Featured

Violet – an opera by Roger Scruton

March 3, 2013  

Violet has many ‘husbands’, none of whom she has given herself to: “I married none of them”, she says, “they married me.” It is the end of an age and the beginning of the end of an aesthetic sensibility that she and her live-in brood of bachelors furiously try to preserve. But what will come of love that always seeks the ideal, that tries never to be consummated in a particular time or place?

Articles / Essays

Cultural confidence and the liberal death wish

February 24, 2013  

In a selection from his forthcoming book The Intellectual Temptation, former European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein suggests that an academic obsession with abstract theory over hard-won experience lies behind our political and cultural crises. Bolkestein takes us from centralization through multiculturalism to cultural self-flagellation: ideals – or ideologies – that define the landscape of contemporary Western Europe.

Interviews

“Yellow Ants,” Fundamentalists, and Cowboys – An interview with Rémi Brague

October 29, 2009  

Interview and translation by Diederik Boomsma & Yoram Stein

We interview the French intellectual Rémi Brague, about his life and work. The question of whether and in what way the West is unique forms a large part of the interview. Whether one can sensibly speak of “three religions of the book”, whether Brague is a Straussian, what the civilizational role of poverty, humility, and cultural inferiority complexes are, and whether Americans really are cultural cowboys, each get discussed in turn.

Book Reviews

Pass de Botton: An atheist’s appraisal of religion misses the cue

November 12, 2012  

Brian Lapsa

A review of Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists.

Not long ago Starbucks sandwich boards advised us to “Take comfort in ritual”—in this case the diurnal rites of lattés and Frappucinos. It’s clear enough that the Giant of Joe benefits from regular patronage, but less clear is why recommending ritual might not be off-putting to a clientele whose apple of wisdom is to “think different.” Ritual is religious (or is thought to be) and is therefore considered wholly personal. Most Westerners tend to regard its presence in public space with suspicion.

Poetry

Whisper

January 26, 2010  

Jeffrey Bilbro

A parody of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. In “Whisper” Mr. Bilbro breaks down some of the feelings of and about Generation ME. A thought-provoking piece that should be required reading in all freshman English classes.

Fiction

A Dove Descending: Part III of III

January 8, 2013  

Roger Scruton

The Clarion Review is proud to present the third and final installment of this novella by writer and philosopher Roger Scruton.

Zoë’s dreams of meeting her destiny on the streets of London are running aground fast. To whom will she turn? To Dr Leacock, the predatory postmodern professor who’s always too ready to help? To Michael, the mysterious art student, who surely pours his angst into something worth living for? Back to her mother, whom she disgraced by her flight, and whom she still resents? Zoë takes her stand; will the world turn with her?