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Why Are We So Metaphysically Beleaguered?

Eric Scheske
4 min readFeb 16, 2022

A review of Bradley Lowell Stone’s Robert Nisbet: Communitarian Traditionalist (ISI Books, 2000)

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

G.K. Chesterton’s economics parallels Robert Nisbet’s sociology.

I think that’s a fair statement, and it’s borne out in this debut volume of The Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Library of Modern Thinkers, a series of books meant to distill the essential thought of twentieth-century thinkers in short and highly-readable books (a goal accomplished admirably by Mr. Stone in this book).

Robert Nisbet (1913–1996) was a sociologist at California Berkeley whose lifework resolved around one grand theme: the importance of communities, those human groups that spring up to fill perennial human needs and solve problems,” such as families, voluntary associations, and churches.

People need community. Community, Nisbet once wrote, “springs from some of the powerful needs of human nature.” If communities are attacked or undermined, individuals will be harmed.

This firmly-held belief animated one of the main “sub-themes” of Nisbet’s work: To the extent the centralized state becomes more powerful, communities atrophy.

This, of course, makes sense, if we keep in mind Nisbet’s primary definition of “community” as groups that solve problems. To the extent the…

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Eric Scheske
Eric Scheske

Written by Eric Scheske

Former editor of Gilbert Mag and columnist for NC Register and Busted Halo. Freelance for many print pubs. Publishes here every Monday+. Paid Medium Member.

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