Classical educators agree on the ends of liberal education, namely, the possession of the true, good, and beautiful, wisdom, and the development of the intellectual and imaginative powers that enable their attainment. But the pedagogical means to these ends are less obvious. Here is an attempt to set out a set of principles and [...]
The end of liberal education is not the learning of settled truths, and the inculcation of useful habits for obtaining useful goods, but the perfection of the human as human, not, primarily, as worker, citizen, or even believer... While people with backgrounds more religious and those with more secular mindsets may disagree about what gives [...]
If we want to live in a world where there are only means to other means with no end in sight, where only the kitsch consumerist monuments of selfish human will and desire exist, where all knowledge is ordered to use, then we must say goodbye to liberal education. It is necessary for the [...]
Glenn W. Olsen’s The Turn to Transcendence is a must-read for us who desire to topple the dictatorship of relativism and culture of death, and replace it with the only alternative: a civilization of love turned to the Face of Transcendence revealed in Jesus Christ... The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the [...]
Dear Graduating Seniors: As Simone Weil teaches us in her essay on the right use of school studies, the purpose of academic study is to become ever more attentive to reality, to God, as He is found reflected in the world, and truly present in our neighbor and in our hearts. Indeed, this is [...]
It would seem that in no way can reading Plato be necessary for salvation, since Jesus Christ alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Yet Plato teaches us the essential spiritual and metaphysical truths, as well as the mystical habit of mind and soul, without which Faith and Grace are stillborn in our [...]
Why did the centralization of power occur so quickly in America? Why have those genuinely common-good communities that were supposed to have worked hand-in-glove with the federal government suffered so much under the American Regime?… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Thaddeus Kozinski as he explores [...]
Modernity, by God’s grace, may be the site of a new synthesis, the transcending of stale categories of thought and practice, in which a new Christendom can emerge, one in which the reign of God in His glory and love emerges side-by-side with the full dignity and flourishing of man… The Immanent Frame and [...]
A Catholic, liberal-arts college’s course of study, being an integrated one ordered to and by natural and supernatural wisdom, is an excellent apprenticeship into the contemplative life, which does not replace the active life, but only crowns it and makes it worthwhile… Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious [...]
Agnosticism is the ultimate stupidity and wickedness because it doesn’t so much reject God as ignore him. If I were God, I’d be more angry at such cold indifference than anything else… “Either God is, or he is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. [Remember that [...]
Our civilization needs zealous and dedicated young men and women to convert the barbarians. However, because the barbaric culture is pervasive, we are all barbarians now to a certain extent, and thus, we must first civilize our own souls… Nowadays the devil has made such a mess of everything in the system of life [...]
Just as the good philosopher needs to be a master of the Christian philosophical tradition and adept at the dialectical, analytical, synthetic, and imaginative skills with which his trade is plied, the good Christian college also requires a rigorous and sophisticated curriculum and pedagogy firmly rooted in the Christian philosophical tradition... As Alasdair MacIntyre has [...]
If you have an open mind and inquiring heart, you will recognize something incomparably wonderful in Plato’s writings, if only their profound resonance with Christian teachings. The Cave is a masterful metaphor for the soul trapped in sin... “All education is conversion” —Pierre Hadot I. Why Read Plato? We know as Catholics, from the Divine [...]
A.G. Sertillanges sees the intellectual life as essentially a vocation, and in the most spiritual sense of the word. It is, as he says, “a sacred call”… “More than ever before thought is waiting for men, and men for thought. The world is in danger for lack of life-giving maxims. We are in a train [...]