Little known outside his native Australia, David Stove was one of the most illuminating and brilliant philo-sophical essayists of the postwar era. A fearless at-tacker of intellectual and cultural orthodoxies, Stove left powerful critiques of scientific irrationalism, Dar-winian theories of human behavior, and philosophi-cal idealism. He was also an occasional essayist of considerable charm and polemical snap. Stove's writ-ing is both rigorous and immensely readable. It is, in the words of Roger Kimball, "an invigorating blend of analytic lucidity, mordant humor, and an amount of common...
Little known outside his native Australia, David Stove was one of the most illuminating and brilliant philo-sophical essayists of the postwar era. ...
The idea of enlightenment entails liberty, equality, rationalism, secularism, and the connection between knowledge and human well being. In spite of the setbacks of revolutionary violence, political mass murder, and two world wars, the spread of enlightenment values has become the yardstick by which moral, political, and even scientific advances are measured. Indeed, most critiques of the enlightenment ideal point to failure in implementation rather than principle. By contrast, David Stove, in On Enlightenment, attacks the intellectual roots of enlightenment thought, to define the limitations...
The idea of enlightenment entails liberty, equality, rationalism, secularism, and the connection between knowledge and human well being. In spite of t...
This volume contains nearly all the criticism that Alexander Coleman wrote for The New Criterion between 1994 and 2003. A specialist in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American literature, Coleman was also a superb essayist on music, and his wide erudition, as revealed in these writings, demonstrates an easy mastery of the entire modernist tradition. Diversions and Animadversions is divided into three parts. The first contains Coleman's literary essays including a lengthy piece on Eba de Quieros, the great master of Portuguese realism, and shorter pieces on the Argentinian...
This volume contains nearly all the criticism that Alexander Coleman wrote for The New Criterion between 1994 and 2003. A specialist in Sp...
Little known outside his native Australia, David Stove was one of the most illuminating and brilliant philo-sophical essayists of the postwar era. A fearless at-tacker of intellectual and cultural orthodoxies, Stove left powerful critiques of scientific irrationalism, Dar-winian theories of human behavior, and philosophi-cal idealism. He was also an occasional essayist of considerable charm and polemical snap. Stove's writ-ing is both rigorous and immensely readable. It is, in the words of Roger Kimball, "an invigorating blend of analytic lucidity, mordant humor, and an amount of common...
Little known outside his native Australia, David Stove was one of the most illuminating and brilliant philo-sophical essayists of the postwar era. ...
Just fifty years ago the literary critic Lionel Trilling spoke of liberalism as not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition in American society. At the turn of the twentieth century this is clearly no longer the case, when conservative ideas have succeeded in many areas of public policy. Yet America s mainstream institutions the media, the academy, popular culture, religion, the law remain largely under the sway of a liberal ethos. In this incisive collection of essays which appeared originally in The New Criterion, nine distinguished critics and observers examine the...
Just fifty years ago the literary critic Lionel Trilling spoke of liberalism as not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition in Amer...
Confronting the dilemmas of modernist and postmodernist thought, Roger Kimball in this new collection of his work explores the literary and philosophical underpinnings of modernity as well as the state of our culture today. Experiments Against Reality displays the sophistication, breadth of knowledge, and clarity of argument that have made Mr. Kimball one of the most trenchant critics of our contemporary culture. He begins by considering the influential poet and theorist T. E. Hulme, and shows how the work of Eliot, Auden, Wallace Stevens, Robert Musil, Elias Canetti, and others can be seen...
Confronting the dilemmas of modernist and postmodernist thought, Roger Kimball in this new collection of his work explores the literary and philosophi...
Can the cultural values that have distinguished Western civilization survive the present-day preoccupation with relativism and the quest for pleasure? In this important and wide-ranging collection of essays, ten distinguished critics reflect on the direction of our society, emphasizing both the dangers that threaten our institutions and the vivifying survivals that are worthy of being cherished and nurtured. Among the contributors, Robert H. Bork considers the contemporary assaults on the tradition of law; Anthony Daniels, the English doctor and essayist, finds that he must defend the...
Can the cultural values that have distinguished Western civilization survive the present-day preoccupation with relativism and the quest for pleasure?...
In the faculty of writing nonsense, the English critic Walter Bagehot once observed, stupidity is no match for genius. In Lives of the Mind, Roger Kimball, one of the best of our cultural critics, offers a lively and penetrating study of genius and pseudo-genius at work and investigates the use and abuse of intelligence. When does a love of ideas become a dangerous infatuation? What antidotes are there for the silliness of unanchored intellect? Drawing on figures as various as Plutarch and Hegel, Kierkegaard and P. G. Wodehouse, Elias Canetti and Anthony Trollope, Bagehot and Wittgenstein and...
In the faculty of writing nonsense, the English critic Walter Bagehot once observed, stupidity is no match for genius. In Lives of the Mind, Roger Kim...
