Comment Magazine

“A law outside our constructed world—the moral law, the natural law— abides. This is why many are ill at ease—dare we say dis-eased—in a culture that encourages us to control everything but ourselves. We cannot seem to completely condition ourselves to feel nothing when we fail to act as we ought.”

Great Books and the Good Life The theme of self-control crops up again and again in the great books, changing in its encounter with the Christian tradition.

“A substantive experience with art leaves behind a residue, leading us to ask: What was that presence, that sense of something uncontrollable? Indeed, art awakens fleeting moments in which the world feels responsive rather than mute.”

Arthur Aghajanian on aesthetic experience and the mystical tradition.

Unknowing in Art and Faith The ways in which the art that uses chance and unpredictability teaches us about control.