Iām a misplaced law professor, you might say: I never wanted to be a lawyer; I went to law school almost by accident; and for four decades Iāve used law as a window into my deeper interestsā religion, history, and philosophy. I couldnāt make myself write books unless the subjects were personally engaging; and in defiance of editors, I insist on writing readable prose. If this adds up to ādilettante,ā so be it. My books, published by the university presses of Harvard, Oxford, Notre Dame, Duke, and NYU, as well as Eerdmans, have dealt with constitutional law; Roman, medieval, and modern history; legal philosophy; and religious freedom.
I wrote
The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity
In The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity, Steven D. Smith considers Jacques Barzunās provocative assertion that āthe modernā¦
This book, which I read in my first year as an academic, has powerfully influenced my thinking ever since ā more than any other scholarly book, probably.
It is the best treatment I know of that not only diagnoses and explains the futility of modern moral thinking ā an ailment that is as apparent in public political debates as in academy philosophy ā but also explains how we got here.
In addition, the book offers cogent insights into much else that is wrong with modern culture and politics. And although After Virtue is not exactly light reading, it is succinct, occasionally eloquent, and sometimes wickedly funny.
When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary moral philosophy. Newsweek called it "a stunning new study of ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world." Since that time, the book has been translated into more than fifteen foreign languages and has sold over one hundred thousand copies. Now, twenty-five years later, the University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue "After Virtue after a Quarter of a Century."
I donāt read many novels ā my work doesnāt leave me much time ā but Iāve had to make time for Percy.
His novels are full of intriguing characters, vivid and natural dialogue, and masterfully controlled plots; and in both his fiction and his essays and interviews he offers a trenchant diagnosis of the ills of modern life. Love in the Ruins is borderline sci-fi and quasi-apocalyptic.
Its protagonist, Tom More (a proud if decadent descendant of Sir and Saint Thomas More) lives in an American society much like our own, which is on the verge of collapse even though most of its residents donāt perceive the problem. The book is at the same time compelling, profoundly insightful, and hilarious.
A pair of profound dystopian novels from the ābrilliantly breathtakingā New York Timesābestselling and National Book Awardāwinning author of The Moviegoer (The New York Times Book Review). Ā Winner of the National Book Award for The Moviegoer, the ādazzlingly giftedā Southern philosophical author Walker Percy wrote two vividly imagined satirical novels of Americaās future featuring deeply flawed psychiatrist and spiritual seeker Tom More (USA Today). Love in the Ruins is āa great adventure . . . so outrageous and so real, one is left speechlessā (Chicago Sun-Times), and its sequel The Thanatos Syndrome āshimmers with intelligence and verveā (Newsday). Ā ā¦
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to runā¦
Barzun, who lived to be 104, was in his lifetime possibly the most erudite human being on the planet.Ā
And this book, published when he was much younger (as a spry 93-year-old) is an almost perfect history of the modern age: a superb, readable sort-of survey that is not surveyish but rather earnestly engaged with themes that were important in the 16th-century beginnings of our modern civilization and are important still.Ā
Barzun doesnāt seem to be a gloomy naysayer, and he admires and appreciates the achievements of Western civilization; but as his title suggests, he came to believe that the culture is exhausted and unraveling. An informative and provocative read!
"A stunning five-century study of civilization's cultural retreat." ā William Safire, New York Times
Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.
Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of its own time and our pressing concerns. He introduces characters and incidents with his unusual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that haveā¦
This book (actually, this series of volumes) is of course an epic and a classic. And deservedly soāeven though most scholars no longer find Gibbonās account of the causes of Romeās fall persuasive.Ā
Right or wrong, the book is a model of a study that is both immersed (sometimes admiringly and sometimes caustically) in individual characters and episodes and yet also intensely interested in the big picture. And the elegant, witty prose makes the book a pleasure to read.Ā
Analyses of modern Western decline often look for parallels in ancient Rome, and Gibbonās study is almost a mandatory point of departure.
Edward GibbonĀĀs classic timeless work of ancient Roman history in 6 volumes collected into 2 boxed sets, in beautiful, enduring hardcover editions with elegant cloth sewn bindings, gold stamped covers, and silk ribbon markers.
This is the Inspiring true story of a young girl surviving Mengeleās hell. This is an incisive, harrowing, and touching memoir of Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister Miriam, who are sent to Auschwitz only to be torn from their parents and given to Josef Mengele, "The Angel ofā¦
A book can be vastly overambitious, and hence broadly unpersuasive, and yet still be full of insights.Ā
Toynbeeās monumental study attempted to order all of human history into a recurring pattern of civilizational genesis, growth, decline, and breakdown. It couldnāt be done, as historians and critics have pointed out.
Even so, the study is rich with ideas and perspectives about factors that contribute to societal growth and decline, the role of ācreative minorities,ā the effects of religion on civilization and vice versa, and much else.
Hardly anyone (including me) will manage to read all 12 volumes, but Toynbee himself approved a readable two-volume abridgment by D. C. Somervell, which was illuminating when I read it in college and has continued to be illuminating in the years since then.
Arnold Toynbee's analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations has been acknowledged as one of the great achievements of twentieth-century scholarship. D.C. Somervell's abridgement of this monumental work is a great achievement in its own right. While reducing the work to one sixth of its original size, he has succeeded in preserving its method and character. The first volume of the abridgement presents Toynbee's philosophy of history as it appears in the first six volumes of the original work. This volume includes the Introduction; The Geneses of Civilizations; The Growth of Civilizations; The Breakdowns of Civilizations; and The Disintegrationsā¦
In The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity, Steven D. Smith considers Jacques Barzunās provocative assertion that āthe modern eraā is coming to an end. Smith investigates the question of decline by focusing on a single themeāconscienceāthat has been central to but disruptive of Western politics, law, and religion over the past half-millennium.
Closely examining three episodes that reflected major transformationsāThomas Moreās beheading for his conscientious refusal to take an oath mandated by Henry VIII, James Madisonās insertion of conscience into the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and Justice William Brennanās promise that he would confine his religion to his private lifeāSmith argues that conscience has come to mean almost the opposite of what it meant when the modern era began.
Ancient Evenings is a study of consciousness presented as a series of fictional philosophical dialogues set at the height of the Roman Empire. These dialoguesāon good and evil, truth and falsehood, life and deathāare historical re-enactments of what persons representing the major Hellenistic schools of philosophy might actually have saidā¦
