culture, literature

The Abyss and cultural rebirth

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." Joseph Campbell "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."… Continue reading The Abyss and cultural rebirth

culture, history, Personal story

Forgetting Foucault

Over recent weeks I have chanced upon a few biographical articles on Michel Foucault. One was an account of Foucault's use of LSD in Death Valley on a road trip with some fellow academics in the 1970s. Another was speculation that in the late 1970s Foucault was too close to neo-liberal ideas that would attack… Continue reading Forgetting Foucault

culture, history

The death of the soul

In The Australian this weekend Greg Sheridan, the conservative and perceptive foreign affairs journalist, comments on the decline of religion and its impact on Western liberal mores. He restores Nietzsche's parable of the madman, who proclaims to an indifferent crowd that God is dead, and then revokes his claim,  but still sees a dark prophecy:… Continue reading The death of the soul