If de Beauvoir’s elders can be accused of mistaking repression for virtue, then she and her intellectual peers were blind to the fact that over-indulgence is not freedom, but, instead, ranks among the most irresponsible forms of neglect.

The phony ‘tolerance of relativism’ must inexorably and unavoidably translate in practice into what it really is: the most implacable, ferocious intolerance.

The novel is compelling (even spellbinding at times)—and if it is called antiquated, it is only because we have forgotten that the oldest human battle is the worthiest one: the battle to achieve and maintain virtue in a fallen world.

Roberts does not refrain from criticising George, both for his political missteps and for his tendency to be slow in acknowledging them. But overall, Roberts has painted a masterful portrait of a patriotic, diligent and cultivated monarch who was periodically struck down by mental illness, worst of all during the tragic last decade of his life.

Ostensibly about bullfighting, it is actually the greatest book published by a foreigner about the city of Seville and one of the great books on Spain.

One might argue that conservatives and traditionalists have no choice but to use peaceful and legal means to advocate a return to traditional values, for the left is in a very totalitarian mood.

Without the Idea of the Good, Lloyd P. Gerson argues, a person cannot argue coherently against materialism, relativism, skepticism, mechanism, and nominalism.

As one of the first arts companies to return to live performance as the pandemic subsided, the Palm Beach Symphony has rocketed to national importance and richly deserves international notice.

The production has aged well. Its vibrant return after a seven-year absence should have been a landmark revival and one of the highlights of the Met’s new season. Musically, it met the mark. The energy on stage was palpable. The only disappointment was to be found in the audience. The revival’s first performance reportedly filled just 57% of the seats.

Kinneging’s book is fundamentally meant to get the reader to read good books again, especially Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas.

In her brilliant essay, Anne-Sophie Chazaud, a French journalist and columnist, dismantles the systemic character of the censures we are subjected to today.

It is no wonder that an un-Sophianic culture would promote enmity between men and woman, viewing history as a protracted conflict of the genders and marriage as a procrustean bed, with procreation contradictorily thought of both as unnecessary burden and selfish environmentally-harmful indulgence.

Even if many of the accusations against Nero could be described as ‘fake news,’ enough of them eventually piled up to undermine his reign. Last year’s exhibit at the British Museum explored the life and rule of this legendary emperor.

It is a mistake to assume that concrete rural scenes like those in the small Romanesque parishes Mr. Mora rightly celebrates, lead to appreciating life whereas, contrastingly, Gothic abstraction leads to a sort of world-weary sickness. This judgement assumes only two realities, body and mind, and pits these against each other.

The author starts from the principle that the study of the Habsburg Monarchy has for too long suffered from an analytical bias: scholars have regularly considered the Empire as something external to the nationalities that suffered under its oppression. This perspective presumes that the weaker forces, compelled to develop defensive measures, became stronger, jeopardizing the Empire’s stronghold.

Scheduled for only six performances (September 28-October 17, 2021), the Met chose, as a cost-cutting measure, to present Mussorgsky’s original seven-scene 1869 version of the opera. European houses and scholarly purists favor this original score, which is currently found in repertoires in London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg.

It is almost as if Don Simon Jubani was prepared to be a political prisoner. His collaborators and admirers describe him as “a nut with a hard shell,” “tough,” “passionate for the truth,” “uncompromising,” “provocative and justice-seeking,” and “highly intelligent though impatient.” He was an athletic priest (a former soccer star) who ministered to five mountainous rural parishes in the Mirdita region before he was arrested in 1963. The toughness comes across in print.

A major retrospective of the work of the Russian painter Ilya Repin (1844-1930) is being held for the first time in Paris at the Petit Palais from October 2021 to the end of January 2022.

The judicial designation of abortion as a right leads to inevitable consequences in other legal spheres. “Failure to protect human life in one area of law will lead to failure elsewhere. Life must either be protected everywhere, or it is at risk everywhere.”

Early in his tenure, Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink had led one of the staples of the company’s ballet repertoire, MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, set to a score by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. It was therefore fitting that a recent performance of this revival was dedicated to his memory.

Canadian-Lebanese writer Nader Moumneh’s 2018 book fills a useful niche in that it is a sympathetic and detailed overview of the main Lebanese Christian military-political formation born during the Lebanese Civil War, a formation that became a leading Lebanese nationalist political party after the war ended.