Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'reason'

Faith and Reason in the Life and Work of Benedict XVI

With the December 31 passing of Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church, Christianity, and the world lost one of the most significant and insightful minds of the last century. Certainly, within the Church, Joseph Ratzinger was among the most influential and esteemed theologians of the second half of the 20th century, all the way through his pontificate in the early 21st, to include the period of the Second Vatican Council, to which he was an important adviser. Continue Reading...

Acton Line podcast: Will-to-power conservatism with Stephanie Slade

With fusionism – the strategic alliance of conservative foreign policy hawks, social conservatives and economic libertarians knitted together in the last half of the 20th century in opposition to international communism – crumbling after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the modern conservative movement has been remaking itself in effort to address the problems of the current day. Continue Reading...

Samuel Gregg on ‘The specter of scientism’

In this week’s Acton Commentary, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks at how “scientism” treats the scientific method as the only way of knowing anything and everything. Without dismissing the real achievements of modern science, he notes that “one side-effect of these triumphs was that some began treating the empirical sciences as the only form of true reason and the primary way to discern true knowledge … ” Notwithstanding these serious flaws with scientism, its acceptance has two effects on a society. Continue Reading...

Carl Jung and Lord Acton on the delicate fruit of liberty

Lord Acton famously wrote that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” Liberty, Acton argued was rare and required constant attention to be maintained.  As many have noted, one of the challenges with political liberty is that it creates the conditions for its own demise from within. Continue Reading...

How to think like a Christian

Here is a podcast interview I did recently with my friend Matt Leonard, host of The Art of Catholic and Next Level Catholic Academy. Matt and I talked about some of the foundational ideas of Christian thinking in contrast with the dominant secular way of seeing the world.  Continue Reading...

Is behavioral economics blind to its blindness?

I find some of the work of behavioral economists, especially that of Daniel Kahneman to be very interesting and important. Thinking Fast and Slow is essential reading. His distinctions between what he calls Type I and Type II thinking is very insightful, and the broad critique that human beings don’t always act like rational maximizers is a correct. Continue Reading...