of Virginia Press, 2006. 256 pages, $34.95. 546@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Reviews 2006-06-01T21:54:05+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/05/roman_catholic.php Review of Roman Catholic Political Philosophy, by Fr. James Schall. Published by Lexington Books. Hdbk, 209 pgs., index, bibliography, notes. ISBN: 0-7391-07745-3 "The Devil seeks two things: first, to rob the Christian of his Joy, and second, to rob God of the worship due him." --Martha H. Cheeks, in conversation, March 14, 2006 547@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Reviews 2006-05-30T02:03:35+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/05/deconstructing.php 540@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Articles 2006-05-22T21:20:27+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/05/shooting_j_r_1.php 539@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Fiction 2006-05-17T04:10:27+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/05/return_from_boh.php This is an excerpt of chapter three in Bill Kauffman's book, Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists. America, turn in and find yourself. --Paul Engle 538@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Articles 2006-05-16T07:52:54+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/05/psychological_m.php In early June 2006, ISI Books is publishing a reissue of Philip Rieff's Triumph of the Therapeutic. This will mark the 40th anniversary of the book's 1966 release. An introduction is included by E. Lasch-Quinn, and there are two critical essays to be included, one by Wilfred McClay, and the following essay by Steven Gardner. Although Freud denied the divine, he did not deny his own divine capacity---to theorize. Before theorizing was distinguished from theologizing, to theorize was considered a way of seeing God. Now it is considered merely a necessity, something men are compelled to do if they are to become god-like. --Philip Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic This escape into a conceit of freedom, as if there were nothing sacred, poses a nice contrast with the fact that every great revealer, Freud included, must depend for his creative power on the concealing character of his vision, the blindly obedient eye of it. [...] The final truth of Freud's vision is in the one thing he will not see, except in delicately balanced distortions and at safe distances, hidden behind newly acceptable surrogates. --Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist Introduction 516@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Articles 2006-05-01T19:00:00+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/05/the_early_syria.php A Look at Their Surprisingly Similar Views on Mind/Body Unity and Metaphor "Who hath known the mind of the Lord?" the apostle asks; and I ask further, who has understood his own mind? Let those tell us who consider the nature of God to be within their comprehension, whether they understand themselves -- if they know the nature of their own mind. -- Gregory of Nyssa, from "On the Making of Man" 524@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Articles 2006-05-01T18:52:14+00:00 http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/04/theocracy_as_a_1.php 512@http://www.newpantagruel.com/ Articles 2006-04-01T18:51:01+00:00