Social-justice shrinks | The Spectator

German philosophy and German wine: a sumptuous pairing

The best teacher I ever had in graduate school — or anywhere else, for that matter — was also the most dedicated. Most semesters he would offer a not-for-credit seminar one evening a week at his house. There, some half-a-dozen fledgling philosophy students would congregate, bottle of German wine in hand, to parse slowly through one text: Heidegger on Nietzsche, say, or Bishop Tempier’s condemnation of 219 propositions in 1277, a once-famous event that signaled the eclipse of the Aristotelian world view in favor of the Christian. We devoted one full semester to De li non aliud, “Concerning the Not-Other” (i.e., God) by the mystically inclined Renaissance philosopher, churchman and diplomat Nicholas of Cusa (1400-1464).

Sean Thomas

Crossing the border for margaritas at La Roca

There are many different reasons to like a bar. Because it does the best cocktails. Because it is the cheapest around. Or the most expensive. Because it’s a great place to meet people for sex. Because all your mates go there. Because it is ubertrendy. The colorful, ornate, majolica-tiled, lushly colonnaded bar restaurant of La Roca, in Nogales, Mexico, isn’t really any of these things. And it certainly isn’t ultra-convenient: you must cross a border to get there from Nogales, Arizona. Why do this?

Timothy Jacobson

Jimmy Kelly’s Steakhouse keeps a simple, good thing going

I have written before in these pages about declining standards in the restaurant world, which has less to do with the food than with the whole “experience” of dining out: the lack of tablecloths, the napkin-wrapped silverware, the to-go boxes, the slovenly informality of staff and customers alike. I stand by every word of it, which is why discovery, or rediscovery, of rare holdout occasions, in this diner-out, is sheer joy. One such exception, long known to me, Jimmy Kelly’s Steakhouse in Nashville, is exceptional in another sense, too. It has been in operation without interruption and under the same family ownership for eighty-nine years.

Food & Drink