Socrates in the Underworld: On Plato’s Gorgias, by Nalin Ranasinghe (192 pages, St. Augustine Press, 2009) Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Peter Augustine Lawler as he reflects on how Socrates models both rightly-ordered eros and logos, in contrast to the Stoics and Sophists. —W. Winston Elliott III, [...]
We know that Socrates was accused of introducing new gods and of corrupting the youth. But what was Socrates’ true position concerning the gods? Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join the late Nalin Ranasinghe, as he analyzes the essence of piety as expressed in Plato’s Euthyphro. —W. [...]
Playwright David Lane has graced the Christian community with a formal, blank-verse play that takes up the war of gods and demons. “Dido: The Tragedy of a Woman” retells the tragic tale of the “Aeneid,” but with some dramatic plot twists that allow it to function both as a timeless meditation on the universal issues [...]
Insights into the nature of Aristotle’s philosophy confirm Edward Feser’s detailed argument that Aristotle, under the gentle care of later scholastically-minded thinkers, turns out to be right about more things than most of us dare hope. Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science, by Edward Feser (Editiones Scholasticae, 515 pages, 2019) [...]
Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is many things: several stories, some bleak, some uplifting, ranging from the creation of the world to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. Yet in its most fundamental form, his epic love poem of many stories reveals deep truths in its poetic proclamations of the transformative power, and spirit, of love. Ovid was [...]
The sheer power and magnitude of Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal,” the fruit of his recent conversion to a vague form of Christianity, shook the resolve and philosophy of his long-time disciple, Friedrich Nietzsche, to their foundations. Having recently watched a superb and breathtaking performance of Wagner’s last and perhaps greatest work, I feel constrained to [...]
What hath Shakespeare to do with the politics of regime change? Given the long and unsuccessful history of what we call regime change, from the installment of the Shah over Persia, to the Bay of Pigs, to Libya, one questions the sanity of anyone who routinely calls for “regime change.” Yet long before our [...]
John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is an intense poem, a passionate poem, an erotic poem. From the visual imagery to the very descriptive language Milton uses to portray his lively scenes to us, there is no escaping the reality of the life force that moves his poem. Why, however, did Milton choose to write such [...]
When a fascinating chaos has been observed enough to reveal patterns that allow prediction, the human mind is ready to ask, “Why?” So it is with the cosmos. Tracing the answers to this question throughout history allows us to understand the development of cosmology and its effects on moral imagination. Like most of the [...]
Paul Elmer More offered one of the single best critiques of Friedrich Nietzsche, delving deeply into the essence of his thought, in both attraction and repulsion, finding that it is in the attempt to reconcile the love and apprehension about Nietzsche that best allows one to understand him. “Who has ever been concerned for [...]
One of the most defining aspects of our humanity is love. We are creatures of affectivity made in love for love. It is the recognition of this fact that makes Homer so eternal: his heroes are heroes of love. In a cosmos governed by lust, strife, and war, the loving deeds of our Homeric heroes stand [...]
Though originally a Jew, St. John was clearly a Hellenized Jew who might have taken his own concepts from either the pagans or the Jews. As he describes the Incarnate Word in his Gospel, the Incarnation resembles most closely the Memra of the Jews. As I discussed in my previous essay, the Pagan Logos [...]
Any understanding of human dignity in the twenty-first century demands an understanding of the Judeo-Christian Logos (Memra in Hebrew). Without it, there is only chaos and darkness, dispiritedness and confusion, blackness and the abyss. One only has to witness the evil sown by the attempted coup against the Judeo-Christian Logos in the last century [...]
John Stubbs should be commended for his biography of the great Anglo-Irish satirist and clergyman. The work is not merely a biography; it is also an account that details the turbulence of the times in which Jonathan Swift lived, painting lively portraits of the many figures and personalities with whom he interacted. Jonathan Swift: The [...]