This week’s list of links is rather lengthy. Enjoy.
Weekly Reading – October 3, 2014
Weekly Reading – September 28, 2014
Weekly Reading – September 20, 2014
One day off, but here it goes. You can find earlier installments by clicking the “Reading” tag.
Schmitt on Cortes
For [Juan Donoso Cortes], man is a disgusting and laughable creature, completely destroyed by his own sins and prone to error. Indeed, if God had not redeemed man, the latter would have been more despicable than the reptile that one crushes underfoot. For Donoso, world history is a ship that reels forward, piloted by a crew of drunken sailors, who dance and howl until God decides to sink the ship so that silence can rule the sea once again.
– Carl Schmitt, “The Unknown Donoso Cortes,” Telos no. 125, pg. 82 (2002) (originally published 1950)
Weekly Reading – September 12, 2014
Because all of you need more things to look at when you’re not visiting this web-log:
Weekly Reading – September 6, 2014
As I noted last week, I will be posting up articles, blog posts, and other such things which caught my eye. This week’s installment is a day late, but hopefully not a dollar short.
Weekly Reading – August 29, 2014
Going off a thought when I wrote “More Things to Read,” on Fridays or Saturdays I will post a “roundup” of things that caught my eye the previous week which a few of you may find interesting. Some of this material probably warrants a good deal of commentary, but my time, as usual, is limited. As always I thank anyone and everyone who, via this blog, Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail, keep my eyes and mind occupied while confirming that not everything on the Internet is worthless.
The Seth Benardete Papers
My “Straussian” days may be over, but I still remain peripherally interested in what goes on in the land of Leo Strauss scholarship. That interest is also extended to a handful of Strauss’s students, particularly the late classicist Seth Benardete. Words like “cryptic,” “obscure,” “challenging,” and “eccentric” fail to do justice to the labyrinthine complexity of Benardete’s thought as expressed through his formal written works. Now for the first time researchers and continuing students of Benardete’s work can begin accessing online a treasure trove of Benardete’s reading notes, written lectures, jottings, early essay drafts, and so forth through the New School’s Digital Archive. While not everything is available online (yet) and some categories of the Benardete papers remain restricted (e.g., correspondence with persons still living), you can get a full account of the archive, including links to the digital material, in the “Benardete Papers: Collection Guide” file. I will admit that his handwriting and note-taking style presents some challenges, but there are some fascinating finds among the collection, including Benardete’s notes on the New Testament.
More Things to Read
At some point I may institute a weekly post rounding up articles — scholarly or popular — which I find especially interesting (even if I don’t always agree with them). It’d be nice if I had more time to comment on such things, but I have to pick my time investments wisely. Anyway, here we go.