human flourishing

September 19, 2023

Cities: An Engine of Progress and Civilization

What is progress? How and where does it occur? Such questions are not easy to answer. Debates about the nature of progress have given rise to entire theories of historical development. Continue Reading...

April 25, 2023

When Human Flourishing Becomes Human Suffering

When the Berlin Wall fell, it was a commonplace observation that there were more Marxists in New York City than in the USSR. If the new Oxford University Press book Theater & Human Flourishing is any indication, they have since relocated to various university drama departments. Continue Reading...

September 27, 2022

The Anarchists Is a Case Study in the Decadence of Autonomy

I have a reasonably high tolerance for uncomfortable television and movies, maybe a higher tolerance than I should, but the first thing I would say about the HBO Max series The Anarchists is that it is not for the faint of heart. Continue Reading...

May 18, 2022

Racelessness is the future of justice

What if the answer to racial tensions in America lay in the removal of race as a necessary identifier of any human person? This question frames a new theory put forward by Sheena Mason, assistant professor of African American literature at SUNY Oneonta, in Oneonta, N.Y. Continue Reading...

January 20, 2022

The twilight of Christianity, the loss of authority, and our fragmented selves

Political theorists have engaged in much debate concerning the “quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,” such quarrel evidence of the opposing claims of the two worlds. Leo Strauss, the best known articulator of an absolute rupture, counterposed classical Greece to modern liberalism and its culmination in Nietzsche. Continue Reading...

November 15, 2021

Does Hollywood love beauty more than profit?

Beauty has the power to spellbind everyone—the proof is Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. His last three movies, Dune (2021), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Arrival (2016), have earned him a reputation as a visionary and a sensitive director, despite science fiction as his genre, which normally is considered either too sophisticated for the broad audience to follow or too simplistic to be worth attention, instantly forgotten. Continue Reading...

October 26, 2021

Beyond material prosperity, economic freedom fosters virtue and relationship

In defending the cause of economic freedom, it can be easy to focus only on the material fruits, whether it be new innovations and efficiencies or the ongoing expansion of opportunity and abundance. Continue Reading...

July 14, 2021

The antidote to Americans’ crisis of ‘meaning’

What do you want? Or, better yet, what do you want from what you want? It turns out, more than money or praise, humans yearn for a purpose. And new data indicate Americans are lacking that meaning and connection in their lives. Continue Reading...

June 21, 2021

Life after the lockdowns: Re-embracing our social nature

During the COVID-19 pandemic, pressure was put on the federal government to override the rights of the states and impose sweeping lockdown policies. This was only partially the case, since most states underwent lockdown and quarantine measures of their own. Continue Reading...

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