Happiness or Joy?

Pedro Blas González If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the Saints and God. —Yes; but is it not to be happy to have a faculty of being amused by diversion? —No; for that comes from elsewhere and from without, and thus is...

Gottfried Responds

Paul Gottfried responds to Daniel McCarthy’s review of his book on Leo Strauss.Dan McCarthy is to be commended for his fair-minded review of my study of Leo Strauss and Strauss’s influence on the American conservative movement. I hope that Dan’s efforts will have the...

‘As You Wish’

True (Self-)Love and The Princess BrideThe early Christian theologian Augustine, in The City of God, relates a story of an encounter between Alexander the Great, emperor of the known world, and a common pirate. When Alexander confronts the pirate about his...

Russell Kirk as Historian

Much has been said and written this year about the sixtieth anniversary of publication of Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind. The well deserved attention has, however, generally overlooked a critical facet of the public role of the book and, as important, of Kirk...

An Aesthetic Vision on West 43rd Street

An Evening with the Poet C. P. CavafyOn November 18, 2013 at The Town Hall in New York City, the PEN American Center presented an evening tribute to the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy in celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth. The readers and speakers included the...

The Voice of Michael Oakeshott in the Conversation of Conservatism

A paper presented to the biennial meeting of the Michael Oakeshott Association, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, September 28, 2013. by Wilfred M. McClay My title refers, of course, to Oakeshott’s celebrated essay, “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation...