Sober pessimism is our defense against the extremes of both despair and the folly of utopian thought.
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On the importance of contemplation and the cultivation of virtue in an age that encourages neither. And how this relates to tradition and the canon.
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We cannot deny the radical secularism with which we are surrounded. But we should defy it.
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Relativism is not “freedom,” but quickly descends instead into tyranny and barbarism.
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We must choose between faith and the world, but this is not to be mistaken as a choice between faith and philosophy. Not at all.
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Greetings and welcome to Wholly Orders, a poetic and philosophical exploration of tradition.
I’m James Landes.
New podcasts from Wholly Orders are coming soon, in early 2020. Until then, look for relevant updates and announcements on the Wholly Orders Twitter feed.
This work is in support of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and will be centered on the intellectual canon and tradition of the Christian West, argued principally by means and use of philosophy, poetry, and cultural criticism.
Are you unsatisfied with (or even better yet, strenuously opposed to) the pervasive contemporary secular worldview in the West, one that treats philosophy, poetry, and the Western contemplative religious tradition as being mere flights of fancy, irrelevant to the “modern world”?
Wholly Orders is a project that seeks a unity in thinking within the Western philosophical and contemplative tradition, one that is grounded in the Christian faith.
The ‘wholeness’ that proceeds from a unity in thinking, as part of that living tradition, is something quite different from the modern, and especially the contemporary, push for uniformity in thought.
This project is guided by the unity of faith and reason, as within the Catholic tradition, while pursuing a non-ideological traditionalist conservative philosophy and cultural criticism.
Apropos of this, I should like to quote from Sir Roger Scruton (requiescat in pace), who remarked in his final speech, in September 2019:
“The word ‘Western’ has been taken to be a standard term of abuse by so many people in the world today, and in particular by people who don’t have the faintest idea what it means: historically, metaphysically, or poetically.”
If you find yourself in agreement with this, stay tuned. Until then, I wish you the best from the great American Midwestern state of Kansas.
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