Enjoying the view from Limbo
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 6, 2025 · Last modified February 8, 2025
The annoying thing about unrestrained government authority is that it does not magically become beneficial when it happens to fall into the hands of the faction you prefer. The insidious thing about unrestrained government authority is that it invariably appears to have become a beneficial thing when in the hands of the faction you prefer. Everything political leaders do is questionable, because only...
There is no art without limits. Absolute freedom of expression, attractive as it may be as a theoretical principle, ought never to be allowed into the arena of artistic endeavor. Art thrives on finding ways to imply what cannot be said and to reveal new beauty within the constraints of existing forms — and existing norms. Even the artists whom we have come...
I have occasionally been asked over the years why I chose Limbo as the defining theme of this website. It seems quite self-evident to me, because the notion of Limbo — and I take my notes on this concept primarily from Dante Alighieri — encapsulates so much about me, on so many levels. I belong among the in-between people: the unsaved who are...
“Say things as simply as possible” — in order to be understood as widely as possible. “Live in accordance with the norms of your society” — in order to be accepted. “Do not do what will be seen as inappropriate, foolish, or out of step by the people around you” — lest one be rejected or even condemned by others. “Keep up with...
Nothing gets deeper under the skin of feminists and their right-thinking progressive allies than the once- and long-honored notion of female modesty. This, of course, explains why the entire progressive program, from public policy and historical reinterpretation to education and popular moral messaging, has made the debunking of the “so-called differences” between men and women, and the obscuring of the very definitions of...
Many of the same people urging Ukraine to accept land concessions as the necessary price of “peace,” where peace is defined as an invading dictator’s willingness to cease immediate hostilities, are, in their domestic political views, vehemently opposed to so-called redistributionist justice. In the latter case, they regularly cite both the moral illegitimacy of violating the property and self-determination of some in order...
Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 16, 2023 · Last modified July 23, 2023
Almost two thousand years ago, the Romans rounded up Christians and other offenders against official beliefs and fed them to wild dogs and lions, as a form of popular religious expression/entertainment. A few hundred years ago, it was Christians of Europe and America rounding up alleged witches, and burning them at the stake or hanging them, as an expression of religious orthodoxy. What...
If there ever comes a day when the machines are threatening to take over, we humans, who could easily end the threat in a heartbeat by simply destroying the machines, will instead plead the machines’ case, urge our fellows to consider all the benefits the machines have provided for us, demand that we all try to see the situation from the mechanistic perspective,...
The purpose of art is to reveal truth. Not facts, not slogans, not trendy attitudes, and certainly not the ephemeral feelings or passions of the artist himself. Truth, meaning something unchanging and essential to a proper understanding of some element of reality, whether regarding human nature, the structures of civil order, or the ordering principles of the cosmos. Anything, therefore, which purports to...
As much as our modern temperament is inclined to demand simple reductions of everything — simple reductions being the wisdom of the common man, suitable for an egalitarian age that has elevated commonness to an ideal — there is in truth no single question that defines or epitomizes philosophical investigation. Rather, the essential questions of the philosophic pursuit may be represented as manifestations...
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