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The Laws of Physics & The Physics of Laws
December 13, 2018
Articles / Essays
Sacred Space as Public Place (Part 1)
May 24, 2018
Augustin IoanHumans never interact with their environment without metaphysical consequence. That is, the world becomes, or is discovered to be, a repository of meaning. Sometimes the meaning points beyond what at first seems to be there, as when we encounter the sacred. But what is the sacred, and how does the numinous dwell in the physical world? Moreover, how does man dwell with it? In this first of two essays exploring such questions, Romanian architect Augustin Ioan draws on Heidegger, Deleuze, and others to help us find our place in space.
Interviews
Building with Biophilia: An Interview with Nikos Salingaros
September 27, 2017
Damien François Speaking for the reconstruction of Parliament's bombed-out Commons Chamber, Winston Churchill famously quipped, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” But how? And should we care? Is it not all rather a matter of taste? Philosopher Damien François interviews architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros, who believes that the art of building is anything but arbitrary: our built environment matters deeply for our attitudes, our aims, our very bodies. Neither a ‘modernist’ nor a ‘traditionalist’, Salingaros is as much a champion of the field’s historical vernaculars as he is of new possibilities afforded by contemporary empirical discoveries in biomathematics. His intellectual eclecticism, his passion for humane urbanism, and his compelling alternatives to stale orthodoxies make him one of the most exciting theorists active today.
Book Reviews
Jonathan Franzen’s The Kraus Project
April 19, 2015
Marion GablNow largely forgotten, Karl Kraus was one of the most incisive and provocative cultural commentators of early twentieth-century Vienna. He's also a literary hero of Jonathan Franzen, one of the most successful American novelists active today. In his ambitious latest book, Franzen sets out to recover the forgotten Kraus for contemporary readers. But his interest isn't simply historical: he also hopes to show that Kraus has a cure for the problems of our postmodern condition. Does he succeed? Marion Gabl reviews the effort.
Poetry
The Stations of the Cross
March 23, 2017
James Matthew Wilson and Daniel MitsuiIn this fourteen-part cycle, Wilson meditates on the mystery of the Cross and the way that leads to it. As the cycle unfolds, mundane time is caught up in the divine economy and drawn, step by step, to the summit of "Skull Hill". Paired with each poem is a beautiful, hand-drawn Station by artist Daniel Mitsui, whose work is a faithful participation in the tradition of Christian iconography as a sacred discipline and an act of prayer, in a revivified Western idiom. It is an honor to present the work of these two contemporary practitioners of classical arts alongside each other.
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?Featured Essays
On Teaching
by Wilfred M. McClayThere are many things that the world doesn’t understand about teaching. One of them is this: teachers themselves rarely have the occasion to step back and reflect on the meaning of what it is they’re doing. What is teaching, after all? Why should anyone do it? What is the point of education in general? How should we go about it? Here Prof. McClay considers just these questions, drawing on the classical tradition and on years of his own teaching experience to reflect on the nature, aims, and means of educating.
Augustin IoanHumans never interact with their environment without metaphysical consequence. That is, the world becomes, or is discovered to be, a repository of meaning. Sometimes the meaning points beyond what at first seems to be there, as when we encounter the sacred. But what is the sacred, and how does the numinous dwell in the physical world? Moreover, how does man dwell with it? In this first of two essays exploring such questions, Romanian architect Augustin Ioan draws on Heidegger, Deleuze, and others to help us find our place in space.
Damien François
Speaking for the reconstruction of Parliament's bombed-out Commons Chamber, Winston Churchill famously quipped, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” But how? And should we care? Is it not all rather a matter of taste? Philosopher Damien François interviews architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros, who believes that the art of building is anything but arbitrary: our built environment matters deeply for our attitudes, our aims, our very bodies. Neither a ‘modernist’ nor a ‘traditionalist’, Salingaros is as much a champion of the field’s historical vernaculars as he is of new possibilities afforded by contemporary empirical discoveries in biomathematics. His intellectual eclecticism, his passion for humane urbanism, and his compelling alternatives to stale orthodoxies make him one of the most exciting theorists active today.
Sacred Space as Public Place (Part 1)
Building with Biophilia: An Interview with Nikos Salingaros
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Featured Poetry
The Stations of the Cross
James Matthew Wilson and Daniel MitsuiIn this fourteen-part cycle, Wilson meditates on the mystery of the Cross and the way that leads to it. As the cycle unfolds, mundane time is caught up in the divine economy and drawn, step by step, to the summit of "Skull Hill". Paired with each poem is a beautiful, hand-drawn Station by artist Daniel Mitsui, whose work is a faithful participation in the tradition of Christian iconography as a sacred discipline and an act of prayer, in a revivified Western idiom. It is an honor to present the work of these two contemporary practitioners of classical arts alongside each other.
Concert at Sunrise House
Len KrisakThe men and women who came of age during the 1930s and 1940s — if they survived them — lived through some of the most spectacular and cataclysmic upheavals that human history has known. In this new poem, Len Krisak offers us a glimpse of their sunset years, a quiet tribute tinged with aching at the passage of time, the changing of the guard, and the frailty of the bond that joins the generations.
The sights, textures, scents and sounds of the world we encounter as children become parts of us, pegs on which memories are hung for a while – before they quietly fade and are lost. In this poem, at a familiar schoolyard after a lifetime away, they surface once more...
Today, Sir Henry is remembered as one of the nineteenth century's most important legal historians: his conception of contractual association as the distinguishing mark of Modernity remains an instructive lens through which to reflect on who we are and where we come from. But, at least in his undergraduate days at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he also proved himself to be both a poet and a Platonist of sorts; and one result was this tribute to the Master, which he submitted in 1843 in an (alas, unsuccessful) bid for the Chancellor's English Medal.
What’s become of the peanut-eyed snowman?
Alessio Zanelli
Plato
Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
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From the Archives
“Yellow Ants,” Fundamentalists, and Cowboys – An interview with Rémi Brague
Interview and translation by Diederik Boomsma & Yoram SteinWe interview the French intellectual Rémi Brague about his life and work. The question of whether and in what way the West is unique figures centrally in our discussion. Whether one can sensibly speak of “three religions of the book”, whether Brague is a Straussian, what the civilisational roles of poverty, humility, and cultural inferiority complexes may be, and whether Americans really are cultural cowboys, are also each discussed in turn.
What distinguishes conservatism from classical liberalism? The problem with classical liberalism is that it never pauses to examine what is involved in ‘not harming others’. Do I leave others unharmed when I destroy my capacity for personal relationships, through drug-taking, promiscuity, or porn addiction? Do I leave them unharmed when I stupefy myself with pop music? I have nothing against individualism, so long as it is recognized that the individual is created by a community and by the moral constraints that prevail in it. The individual is not the foundation of society but its most important by-product.
“Cows too…can easily be made into ideas”: An Interview with Roger Scruton
Interview by Diederik Boomsma
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