Dylan Pahman

Dylan Pahman, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Acton Institute and founder and president of the St. Nicholas Cabasilas Institute. He is author of The Kingdom of God and the Common Good: Orthodox Social Thought (Ancient Faith, 2025) and Foundations of a Free Society & Virtuous Society (Acton, 2017). With John Pinheiro, he is also coeditor of The Christian Roots of American Liberty (Acton, forthcoming in 2026), a sourcebook charting the prehistory of American founding principles through the ancient, medieval, and early modern worlds.

Posts by Dylan Pahman

March 07, 2013

Orthodoxy and Natural Law: A Reappraisal

At Ethika Politika today, I examine the recent critique by David Bentley Hart in the most recent issue of First Things of the use of natural law in public discourse in my article, “Natural Law, Public Policy, and the Uncanny Voice of Conscience.” Continue Reading...
February 26, 2013

Beware the Yeast of the Bureaucrats

With the most recent fiscal cliff approaching this Thursday (February 28), it is worth asking, “How did we get into this mess?” My answer: a little leaven works its way through a whole lump of dough…. Continue Reading...
February 20, 2013

Check Your Rhetoric: What Common Good?

In the Winter-Fall 2012 issue of Modern Age (54, nos. 1-4), Jonathan Daly contributes a helpful exploration of what happens when desire for the common good goes bad. His article, “Bolshevik Power and Ideas of the Common Good,” focuses on the disastrously ill-conceived effort by the Russian revolutionaries to promote the common good through their self-proclaimed “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” Continue Reading...
February 07, 2013

Privilege: The Real Postal Problem

Regarding the USPS decision Wednesday to stop Saturday mail delivery, Ron Nixon at the New York Times writes, The post office said a five-day mail delivery schedule would begin in August and shave about $2 billion a year from its losses, which were $15.9 billion last year. Continue Reading...