Diana Trilling’s Search for a Hero

by | Aug 13, 2017

The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling by Natalie Robins. Columbia University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 424 pages, $33.“In the actual conduct of our lives Lionel and I silently accepted the premise that my first responsibility was to my home and family.” So...

Schiller and the Two Drives of the Person

by | Aug 13, 2017

Pedro Blas González The German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) is known for his philosophy of man’s relationship with transcendence and the sublime. Schiller believed that only through concrete life, that is, individual existence as differentiated...

Virtue: Can It Be Taught?

by | Aug 9, 2017

by Russell Kirk Are there men and women in America today of virtue sufficient to withstand and repel the forces of disorder? Or have we, as a people, grown too fond of creature-comforts and a fancied security to venture our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in...

The Illusion of Human Rights

by | Aug 9, 2017

“There exists something even more important than civil liberties: the survival of legitimate governments.”Human rights, some folk tell us, are not fully realized in El Salvador. Other people have discovered, somewhat tardily, that human rights are not altogether...

Prospects for American Education

by | Aug 9, 2017

An address discussing the findings of the Report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education. “There will come about a marked decline of prosperity and of national strength—with no one knowing why, or at least no one daring to explain why.”For more than...

The Surly Sullen Bell

by | Aug 9, 2017

By Russell A. Kirk And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? Isaiah VIII:19 Having stared at the river for half an...

The Lost Great Modernist

by | Aug 6, 2017

David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet by Thomas Dilworth. Jonathan Cape, 2017. Hardcover, 432 pp., $15. T. S. Eliot called his debut poem, In Parenthesis, “a work of genius.” To W. H. Auden, his second epic, The Anathemata, was “the finest long poem...

Liar or Fake, and Other Clarifying Questions

by | Aug 6, 2017

Confessions of a Heretic: Selected Essays by Roger Scruton. Devon: Notting Hill Editions, 2017. Hardcover, 208 pages, $12.89. In “Faking It,” Roger Scruton distinguishes between a liar and a fake; a most topical notion. The liar intends to deceive. The fake, on the...

The Soul of Man Under Socialism

by | Aug 1, 2017

The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea by Bandi, translated by Deborah Smith. Grove Press, 2017. Hardcover, 256 pages, $25.The title of this review is taken from Oscar Wilde’s celebrated essay carrying the same name. Writing in 1891, Wilde tries to...

James E. Person Jr.

by | Aug 1, 2017

James E. Person Jr. James E. Person Jr. is a writer, editor, and lecturer who has been involved with the activities of the Kirk Center since its founding in 1995. He was named a Senior Fellow in 2011. A graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of...