Volume 82

Guests on Volume 82: Stephen Gardner on how modern culture weakens religion and establishes a new definition of the public; Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn on Tom Wolfe and Philip Rieff’s diagnosis of cultural disorder; Wilfred McClay on how Philip Rieff’s brilliant critique of modern disorder kept him from realizing a way out of our dilemma; David Wells on how Western culture has eclipsed fundamental assumptions about human nature and God; James K. A. Smith on the postmodern insight that our experience in the world requires interpretation (and that some interpretations are better than others); and Robert Littlejohn on how education should encourage wisdom and eloquence in students. “[T]herapy in Plato means not so much the care for us but our care for the gods, the assumption [being] that our care for the gods or for the Divine is what cures us of the intrinsic difficulties of human life.”  —Stephen Gardner  Professor Stephen Gardner discusses Philip Rieff’s analysis of modern culture and ho