‘Lane Fox’s book is a work of dedicated scholarship and not for the casual reader. This is in no sense a biography and the author touches only relatively briefly on Augustine’s life as bishop of Hippo, his other works and legacy. The focus is on the Confessions, studied in detail to trace Augustine’s complex spiritual pilgrimage. At the same time, Lane Fox provides an immense amount of contextual information about his hometown of Thagaste in North Africa and about Carthage, Rome and Milan, comparing Augustine’s life there with those of some very different contemporaries.’
As previously posted:
So, where do the social-sciences and foreign policy meet?
Roger Sandall argued Fox pointed-out how we often misunderstand other parts of the world as we project our own traditions, definitions of freedom, and democratic ideals upon them:
‘Fox knows what Tierney and most other educated Americans apparently do not: that tribal communities are the default system of human social nature. Humanity evolved that way for millennia after exiting the hunter-gatherer band stage of social life. Many of the planet’s diverse societies have since moved on toward becoming modern states, but not all of them have. And even for those that have, the shadowy emotional residues of the distant past remain.’
On This Site: Francis Fukuyama uses some Hegel and Samuel Huntington…just as Huntington was going against the grain of modernization theory…:Newsweek On Francis Fukuyama: ‘The Beginning Of History’…Francis Fukuyama At The American Interest Online: ‘Political Order in Egypt’
Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’…
Romantic primitivism in Australia: ….Roger Sandall At The New Criterion Via The A & L Daily: ‘Aboriginal Sin’
Did Jared Diamond get attacked for not being romantic enough…or just for potential hubris?: Was he acting as a journalist in Papua New-Guinea?: From The Chronicle Of Higher Education: Jared Diamond’s Lawsuit…
From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘Nietzsche–Aristocratic Radical or Aristocratic Liberal?’