The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry

Mark Mitchell, Nathan Schlueter

• Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781497636415
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Biographies littéraires

A striking contribution to the conversation that is conservatism
Wendell Berry—poet, novelist, essayist, critic, farmer—has won the admiration of Americans from all walks of life and from across the political spectrum. His writings treat an extraordinary range of subjects, including politics, economics, ecology, farming, work, marriage, religion, and education. But as this enlightening new book shows, such diverse writings are united by a humane vision that finds its inspiration in the great moral and literary tradition of the West. In The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, Mark T. Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter bring together a distinguished roster of writers to critically engage Berry's ideas. The volume features original contributions from Rod Dreher, Anthony Esolen, Allan Carlson, Richard Gamble, Jason Peters, Anne Husted Burleigh, Patrick J. Deneen, Caleb Stegall, Luke Schlueter, Matt Bonzo, Michael Stevens, D. G. Hart, Mark Shiffman, and William Edmund Fahey, as well as a classic piece by Wallace Stegner. Together, these authors situation Berry's ideas within the larger context of conservative thought. His vision stands for reality in all its facets and against all reductive "isms"—for intellect against intellectualism, individuality against individualism, community against communitarianism, liberty against libertarianism. Wendell Berry calls his readers to live lives of gratitude, responsibility, friendship, and love—notions that, as this important new book makes clear, should be at the heart of a thoughtful and coherent conservatism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Wendell Berry, a Placed Person
• Chapter 2: Marriage in the Membership
• Chapter 3: Not Safe, nor Private, nor Free: Wendell Berry on Sexual Love and Procreation
• Chapter 4: An Education for Membership: Wendell Berry on Schools and Communities
• Chapter 5: And for This Food, We Give Thanks
• Chapter 6: The Third Landscape: Wendell Berry and American Conservation
• Chapter 7: Wendell Berry and Democratic Self-Governance
• Chapter 8: First They Came for the Horses: Wendell Berry and a Technology of Wholeness
• Chapter 9: Living Peace in the Shadow of War: Wendell Berry's Dogged Pacifism
• Chapter 10: Wendell Berry's Unlikely Case for Conservative Christianity
• Chapter 11: The Rediscovery of Oikonomia
• Chapter 12: Wendell Berry's Defense of a Truly Free Market
• Chapter 13: The Restoration of Propriety: Wendell Berry and the British Distributists
• Chapter 14: The Integral Imagination of Wendell Berry
• Chapter 15: Earth and Flesh Sing Together: The Place of Wendell Berry's Poetry in His Vision of the Human
• Chapter 16: If Dante Were a Kentucky Barber
• Chapter 17: Wendell Berry: A Latter-Day St. Benedict
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• The Works of Wendell Berry: A Selected Bibliography
• About the Authors
• Index
• Copyright