Tocqueville was not a philosopher in the classic sense; he thought of himself as unfortunate not to believe in the promises of the personal God of the Bible. He didn’t think he, as a thinker, had a natural right not to believe. I’m giving some comments in Boston in response to a great essay by [...]
The poet relies upon on a shared understanding that gives his imagination the oxygen to sustain it. The world lacks certitude about its direction, and we want most of all to awaken the poetic powers urgently necessary for the long rebuilding that lies ahead. For the past month or so, I have been doing daily [...]
During this Holy Week, perhaps we can pray that the uncanny pull so many feel toward the ever-after will lead to a deeper reflection on the paradises, earthly and heavenly, from which the fairy stories we enjoy get their point and purpose. One of my favorites passages in Dante’s Purgatorio is when Dante finally reaches [...]
According to Socrates, to save Philosophy, to save young souls destined for greatness, to save human society itself, the true, philosophic nature must be freed from the corruptive influences that have formed him and receive the best education. The soul must be turned around. I forgot that we were playing and spoke rather intensely. For, [...]
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 [...]
C.S. Lewis' obscure essay, ‘A Note on Jane Austen,’ shows that it is Austen’s humor and humility that captures Lewis’ fancy and that directs us to a Lenten lesson. In his rule Saint Benedict advises that each monk should have a holy book to read during Lent. When searching for a holy book, we are [...]
Music pervades our lives and always has. It has taken you outside of yourselves and taken you deep within. It has been associated with things divine. There comes a time in every year when I find myself saying to a friend or a prospective student that this is a very musical College [Convocation, St. John’s [...]
Friedrich Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, targets Christianity, in the form most accessible to him: Catholicism. He critiques the virtues it fosters and the religion’s effects, particularly highlighting Christianity’s stance on suffering. On the other hand, Martin Luther King Jr. rejects Nietzsche’s accusations of Christian notions encouraging mediocrity and weakness. Despite the philosophers' adherence [...]
Huckleberry Finn is no hero, though he does symbolize the American conscience at the time Mark Twain wrote, or at least the conscience Twain hoped for. Yes, "Huckleberry Finn" is a coming-of-age tale and a social criticism and satire, but it also asks crucial questions: Who actually changes? What type of American will change? Huckleberry [...]
In taking his autobiographical protagonist through hell, Winston Brady does many things that would, I believe, have pleased Dante Alighieri. Like Dante’s "Inferno," Brady’s "Inferno" tests the will and courage of its hero, forcing him to wrestle with his American identity and legacy, to understand the grave nature of sin, and to seek repentance from [...]
If the "Vita Nuova" had been the only major work Dante had made, this work alone would have earned him the reputation as a great poet of Western Civilization. It is well-known that Dante is one of the greatest poets in Western Civilization. His magnum opus, The Divine Comedy, is considered one of the crowning [...]
“The Trial by Existence” is an example of Robert Frost’s strong and brilliant reworking of Dante’s poetic tradition in his own work. He incorporates many of Dante’s images, but he also pushes past the ending silence of "Paradiso" by making the incarnate Christ the sight at the top of the mountain. But God's own descent [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien believed that fairy-stories hold up a mirror to man, showing us ourselves. The mirror is not, however, any ordinary mirror; it is an extraordinary mirror, a magical or elven mirror, which doesn’t merely show us what we look like, but who we are, and not merely who we are, but who we should [...]
The protagonist of the film “Groundhog Day” discovers that what makes life worth living is not immediate gratification, or moral autonomy, or flippant cynicism, or self-deification, but rather encountering those things that give meaning and purpose to our lives. Today, we are experiencing nothing less than a renaissance of classical education throughout the United States, [...]