a new journal - ANAMNESIS

A Journal for the Study of Tradition, Place, and ‘Things Divine’

Editorial Statement

ANAMNESIS is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, academic journal dedicated to the study of Tradition, Place, and ‘Things Divine.’ [The] journal will strive to avoid ideological commitments and, instead, be open to diverse scholarship relating to our major themes. Tradition signals the importance of custom and our relation to the past. In this sense, it can be a guide to human conduct and a constituent of rationality.

Place is an existential category, like the human body, that connotes focus on the limits of human scale, the value of human attachment to historical community and locality, and the value of human connection to nature and the land. Issues of agrarian values, decentralization, localism, and other such concerns are themes that the journal hopes to explore.

’Things Divine’ is Cicero’s phrase, and it is part of his famous claim that “wisdom” entails “knowledge of things divine and human.” The expression is intended to encompass a broad swath of meanings. On the one hand, it connotes openness to theological and philosophical inquiry into what is thought to be ultimate and unconditioned; and so we welcome exploration of topics related to Logos, natural law theory, and other such themes. On the other hand, we are also open to the mythos view of culture—i.e., that many basic truths about reality, which people experience, are often expressed in myths.

With respect to possible thinkers whose work might fit well with the journal’s concerns, they are legion. Here are just a few: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Charles Taylor, Edmund Burke, Stanely Hauerwas, T.S. Eliot, Wendell Berry, Richard Weaver, Rene Girard, Lord Acton, Alasdair MacIntyre, Christopher Lasch, Leo Strauss, Allen Tate, John Randolph of Roanoke, David Hume, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Nisbet, Alexis de Tocqueville, Eric Voegelin, John Taylor of Caroline, and Michael Oakeshott. This list is far from exhaustive, and many other fine thinkers from across the ideological spectrum could be included and will be welcomed.