Enjoying the view from Limbo
A student sent me an e-mail yesterday which consisted of one simply-worded, but far from simplistic, question: “How can I be rational?” The question has perennial importance, of course, and may in a sense be the defining concern of the human soul. However, as the obstacles to living in accordance with reason grow more pervasive and pernicious with each generation, the notion of “being...
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 12, 2019 · Last modified February 14, 2019
(If you have not done so, please read Part One and Part Two.) I concluded Part Two of this series with the challenge, directed at all my students, real and hypothetical: “Why are you living a life you don’t want?” In a sense, the answer is obvious: Because they don’t know what life they want. In fact, I believe the problem is even...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 29, 2018 · Last modified August 1, 2018
Modernity is, or was, the age of the triumph of practical reason, and the flourishing and harnessing of an emancipated desire for earthly wellbeing and individual self-determination. Its definitive political development was the limited republic, the premise of which was that normal human beings left to their own devices will sort themselves into a reasonable public shape beneficial to all, and the necessary...
To all my American readers and friends — and that would be the majority in both categories — Happy Fourth of July from here in Limbo! This is a less than stellar moment for your nation, to put it mildly, but there is no reason not to take a day to appreciate all that is and has been great about modernity’s most...
In 2008, America elected a president from a broken home whose mother was sympathetic to communists; who as a youngster had formative relationships with a transgender nanny chosen by his mother and a bisexual communist pornographer “mentor” chosen by his grandfather; whose teenage friends were so devoted to drug use that they gave themselves a nickname derived from this habit, and developed their...
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