A Theory of Psychohistorical Process and Note on the Language of “Givens” and “Releases” This book is heavily indebted to Philip Rieff, the genius behind The Triumph of the Therapeutic. I first read Rieff in December 2016, thanks to my dear friend Vincent Zimmern sending me a copy, and I…

Looking Over the “Present” Terrain The title of this paper alludes to The Legitimation Crisis by Jürgen Habermas, a prophetic book nearly forty-years ahead of its time. It warned that we were losing confidence in political institutions, rendering those institutions ineffective and profoundly damaging democratic processes. Today, the term “legitimation…

On the Mechanisms of Fiction and Society Describing James Wood’s skepticism about “hysterical realism,” Lee Konstantinou writes that ‘ “hysterical realism” fails for Wood because its too rapid accretion of interesting detail breaks the trance of believability.’¹ “The trance of believability” is a beautiful and eloquent phrase that I think…

Feeling peaceful could be a sign of the banality of evil. Without community, humans feel alienated and aimless: there is a link between “homelessness” and “existential anxiety.” Additionally, we cannot possess “meaningful character,” as argued by James Davison Hunter in The Death of Character. …

Character requires community and might be too dangerous. Both Arendt’s “banality of evil” and Hunter’s “character” require community. Community is what makes possible both Hitler and Bonhoeffer. Perhaps then we should rid ourselves of community and efface the problem and its solution together? Perhaps if there’s no “banality of evil,”…

A house requires walls — like a prison. Does a home? Describing modern America, David Brooks writes: ‘We live in a society plagued by formlessness and radical flux, in which bonds, social structures and commitments are strained and frayed. Millions of kids live in stressed and fluid living arrangements. Many…

Do Cosmopolitans avoid the Hitler/Bonhoeffer Problem? Is Bonhoeffer worth Hitler? Isn’t modern life, with all its existential anxiety, the loss of absolutism, Pluralism, and fragmentation, preferable to Nazi Germany and “the banality of evil”? Isn’t erasing Bonhoeffer to erase Hitler rational? This returns us to another question: is it possible…

On the Twin Development of the State and Isolationism ‘What part does toleration play in these twin developments of large centralized states and the isolation of the individual?’ A.J. Conyers wondered.¹ ‘Is it merely coincidental that wherever highly organized industrial powers with a central bureaucratic government is found anywhere in…

Identity Requires Allowances and Restrictions, but Restrictions Risk Injustice To return to the main point of the last section — as hopefully the example of Christianity and LGBT marriage helped make clear — the doctrine of tolerance can be a threat to communal authority, for as the State demands tolerance…

Does a Growing State Decrease the Probability of Violence By Raising the Stakes? The doctrine of tolerance has lessened the authority of communities, contributing to a questioning of their very existence, which in turn has contributed to a feeling that the State possesses ultimate control. Today, the “borders”…

Local Communities Weaken in Proportion to How Much Power the State Accumulates for Good. Considering our rootless, Cosmopolitism under an ever-growing State, and how toleration empowers the State and the “individual to individualize,” Conyers wrote: ‘But it seems to me a fitting coincidence: for the condition of the modern psyche…

Does Tolerance or Humility Better Favor Mechanisms of Knowledge Acquisition? In regard to modernity, Conyers wrote that ‘[t]he question [now is] how [do] we achieve authentic toleration without merely shifting to another political perspective from which a new kind of intolerance becomes acceptable.’¹ If one didn’t know better, one would…

Can internal conflicts only be stopped by controlling “the reality industry?” How do we stop internal conflicts? There’s no single answer, but even though liberal science inevitably leads to tension with the doctrine of tolerance (even if tolerance purports to be a major proponent of liberal science), Jonathan Rauch wrote…

Can law replace moral orders and still be a moral order? In the name goodness, justice, and truth, as opposed to humility, the doctrine of tolerance can reduce the categories of good, evil, justice, etc. to subjective preferences, hollowing out their authority. The society still uses these categories, usually and…

Do the “acids of modernity” dissolve our feeling of “quiet certainty?” In his book Evangelism, Hunter wrote: ‘The moral order [or a society] is comprised of symbolic boundaries. These act as rules and guidelines by which ordinary people make sense out of their personal lives. They also establish predictable patterns…

If the State stabilized, would we stabilize too? Suffering what Charles Taylor called “cross-pressures,” “unbundling,” and “The Nova Effect” — increasingly surrounded by options of how we could live, causing us to suffer what Barry Schwartz called “the paradox of choice” — increasingly losing any sense of “quiet certainty,” unable…

If we cannot have many essences, can we be multicultural? Can multiculturalism help stabilize the State by helping bring about “substantive democracy” — a debate between “first principles” — and can it help Cosmopolitans feel like they “belong again,” not only by stabilizing the State, but also by providing “space”…

Does the State train us to love humanity more than individuals? “How does the Cosmopolitan belong (again)?” — on this question, so far, we have established that fixing democracy will help soften the tensions of the State which all are increasingly “toward.” This will help Cosmopolitans feel more at rest…

Can rationality bring us together? Could rationality unify and stabilize us, enabling us to “belong again?” This is the arguably the hope of the Enlightenment, the spirit of which still lives with us today. I believe many of us can’t help but think that if we could just get people…

Is there an ultimate set of axioms for reality upon which all can harmonize? Assuming all “first principles” can be (peacefully) bridged to it (though this cannot be guaranteed), does there exist “an ultimate set of first principles” which mastering “critical thinking” necessarily leads people to accepting? No one knows…