Love and the Dignity of Human Life, by Robert Spaemann

This is an interesting trio of essays by philosopher Robert Spaemann.  The first is on the many meanings and paradoxes of love, especially the tension between desirous love and beneficent love.  The second is on human dignity, particularly its inalienability when the person does not consent to its loss. The third on the modern concept of “brain death”—is it the same as the traditional concept of death, and can a “brain dead” person properly be considered dead?   

Since I have no philosophy training, I thought the book would probably be over my head, but Spaemann explains things very clearly.  Highly recommended to clear out the fog that results from the intentionally deceptive wording we are accustomed to using these days to lie to ourselves about reality in order to justify ethical shortcuts.

How the West Really Lost God, by Mary Eberstadt

Mary Eberstadt presents a convincing theory that family formation and family life help to pass on and enforce religious belief from one generation to the next rather than just being an effect of religious belief. She points out how marriage, family formation, and birth rates tend to rise and fall in tandem with religious practice among populations, and how this correlation tends to hold more consistently through history than other explanations of why belief in God rises and falls, such as political or economic changes, wars, industrialization, etc. The book can be a dry read at times, because it does deal with statistics, but very worthwhile for those who are interested in the subject. 

One Word of Truth- Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Lecture

This speech is just as good as A World Split Apart, and that's really saying something.  He describes the existential gulf between people living under oppressive governments and those in free countries.  There is a disconnect between the two, and the latter group very often cannot understand where the former is coming from.  As a representative of the former group transplanted into the world of the latter, Solzhenitsyn cites art as the means by which the gap can be bridged.
It is the means by which one can enter into another person's experience.

He also talks about the "spirit of Munich" and how it has dominated the 20th century (inclination of the free world to appease and tolerate unjust violence elsewhere provided it left the West alone) and how violence inevitably requires lies to maintain its position of power-- to deceive people about its true nature and give itself legitimacy.

The task of the artist above all is to remain honest in the face of violence and lies.

"Let the lie come into the world, even dominate the world, but not through me."

The Solzhenitsyn Center has released a video made with an excellent (English) reading of this speech, which is available to view here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ITbFdTaB_E.

Understanding Europe, by Christopher Dawson

This is an outstanding analysis of Europe and Western civilization.  The book is divided in two parts.

In the first part, Dawson describes what Europe is: a society of peoples whose culture was shaped both by Christianity and the Greco-Roman heritage.  Through comparisons, he explains what differentiates it from Asia, describes the special case of Russia, and discusses the regional differences among the different peoples.  These were produced by the splintering of Christianity during the Reformation and the different styles of government in the different regions, contrasting the parliamentary governments that sprung up in Western Europe with the large military empires that developed in Central and Eastern Europe.  He also devotes two chapters to Europe's overseas colonies: the dual nature of European colonialism and how each nation's colonial effort differed in character from one another.

The second part of the book is about the decline of Western culture and the revolt, starting in the eighteenth century, against the ideas and norms that used to unify Europe.  He describes the rise of the large totalitarian and authoritarian states, how the ideas behind this style of government originated in Hegelian philosophy, and how the two world wars came about.

For a relatively short (230 page) book, he covers a lot of ground, and it's definitely a book that you have to read more than once in order to properly digest the material.  It's best to have a reasonably good general knowledge of the history of the various European countries in order to appreciate this book properly.

A World Split Apart- Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Commencement Address, 1978

I think this is one of the best speeches ever written. On anything. Alexander Solzhenitsyn turns his keen powers of observation and understanding, sharpened by long years of oppression under a totalitarian regime, on the West and diagnoses the cause of its ills: a decline in moral courage. Despite having been written 40 years ago, it's even more relevant now than it was then.

Even better than reading this is hearing the man himself deliver it at Harvard in 1978-- the video of the complete speech, with a simultaneous translator translating it into English is available on Youtube. Awesome stuff.

And if you can, listen also to Dr. Peter Kreeft's excellent commentary on it and the impression it made on him as a member of that audience in 1978--also available on Youtube.

The Mortal Danger, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This book consists of a long essay Solzhenitsyn wrote in 1980 for <i>Foreign Affairs</i> magazine, some reaction letters from readers (mostly university professors) and Solzhenitsyn's rebuttal to the letters.  I liked the format because it shows both sides of the issue and you get the back-and-forth of a debate.

The essay addresses an important question, especially for those who think real Communism hasn't been tried yet because it's always been adulterated by the local history and traditions of the countries where it was implemented.  Did the mass murders, oppressive policies, and other negative features of the Soviet government have their roots in some evil tendency from Russia's tsarist past which re-emerged under Stalin, or does the evil reside in Communism itself? Solzhenitsyn argues the latter position, pointing out the intellectual roots of Bolshevism and misconceptions about both 19th century Russia, often presented as worse than it really was, and Lenin's government, often presented as the antithesis to Stalin, when Stalin was just continuing the same policies.

The letter-writers cite, among other things, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and some of the features of Nicholas II's reign as providing precedent for oppression, and Solzhenitsyn shows why their arguments are implausible or based on a mistaken interpretation of historical facts.

Very interesting reading for those interested in the Cold War and for those who are puzzled about how an economic system with an awful track record every place it's been tried still attracts supporters.

The Judgment of the Nations, by Christopher Dawson

This book is my introduction to British historian Christopher Dawson, and I think it's brilliant. Definitely going to be reading more of his work. He finished this in 1942, so he was working on it when WW2 broke out and in those tense and depressing years leading up to it. His purpose in writing it was to offer some reasons why the countries of the West, whose culture and values were formed by Christianity and the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome ended up fighting two horribly self-destructive world wars. 

