Nobility of Spirit

The Wall Street Journal: Bookshelf ^ | June 10, 2008 | Darrin M. McMahon

[Uncle Ralph]

[Book review] Excerpt:

Mr. Riemen's Nobility of Spirit is intended as a meditation on the forces that threaten civilization and, no less important, on the forces that are desperately needed to sustain it...

The originality of Mr. Riemen's argument resides less in its defense of universal values than in its analysis of the assault they have suffered for so long. If so many intellectuals today find it difficult to utter words like "truth," "beauty," "piety" or "goodness" without mockery or ironic derision, the cause may be traced, in large part, to the abuse of those terms by philosophers and social critics since the 19th century. Over time, various forms of relativism and nihilism took hold in elite circles, as Mr. Riemen shows, especially in the wake of Nietzsche's savage attack on the West's moral underpinnings. The would-be guardians of culture became its destroyers...

[Uncle Ralph]

Sounds interesting.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

"Some of the finest pages of his short book are devoted to a redramatization of the life and trial of Socrates"

Some Freepers, if alive at the time of Socrates, would have voted in favor of his guilt and glad to see him die.