Robert M. Woods is the Headmaster at the Covenant School in Dallas, Texas, and teaches in the graduate program at Faulkner University. His work has been published in several journals and he writes regularly for his website Musings of a Christian Humanist.
The philosophical roots of the liberal arts can free students from a life of slavery spent spelunking in the cave of ignorance, trivialities, and the merely menial...
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Robert M. Woods as he...
This past year I read or re-read the following that reminded me of the permanent things that inform the good, true, and beautiful:
Daniel Taylor's Death Comes for The Deconstructionist: A unique murder mystery that also...
He was among the brightest students I have taught. We had just finished talking about how and why Freudian or Marxists interpretations of reality are suffocating in their reductionistic interpretations. The conversation moved to the writings of...
In literary terms, Gothic typically refers to that frame of mind and soul that embraces the strange, the mysterious, and the irrational—specifically, terror. Gothic novels are often set in the dark and in the wild. This is...
Let's begin with the film's single greatest obstacle: the culture Philip Rieff described as "the death culture" is not likely to assemble en masse to pay for viewing a morality tale. A central message in this film...
Sounding like a modern, the Greek writer Callimachus once penned an epigram where he quipped, “a large book is a great misfortune.” Does not the legitimacy of such an assertion depend on the author and...
I have never concealed the truth that I am a Trekkie. Additionally, I have never hidden my conviction that I am a traditionalist and a conservative in the way defined by Russell Kirk. While there are thematic and...
Mortimer Adler
For years, I would begin my Introduction to Humanities course by trying to clear up some muddled ideas about the term humanities. Of course, most of my students did not get the weightiness...
And if we should know what government is, we should observe, in Thucydides' laconic account of the revolution at Corcyra, what happens when it fails.– Stringfellow Barr
Most keen observers would say that our...
Tertullian
The incarnation calls us to the things of this world. So when we consider the following quotes about the liberal arts we must begin and end there:
What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?– Tertullian
“What has Ingeld...
I was talking with a friend a few days ago, and he asked me what I thought about a particular news story. He was surprised when I responded that I knew a good bit less than he did...
Robert Hutchins
Studying and leading conversations on the Great Books for more than twenty years still produces that sense of awe and wonder, especially when I discover a new tool to aide in the...
Reading wisdom literature in any age is wise. Reading wise sayings in a foolish age will mark one quickly as a contrarian, but being wise where folly is as pervasive as oxygen is essential for survival. Of...
Andrew Klavan has started writing young adult fiction and for a Christian publishing house. While this may be a bad move for some writers, Klavan has navigated the move very well. In truth, Klavan is a fine popular contemporary novelist....
