The New Republic

An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age By Jürgen Habermas (Polity Press, 87 pp., $14.95) The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere By Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West Edited by Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Columbia University Press, 137 pp., $19.50) READ MORE >>

The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life By Harold Bloom (Yale University Press, 357 pp., $32.50) READ MORE >>

For Richard Blumenthal to claim that he has been “misspeaking” in implying that he fought in Vietnam rather than obtaining multiple deferments and finally waiting things out in the Marine Reserves right here at home is repulsive. I am not exactly the first one out of the gate on that. READ MORE >>

I find the voice undeniably authentic (yes, I know the book was written “with the help” of Lynn Vincent, but many books, including my most recent one, are put together by an editor). It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety. It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. READ MORE >>

In the August/September issue of Policy Review, Stanley Fish has a long essay explaining why teachers should not strive to "fashion moral character or produce citizens of a certain temper." Instead, the goal of educators should be to "equip those same students with the READ MORE >>

Over on the NYT's opinion page, Stanley Fish is taking on the newest manifestation of the "intellectual diversity" movement: CU Boulder's plan to endow a Chair in Conservative Thought and Policy. READ MORE >>

That's the title of Stanley Fish's blog post, "Think Again," on todays New York Times website. It is based on the numerous responses he received to another posting he did on how Hillary is the target of what he sees as calumnies. READ MORE >>

Stanley Fish is way too preemptive in declaring Hillary the Democratic nominee. While she is certainly the favorite, it's just too early to dismiss Obama given his fund-raising success and favorable polling in the early primary states. READ MORE >>

After Theory By Terry Eagleton (Basic Books, 231 pp., $25)   I. READ MORE >>

I have been reading collections of writings about September 11, and they are wearying: so many bruises so feebly expressed, so many people searching for a poem to protect them. Dickinson #341, perhaps? Literariness is a kind of sedative, I suppose, and in this way it differs from literature. There are circumstances, of course, in which unoriginality of feeling or form is not a shortcoming, in which the really advanced statement is the modest expression of a common sentiment, in which banality is a guarantee of decency. READ MORE >>