Skepticism and Certainty

And this I pray, that your charity may more and more abound in knowledge, and in all understanding: that you may approve the better things. Philippians 1:9-10 In a profoundly pertinent and provocatively penetrating essay, Gary Saul Morrison explores the wise skepticism of Leo Tolstoy. Against those who believe that human affairs can be reduced

Terrifying Drivel

In 1933, Josef Pieper, assistant in a sociological research institute, published a brief treatise, “formulated in the requisite scientific jargon,” patiently identifying and correcting major blind spots of eminent experts in the field. Very soon, Pieper was to leave behind the jargon, and the field itself. Many decades later, however, he was inspired to revisit

Counseling Capitalism

“That invidious word, ‘capitalism,’” Irving Kristol reminds us, “was invented by European socialists about a half-century” after the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Although the term is now lovingly embraced by proponents of free enterprise, it has never ceased to carry negative connotations, even to souls disinclined towards socialism. Kristol recognizes that, in