Philosophy of Philip Rieff

William G. Batchelder IV is an Associate Professor of History at Waynesburg University, USA.Michael P. Harding is a Professor of Philosophy at Montgomery College, USA.

We are experiencing ... a slow-motion clash of visions: one which looks outward to the logos; another which finds meaning emerging from within. We need some sense of hope that psychological man does not extinguish what is best about us. To find hope, we must begin with understanding. To find understanding, we might begin with Philip Rieff and with Rieffian thought as developed in this excellent book.

• 1. Editor’s Introduction: Of Deathworks and Sacred Orders, William G. Batchelder IV (Waynesburg University, USA) and Michael P. Harding (Montgomery College, USA)Part I: Rieff, Philosophy, Religion & Metaphysics2. “You should be closest to him in heart when you resist him”: Rieff’s Use of Nietzsche in Deathworks”, Michael P. Harding (Montgomery College, USA)3. Self-Knowledge After Rieff, Christopher Anadale (St Mary’s University, USA)4. The Peculiar God of Philip Rieff, William G. Batchelder IV (Waynesburg University, USA)5. Democratic Drift and the Therapeutic Deathwork, Paul J. Diduch (University of Colorado, USA)6. Rieff, Strauss, and Heidegger: Sacred Sociology and the Prophecy of a New Social Order, Kevin Slack (Hillsdale College, USA)Part II: Rieff and Cultural Change 7. Freud, Culture, and the Function of Political Elites: Philip Rieff on the “Virtuosi of Creation and Decreation.”, Ethan Alexander-Davey (Campbell University, USA)8. Philip Rieff and the Resistance to Totalitarian Imagination, Joshua Bowman (Center for Social Flourishing, USA)9. The Sexual Revolution, Sacred Order and Total Revolution: Philip Rieff and Augusto Del Noce on Wilhelm Reich, Carl Trueman (Grove City College, USA)10. Philip Rieff’s Critique of Oscar Wilde, Expressive Individualism, and the Religion of the Self, Jacob Wolf (Princeton University, USA)11. Philip Rieff and the Politics of the Cold War, Yiftach Ofek (Shalem College, Jerusalem)12. Beloved Community and Black Power: An Application of Philip Rieff’s Theory to the Divergence of King and Carmichael in Civil Rights History, James Patterson (Ave Maria University, USA) and William G. Batchelder IV (Waynesburg University, USA)13. Locating the Sacred: Notes Toward a Rieffian Sensibility, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn (Syracuse University, USA)