The Issue at a Glance

The Razor’s Edge (10.1007/s12129-012-9277-8)

Robin Fox, Rutgers University

Today’s liberal democratic societies “are still fragile experiments” that exist “on a razor’s edge.” Robin Fox avers that “far from being natural outcomes of human nature,” they are the “heroic attempts to defy human nature.” Evoking his own “socialization into Western culture in a northern provincial town in [mid-twentieth century] England,” Prof. Fox emphasizes the importance of teaching Western culture, insisting we must do so with openness to avoid repeating or perpetuating “its many and serious flaws” as well as to “defend and preserve” its virtues.

The Great Tradition (10.1007/s12129-011-9266-3)

Eva Brann, St. John’s College, Annapolis

Why should we study the West?“Like most defenses of the obvious,” reflects Eva Brann, this question “is fraught with antitheses. We should study ‘the West’ because it is ours—and everybody’s; because