Reading in Exile

Two films that my wife and I have recently watched have led me to reflect on the notion of Nihilism (you know, "these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of.") A few weeks ago, we watched Francois Truffaut's four Antoine Doinel films ( The 400 Blows, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board , and Love on the Run ), and last night we watched Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo . (If you know Whit Stilman's work, Stolen Kisses is the film that the Cathar character--another nihilist--makes his girlfriend watch in Damsels in Distress . I think it's well worth watching, but I'm not going to talk about that film here.) As one does, I mull over the much-vaunted eclipse of meaning in the modern world now and again. At times, I am overwhelmed with the apparent meaninglessness and valuelessness of the world; at times, I am struck by the deep and abiding significance and value of things. I've learned to take both experiences seriously. Both of them say...

I've recently been asked to write two papers, one on Max Scheler's theory of value perception for a forthcoming volume from Oxford University Press on spiritual perception, and the other on Dietrich Von Hildebrand for a special issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly . This has led me, especially during the last week, to revisit a lot of material I haven't looked at closely in some time. While I've dealt with these thinkers in my  papers on personalism , I haven't concentrated on Hildebrand  since my undergraduate days at Franciscan University of Steubenville , and not on Scheler  since I was working on my dissertation. In my professional writing, I've focused more recently on Thomistic metaphysics, especially the Thomism of the 16th and 17th centuries, and on more contemporary French phenomenology. It's been quite a treat this week revisiting in a focused, daily way, this older, more realist, more German phenomenology. The fundamental idea...