Fashion sits atop the moral problem of vanity. As per V&R Chapter 1, sometime in the eighteenth century vanity gained positive moral standing, albeit only in a nuanced way. The core problem of vanity is the over-estimation of self in face of higher and abiding truths: whether our fascination with glamorous refinement (fashion) competes with…
In light of the recent Annual Andy Warhol Lecture at Loyola last week, I thought a brief comment on Kendrick Lamar’s new song Humble might be useful. A principal claim in V&R belongs to Max Scheler: either you venerate God or some other god. This point is so important because one of the things…
Yesterday Loyola University Maryland hosted the Annual Andy Warhol Lecture sponsored by the Committee on Catholic Social Thought. I will give a brief summary. The theme was music and began with the observation that even young toddlers dance on hearing music (for those familiar with this blog know that Huizinga bells were going off…
Over the coming weeks I want to do a few posts on the use philosophers make of the idea of cloth in their thinking. I will do a post on Edmund Burke soon but for now I want to mark Easter by using Erich Przywara – discussed at V&R Chapter 8 – to explain a…
Edmund Burke is one of Britain’s towering intellectual figures, a man, who, like his contemporary Adam Smith, continues to impact our moral and political order. I have spoken about Burke here: http://www.libertylawsite.org/2016/09/07/burke-and-burkinis/. At the heart of his thinking is the idea of inheritance, that you and I live by the grace of what he…
*Special Note: This is a close to the series of recent posts on natural law prompted by a set of luncheons at Loyola University Maryland. The final luncheon was guided by Scott Roninger of Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. What follows is an outline of his presentation with additions made by myself to explore fashion…
Over the last month, I have posted on natural law and how its approach to ethics can help us think about costume and body modification. St. John Paul II made a distinctive contribution to natural law thinking. I argued in Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics (2005) that this contribution brilliantly develops aspects of Aquinas’s…
Our Baltimore garage poster is, of course, a cheeky poster. Professor Kass lays great stress on the Ten Commandments as the foundation of a community. Does the poster mean that the Second Amendment protects this community established by the commandments? And, if so, is it arguing that the Second Amendment is a crucial clarification of…
*Special note: This post is a highly modified version of an essay I wrote in response to Leon Kass’s work on the Ten Commandments. Professor Kass was being honoured by the Fr. Ernest Fortin Foundation and I was asked to deliver a response essay to Kass’s reflections. Leon Kass is a leading American intellectual, author…
The corset is making a comeback. Some worry there are political implications, that corsets objectify by pushing the female body to “perverse proportions” (https://www.wsj.com/articles/waist-management-test-driving-springs-corset-trend-1488471042). How to assess the morality of “perverse proportions”? In a previous post, I noted Adam Smith’s aesthetic objections to the corset (http://www.ethicsoffashion.com/adam-smith-on-corsets/). Recalling that for Smith beauty and morality…