So it was an amazing world, that of the philosophers from Ionia. It was attractive in that it seemed to be a free-thinking time . . . that is, on observation, as well as open speculation. . . This world greatly appealed to the contemporary philosopher, Karl Popper (1902-1994) evident in his posthumously published book on the Presocratics titled, The World of Parmenides (1998).

The concept of the guild, or occupational group, as its modern version has sometimes been called, is one of the most distinctive features of Catholic socio-economic thought. The guild combined two of the most important points of Catholic social theory, the principle of subsidiarity, as it later became known, and a distrust of purely economic motives in the conduct of human affairs.

O’Connor had a very sharp eye and ear for the sights and sounds of her native land. And for me, a native of western North Carolina living in exile in the Midwest, it is a joy to encounter the “Southernness” in her fictional world, despite the fact that this world she presents is often not at all lovely.

There are a number of reasons why it could be said, albeit from different perspectives, that the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) occupies a unique place among the great thinkers of the twentieth century.

References to the United States are relatively infrequent in Bertrand de Jouvenel’s major works, but America was never far from his thoughts. . . . In On Power, he referred to America as a regime in which Power “has no history” and is limited by local authorities, by a stubbornly independent legislature, by a judiciary “with a penchant for a traditional scheme of individual rights,” and by the fact that the country is inclined to regard those rights as “sacred.”2