originally published 11/30/2023

D. C. Schindler, author of God and the City: An Essay in Political Metaphysics (St. Augustine’s Press, 2023), explains his journey to his current interest in political philosophy, with a particular focus on the nature of freedom. Schindler argues that political order cannot be disentangled from the social, and that fundamental questions of what humans are and what the good is cannot be bracketed from politics. This goes against the modern claim that human communities can be constructed without an understanding or agreement of what humans actually are. Schindler believes that questions related to the human and the good must no longer be ignored or “privatized” but must be reckoned with in modern political philosophy. He asserts that we are at a place culturally in the West in which people across the political spectrum seem to have a sense that the world is spinning out of control. Schindler believes this is because we are confronting more fully the nihilism that Nietzsche predicted long ago. Christianity is the synthesis of the best of the philosophy and theology of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, Schindler believes, and it is in Christianity that the fullness of reality makes sense. Many are now rejecting the reality of the world as it truly is, to such an extent that it is daunting even to begin to know how to respond. However, Schindler and Ken Myers agree that there are reasons for hope even in the “small things” of life, such as a beautiful music composition or a well-ordered home, because in things such as these, we participate in their Christocentric reality, or presence, whether we recognize it or not.

30 minutes

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