EPPC’s latest work renewing culture.

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January 12, 2024
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Can Harvard Learn Anything From Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Lance Morrow
Wall Street Journal

The novelist Henry James said that Ralph Waldo Emerson—who was once the country’s beloved essayist-laureate, author of the iconic American effusion called “Self-Reliance” and the semiofficial philosopher of entrepreneurial individualism—suffered from a fatal flaw. Emerson’s disabling defect, James thought, was innocence: He had no “sense of the dark, the foul, the base.” The novelist said of the essayist: “A ripe unconsciousness of evil is . . . one of the most beautiful signs by which we know him.”

James and Emerson were giants of American literature long ago, but they belonged to different generations. Emerson (1803–82) wrote his important essays (those sun-shot prose miracles of the country’s morning energy) in the years before the Civil War, before that catastrophic crack in American history. James (1843–1916) composed his elaborately shadowed novels well after Appomattox. It was the Civil War that introduced the naive country to its fallen self. The conflict ushered in, among other things, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the Gilded Age and the robber barons, mass immigration from Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe. James and Emerson came of age in two different Americas. No wonder, then, that they had different ideas about the country’s capacity for good or evil.
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EPPC Board Vice-Chairman Robby George writes for First Things on the New Yorker’s ludicrous claim that polyamory will save marriage ([link removed]) .
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At his keynote address at the annual Napa Institute Conference last summer, Carl R. Trueman spoke about the Church as witnessing to the hope that humanity needs ([link removed]) .
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For WORLD, Jennifer Patterson writes about the personal and cultural significance of growing old ([link removed]) .
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Also for WORLD, Carl Trueman wonders if the collapse of our moral consensus will ever stop ([link removed]) .
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For his column this week, George Weigel writes about the flawed theology behind the Vatican's newest document ([link removed]) .
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On the EDIFY podcast, Mary FioRito interviewed Archbishop Joseph Naumann ([link removed]) about the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexual relationships.
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For The Catholic Thing, Stephen P. White offers some predictions for 2024 ([link removed]) .
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On Jan. 16, Patrick T. Brown will participate in a livestreamed panel on the topic, "Promoting a Consistent Ethic of Life ([link removed]) ," for Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought.
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On Jan. 15, Ed Whelan will join Israeli constitutional law scholar Dr. Yaacov Ben-Shemesh to discuss recent controversies at the Israeli Supreme Court. ([link removed]) .
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