James Davison Hunter is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia. He is also the publisher of The Hedgehog Review. His many books include Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis, Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality (with Paul Nedelisky), Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America and The Death of Character: Moral Education without Good or Evil.
Our contemporary culture is a culture of nihilism without nihilists.
The young will be formed. The question is how.
King’s arguments for freedom and justice were not only constitutional but also profoundly ethical.
Quantification is more than merely a means of communication and persuasion in a fragmented culture.
Only the human species is capable of grasping, analyzing, and interpreting signs as symbols.
The question now is whether contemporary American democracy can even be fixed.
The nature and purposes of the family, education, science, faith, business, the media, and government itself are all disputed at a fundamental level.
The characteristics that have made adulthood recognizable and desirable have been deinstitutionalized.