Theo Hobson

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Theo Hobson

I managed to sit through most of Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius the other night. I endured luvvies and minor academics and even Cherie Blair, all wide-eyed at the brilliance of their heroine. She was inevitably presented as edgy and funny and brave and ground-breaking and mould-breaking and ball-breaking and oozing girl power. Equally predictably, no one mentioned the key to her writing’s power, to her authorial authority: her moral intensity.

1 month ago | spectator.com.au | Theo Hobson

Alasdair MacIntyre, who died last week, was one of the most influential thinkers of the past 50 years. It is hard to think of any other philosopher writing in the late 20th-century who has had such an impact. He might be less famous than Foucault or Derrida, but it is his conservative brand of postmodernism that launched a fairly coherent intellectual movement.

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Theo Hobson

Alasdair MacIntyre, who died last week, was one of the most influential thinkers of the past 50 years. It is hard to think of any other philosopher writing in the late 20th-century who has had such an impact. He might be less famous than Foucault or Derrida, but it is his conservative brand of postmodernism that launched a fairly coherent intellectual movement. For a few decades its adherents were mostly academics; now it has become politically influential too.

1 month ago | spectator.com.au | Theo Hobson

The Church of England’s various travails and dilemmas – on controversial issues, like sexuality and safeguarding – are on one level beside the point. Even if it managed to solve these problems, the Church’s drift to the margins of our culture looks likely to continue. The really fundamental issue is how the CofE can reverse that drift, how it can renew itself.

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Theo Hobson

The Church of England’s various travails and dilemmas – on controversial issues, like sexuality and safeguarding – are on one level beside the point. Even if it managed to solve these problems, the Church’s drift to the margins of our culture looks likely to continue. The really fundamental issue is how the CofE can reverse that drift, how it can renew itself. This is harder to talk about, as it has little connection with the news cycle.