This book is full of observations about friendship—discerningly borrowed and observantly original; it is a credible descendant of those wonders of human perspicacity, Aristotle’s books on friendship. One of those borrowed observations is that “the point of being friends is to charm each other.” Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs by Gary [...]
Learning and teaching are mysterious processes. To understand them fully would mean to discover the secret of our lives. For we are, perhaps above anything else, learning and teaching animals. What I have to speak about, briefly and in a most elementary way, is what both learning and teaching mean and do not mean. Learning [...]
The boy I saw fishing was enjoying a moment of solitude—a state of being alone that seems a luxury in a churning world agitated with digital waves. It made me realize that in leisure, we open ourselves to receive God and take confidence in trusting the mysterious and fragmentary. Be at leisure – and know [...]
Great books introduce us to ideas and to ways of looking at the world that are new to us. They provide a refreshing distance from the trends, fashions, tastes, opinions, and political correctness of our current culture. Great books invite us to put aside for a while our way of looking at the world and [...]
If all men truly desire by nature to know, as Aristotle claims, then a human society in which evidence is ignored or quashed or in which truth is a commodity cannot but destroy men—and itself. Those ideologies that are plaguing us are fruits of the refusal to heed the natural desire to know. The basics [...]
Professor Agnes Callard is admirable in her unwillingness to cancel Aristotle. In light of recent events, she might find his views are not so much prejudiced as they are realistic, and, on that note, timeless, unlike the egalitarian utopias which liberals are always chasing. The philosopher had a disposition toward the world around him which [...]
As Robert R. Reilly explains in “America on Trial,” the United States restored the founding of government based on reason in a Constitution that produced the most successful government experiment in history. If the American Founding was a rational and social success, why has the American experiment now come under modern attack? America on Trial: [...]
In times of chaos, it’s profoundly necessary to remember those who have come before us and the innumerable sacrifices they made. Each of these great men, whatever his individual faults, sought to live according to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. They preserved, and they conserved. As a way of perceiving and a habit [...]
Across our nation, people have been asked to self-quarantine, and guiding these efforts are the parameters defining which businesses are “essential.” Many of these guidelines are as expected, but included among them are “space and aerospace” industries—an odd inclusion by many standards. But I find that the space and aerospace industries are essential to humanity [...]
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) Philosophy [...]
Time is not a being, a thing, or a substance in the world, nor does it operate as a power, a force, or a destiny in our life. It has no external existence; the word “time” is used by a sort of obtuse poetry for processes that have better names of their own. Here is [...]
Russell Kirk thought that because justice is rooted in nature and because in its perfection transcends all time and space, one can innately observe virtue in the actions of wise men. Such observation of those we admire might be the best teacher in our current day, serving as a reminder of what has always been [...]
Stewart Umphrey’s “Complexity and Analysis” presents a sober analysis of ways of going beyond oneself, especially in love; its conclusion presents the union of integrity with transcendence in the “sober madness of philosophy.” His careful descriptions and distinctions trace out incompleteness as a human condition. Those of our alumni who had really good Republic seminars [...]
It is essential that each new generation understand the meaning of the United States Constitution. Without an adequate understanding of the Constitution’s moral and cultural prerequisites, Democrats and Republicans will lack the moral and imaginative qualities necessary to cooperate; hence free government, which is dependent on inner ethical control, will be imperiled. If civil society [...]