Revisiting the Secular–Sacred Debate: Jung, Strauss, Taylor, and Schindler

Maxwell G.

Havers G.N.

Leo Strauss is one of the few political philosophers of the twentieth century to appreciate the enduring challenge of revealed religion to philosophy. While most of his contemporaries had written o...

Balfour D.L., Adams G.B., Nickels A.E.

COOPER K.W.

Magill R.J.

This paper contains a compact narrative history of the life of theologian Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) and his curious spiritual guidebook The Imitation of Christ. It then continues with a brief analysis of how The Imitation shaped the contours of the Reformation, harkened back to the early Christian tradition of contemptus mundi, and eventually helped form modern ideas of intimacy and inwardness in the West.

Brower J.E.

Main R.

Sociologists engaging with depth psychology have rarely drawn on the work of C. G. Jung. Part of the reason for this, I suggest, is Jung’s seeming tendency to credit, and be informed by, religious and non-rational perspectives. In this article I first highlight what sociologists might find problematic in Jung by comparing his views on the desacralisation of the modern world with Max Weber’s views on disenchantment. I then argue that Charles Taylor’s recent alternative account of disenchantment and secularity provides a framework within which Jung’s thought becomes more sociologically creditable despite, and even because of, its approach to matters of religion.

Gregory B.S.

Hall L.

AbstractEdmund Burke's emphasis on emotional phenomena is often seen as a rejection of reason. The relationship between reason and the emotions in Burke's work is paralleled by the relationships between the individual and society and between rights and duties. Emotions support duties because they bind us to social life and a particular social location. Burke filters rights claims through our emotional attachment to specific circumstances, thus creating social rights of man in contrast to the individualistic, abstract rights of men of the social contract theorists. Prejudice is presented as an example of a Burkean filter for rights that moderates rights claims by binding individuals to society. Thus, Burke sees reason and emotion as interconnected phenomena that support the balancing of the claims of both individual and the community.

Strauss L.

Zuckert C.H., Zuckert M.P.

Schindler D.L.

I. I begin with a discussion of Father Michael Baxter's reflections on my Heart of the World, Center of the Church (HWCC). I am deeply grateful for the evident care and thoroughness with which he read the book, and can suggest here only the beginning of a reply to his serious questions.Appropriately for the audience of the Review of Politics, Baxter develops his reflections mostly in terms of my argument regarding John Courtney Murray. Granting a basic validity to my critique of Murray, Baxter nonetheless argues that, in the end, my own constructive proposal “gets vague,” and he suspects that “it will turn out not to be substantially different from what has already been proposed by Murray and his successors.”