He discusses the tensions that began to develop between nations as their styles of government diverged (constitutional vs. autocratic monarchies, nation-states vs. multilingual multiethnic empires, fundamentally civilian vs. military states), and as Christianity splintered into multiple denominations. Differences in belief do cause differences in worldview, which have practical ramifications. He also expounds on the Enlightenment, the scientific materialist world view that came with it, the impact of the Industrial Revolution, and of the Socialist movements of all stripes that aspired to bring the rapidly growing economies under state control.

Black Rednecks, White Liberals, by Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell challenges a lot of popular misconceptions about the real origins of African American ghetto culture, the global history of the slave trade, racism and how it relates to slavery, the role of the West in its colonial period, disparities of accomplishment among different demographic groups, and the reasons why some groups of people achieve more than others even in the face of adverse conditions.  It's a well-reasoned, well-researched book, and Sowell supports his arguments with real world examples.  Excellent antidote for habitual victims, moral poseurs, the professionally offended, and grievance-mongers of all stripes--if only they would read it.

The Crooked Timber of Humanity

In this series of eight essays, Isaiah Berlin recounts the intellectual dispute that took place in the late 18th to early 19th century that gave rise to the Romantic movement, and how ideas from both sides of the debate combined and recombined in the heads of various thinkers over the years so as to produce the fascist and socialist movements of the twentieth century.

One side of the dispute consists of those who believed in universal, objective truth, scientific rationalism, a common human nature, the possibility of an earthly utopia, and the non-contradiction of values. On the other side were those who believed in various degrees of relativism, the value of local traditions, even those that could not be traced to any rational basis, the possibility of different hierarchies of value that could contradict each other, and that human societies are ultimately founded on an irrational factors.

The second essay, called Alleged Relativism in Eighteenth Century Thought is particularly valuable because it explains how pluralism is different from relativism, and how pluralist thinkers of the eighteenth century (like Vico and Herder) are sometimes mistaken for relativists.  I read that one twice.

Included among the essays is an exposition of the life and thought of Joseph de Maistre, who is often mistaken for a conservative Catholic reactionary, but whose ideas contradicted those of Church and those of other conservatives, such as Edmund Burke, on important points, and whose dark, illiberal, eerily modern outlook presages twentieth century totalitarian movements.  Berlin recaps much of the content of this essay in this lecture.

The last two essays in the series, The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will and The Bent Twig are about how in the Romantic movement, the will, particularly in art, began to displace objective truth and nature, and how appreciation for local customs, thought to be the least enduring part of the Romantic movement, morphed into the nationalist movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries, from the desires of small ethnic or linguistic minorities to become independent states, or the sense of entitlement of large states to take over regions in other states inhabited by people of the same race or language.

I learned a lot reading this.  Great read if you're interested in the art, literature, and thought of the Romantic era, how ways of thinking we now take for granted originated, and in the causes of some of the most important events in twentieth century history.

La cité antique / The Ancient City

This is a brilliant exposition of the religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans and how that shaped the way they lived, their ideas, their government, and the culture they developed.  When we think of Greek and Roman religion, we immediately think of gods like Zeus, Athena, Apollo, and Venus and such, but de Coulanges goes even further back than that, to the domestic gods that were the dead ancestors of each family, and that protected only that family and their property so long as the living members of the family faithfully carried out the proper rites and sacrifices and owned the property on which their tombs were located.  Apparently, this ancestor worship was a religion the ancient Greeks and Romans shared with the Hindus and dates back to their common roots before the different groups diverged and migrated out to India and to Europe.  As their beliefs and worldview changed, so did Greco-Roman culture change, giving rise to the Greek and Italian city states that later consolidated into the Roman Empire.  In the last chapter, de Coulanges provides a brief outline of how radically Christianity changed the culture and outlook of the Roman Empire and why it brought an end to the ancient conception of the city.

This book is invaluable for those with an interest in the history of ancient Greece and Rome, those who are planning to read the classics and want to understand the mindset of the authors better, and those who want to see how a religion can shape the culture and civilization of a people. De Coulanges's purpose in writing it was to show how different the worldview of the ancient Greeks and Romans was from our own, to prevent the common mistake of believing the ancients to be too much like ourselves.

The Hall of Uselessness, by Simon Leys

Great collection of essays from an author whom I think is one of the best essayists ever!  The topics in this collection are wide ranging, from literature to China to history to the sea.  My favorites were the ones on Chinese art and history (a subject I know little about, so I learned a lot reading them), and the ones on Cervantes, Victor Hugo, and Magellan.  Included in this collection is the one where he (rightfully, in my opinion) excoriates Christopher Hitchens's negative comments about Mother Teresa.

Reflections on History, by Jacob Burckhardt

Interesting and concise study of various patterns that often appear in history, particularly those involving the interactions among the three powers Burckhardt identifies at the start of the book: State, Religion, and Culture. Reading this book, which is not specific to any particular time or country, will make one more alert to spotting and remembering these patterns when they are encountered in studying the history of any time or people.

The World's Last Night, by C. S. Lewis

I enjoyed this little collection of essays by C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite essayists ever.  As always, they display his gift for clear, logical expositions in straightforward language and his way of bypassing currently popular ways of looking at things by showing how they can be considered differently.  Reading Lewis nearly always helps to broaden my mind and this collection is no exception.  My two favorite essays in this book are <i>Lilies That Fester</i> and <i>The Efficacy of Prayer</i>.

Le bonheur des petits poissons, by Simon Leys

Une très bonne collection par un essayiste cultivé et subtil. C'est le premier livre de Simon Leys que j'ai jamais lu et je vais définitivement lire plus. J'aurais préféré une collection un peu plus grande; le livre est beaucoup plus mince que j'attendais. J'aime bien L'empire du laid, Les mensonges qui disent la vérité, et Du goût.