Some familiarity with the ancient world really does enliven one’s appreciation of the arts and literature of the European tradition and its geographical and cultural penumbra. I was reminded of this recently in an apparently trivial—but, for all that, rather delightful—way. Are there any “benefits of a classical education,” as Hans Gruber puts it in [...]
In his last moments, Brutus voiced a sentiment about the ultimate tragedy of the virtuous life in those evil days, in which the good was punished and the evil rewarded. This does not make virtue worthless for the individual; it just may place him on the losing side. [E]veryone knows that some young bucks among [...]
In Othello, William Shakespeare, the philosopher of everyday life, holds up a mirror to us and shows us what human beings are capable of. Beneath our most pleasantly cultivated exterior, there often lurks a serpent… William Hazlitt is widely recognized as one of the greatest of Shakespearean critics. Yes, there is Dr. Johnson; yes, there [...]
The hedonism of reading good books makes its mark on the meaning of a life, infusing it with a richness that can be had at no dearer a price than that of a library card—which is to say, it can be had for free by anyone who is not so foolish as to fail to [...]
W.H. Auden realized that J.R.R. Tolkien’s greatness was not simply the result of a capacity for the fantastic, but rather that it relied just as much on his scholarly acumen as on his imagination… W.H. Auden was a great admirer of the fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien. Having heard Tolkien’s lectures while an undergraduate at Oxford [...]
The work of editors and commentators is not only an interesting historical curiosity. Though the task of liberating important texts—whether from the dustbin of history, the barricade of a foreign language, or both—goes on behind the scenes and is often thankless, it is indispensable. For without it, there is no tradition at all... In 1915, [...]
If one cannot hope for an informed citizenry—and the evidence is overwhelming that such a hope is futile—one must hope for something else: a formed citizenry. For the remedy for thoughtlessness is not information; it is thought, thought about what man is, what the good man is, what the good society is, what virtues and [...]
Here is the grand fact that Protestant theologians always overlook. They, in reality, always present nature and grace as two antagonistic powers, and suppose the presence of the one must be the physical destruction of the other. Luther and Calvin, weary of the good works, and shrinking from the efforts to acquire the personal virtues [...]