Is Life Worth Living?

Russell Kirk
Too often, childhood hopes give way to adult complacency; but, just as often, "men and women are haunted by such nagging questions as 'What is this all about?' or 'Is life worth living?'" In this Epilogue to his remarkable third-person autobiography, Russell Kirk looks back on a long life of literary conflict and reflects on just what it might all be about.

Literature and the Contract of Eternal Society

Russell Kirk As a young man Russell Kirk traipsed over the braes of East Ayrshire, Scotland, to a tiny village with a rich history. Known to Dr. Johnson as the residence of his friend Boswell's family, the place had, by Kirk's time, little left of its former vitality. Worse, few seemed to care: there was a new cinema a few towns over, and that was, well, new, if nothing else. In this essay from 1969, Kirk argues that community decline cannot be understood - let alone reversed - without participation in the ever-threatened tradition of literary continuity.

Russell Kirk: Christian Humanism and Conservatism

Vigen Guroian
During a dinner conversation with Russell and Annette Kirk in Washington, D.C., just five months before Dr. Kirk’s death, Russell turned to me and quipped, with his familiar chuckle and impish smile, “Vigen, they are now calling me a theologian!” I did not ask him who was saying such a thing...

The Moral Imagination

Russell Kirk
For decades now, mainstream educators have been encouraging their pupils to use their imaginations - even as the literary fare they've been offering has increasingly had the opposite effect. Russell Kirk brings his characteristic perspicacity to bear on the question of literature and the "moral imagination" in a classic essay that has only grown more relevant since it first appeared in 1981.