Growing Wings to Overcome Gravity: Criticism As the Pursuit of Virtue

In Growing Wings to Overcome Gravity, George A. Panichas continues his criticism of life, literature, and thought. As with his three earlier works of criticism over the past twenty-five years—The Reverent Discipline (1974), The Courage of Judgement (1982), and The Critic as Conservator (1992)—Panichas seeks to overcome the crises of modernism in which we agonize, and to attain the promise of spiritual and moral order.

The overarching critical emphasis is on human possibility, on the spiritual recovery and revitalization of American society and culture, especially the republic of arts and letters. This volume contains Panichas's literary, critical, and cultural affirmations, stressing as it does the flow of aspiration and the power of ascent. At the same time, it does not fail to confront the power of the abyss of negations, so pervasive and dominant in the modern world, and of the profane critical spirit that flourishes in the academy and the intellectual community.

The title, derived from Plato's Phaedrus, intends to point the reader to the quest for beauty, wisdom, and goodness. The ultimate goal of the book, therefore, is silmultaneously restorative and transcendent, and in active contention with those forces and conditions in modern civilization that, like the pull of gravity, diminish the moral and ethical life.