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In the medieval university, disputatio was the formal process of debate and discussion of arguments and ideas. It was the art of disputing, a kind of intellectual joust, and meant to discover the truth of the matter in question.
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From an interesting, unpublished, opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, McDowell v. Bayhealth Medical Center, Inc. The case itself was not that uncommon. It concerned a Title VII matter: the defendant required its employees to receive a COVID vaccine in order to work, with possible exemptions for religious or medical […]
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A nice piece by Paul Seaton on the political thinker, Pierre Manent, published over at Public Discourse. Seaton summarizes some of Manent’s key themes over the years. Here are a few lines from one of my own favorite of Manent’s books, Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic (2013, English edition), a highly Augustinian […]
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I was delighted to offer some remarks on this occasion. Here is the video of the event:
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We often hear, quite rightly, that the Church and her members should “go to the margins,” to “meet people where they are,” and to practice the art of human encounter, especially with the vulnerable, the poor, and the downtrodden. As Pope Francis exhorted in Evangelii Gaudium, “all of us are asked to obey his call […]
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Yuval Levin has a typically insightful essay, A New Hope for Saving the Universities, at “Commentary.” In it he describes the interesting growth of centers of civic education within certain existing university structures–most (though not all) of them state schools–and the opportunities for university reform that they offer. The essay is replete with the themes […]
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Todd Ream (Indiana Wesleyan) interviewed me, as one episode on a six-part series for the Christian Scholar’s Review. We discussed the concept of human flourishing in the law, the nature and role of obligation in the law, some of the themes in my own work (tradition, the civic ties that bind us, and the limits […]
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I’ve been reading the work of Professor John Stinneford, concerning the role of custom and tradition in determining the meaning of “cruel and unusual punishments” under the Eighth Amendment. It is one of John’s important insights that the meaning is to be determined by practice or general usage. And one of the issues that crops […]
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I have an opinion piece in the New York Times today concerning the criticism Justice Alito has received for reactions to and remarks about political polarization in this country, the Supreme Court’s proper role, and God and the nation. A bit: As to whether he should hold these views, I would suggest that they are […]
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I was reading again Josef Pieper’s essay, Tradition: Concept and Claim (originally published in 1970, but developed from a lecture given in 1957). In it, Pieper discusses the idea of tradition in a distinctively sacred key. For Pieper, by far the most important variety of tradition is “sacred” tradition, because the reasons to value tradition have not so much […]
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