Thomas More: Virtuous Statesman

By |2023-07-06T00:23:49-05:00February 6th, 2023|Categories: Books, Christendom, Cicero, Classics, Protestant Reformation, St. Thomas More, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Several centuries before Edmund Burke, Thomas More warned against theorizing about the perfect society and advised statesmen to do their best with the form of government their people have passed on to them. Though he himself favored one form of government over another, he admitted that we rarely have the power to create the government [...]

A Conservatism of Joy, Gratitude, and Love

By |2023-07-10T10:46:20-05:00December 18th, 2022|Categories: Cicero, Classics, Conservatism, Essential, Featured, Russell Kirk, Support The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays, W. Winston Elliott III|

Will you join us in our mission to pursue Truth, Goodness, and Beauty by making a gift to us today? I am yearning for conservative voices offering great depth, thoughtfulness, and dare we say, grace. Is it possible to be strong in conservative principles and to present those principles in a manner which is attractive, [...]

Socrates’ Ethics

By |2022-09-21T16:29:17-05:00September 21st, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Philosophy, Senior Contributors, Socrates, Western Civilization|

Though we often associate the Greeks with the “order of the mind,” we should note that Socrates had a deeply spiritual and theological side, which embraced divine reason as the language of the living and the dead. When someone—and, in 2022, it’s likely nearly everyone in the world of academia and in the world at [...]

The Imaginative Conservative: 11 Years of Preserving & Advancing

By |2021-07-09T13:58:09-05:00July 9th, 2021|Categories: Aristotle, Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Reason, Russell Kirk, Senior Contributors, The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays|

What we held back in 2010 we still hold today: “The Imaginative Conservative” is not meant to be one voice, but many voices forming one voice. The ideologue and the conformist, we equally despise. We want excellence, argument, inquiry. We wish to provide, above all, a safe haven for reason and reasoned passion: We wish [...]

Conserving Today or in 499 B.C.

By |2022-06-22T10:00:16-05:00July 21st, 2020|Categories: Aristotle, Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Conservatism, Culture, Edmund Burke, Politics, Russell Kirk, Senior Contributors, Socrates, St. Thomas More|

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 [...]

A Decade of Hope-Filled Conservatism

By |2020-12-23T00:12:05-06:00July 9th, 2020|Categories: Christianity, Cicero, Conservatism, Essential, Hope, Russell Kirk, Timeless Essays, W. Winston Elliott III|

I pray that The Imaginative Conservative offers a conservatism of thought and imagination in the hope of preserving the best of the Western tradition and restoring the virtue of our Republic. After a decade of faithful effort we continue to persevere and pray. […]

The Pagan Roots of the Christian Logos

By |2020-01-10T09:38:29-06:00January 7th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Cicero, Classics, Great Books, Liberal Learning, Virgil|

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 by [...]

How to Think about God: A Pagan “Mere Christianity”

By |2019-12-14T16:06:27-06:00December 14th, 2019|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Christianity, Cicero, Culture, Great Books, Religion, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization|

Princeton University Press’s most recent volume, “How to Think About God,” is a handbook of paganism, an antique “Mere Christianity.” While none of its wisdom will get you to Heaven, it will certainly help you lead a better and more fulfilling life here and now. Over the last several years, Princeton University Press has been [...]

Cicero’s Republic: The Duty to Make Whole That Which Is Broken

By |2020-09-01T12:55:53-05:00June 27th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Cicero's Republic Series, Civil Society, Senior Contributors|

In “On Duties,” Cicero throws down the gauntlet, defining one of the most important aspects of Western civilization: There is no greater philosophy than the discovery of what our duties are to one another, to our communities, and to our God. A divorce, the death of a beloved daughter, the absence of his only son, [...]

Cicero: No Slave of Plato

By |2019-06-07T09:36:17-05:00June 6th, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Cicero's Republic Series, Civilization, Great Books, Senior Contributors|

Of all the writers who came at the end of the Roman Republic and at the beginning of the Empire, most make note of the loss of traditional morality. It was Cicero who advocated an adherence to nature and order by recognizing the proper meaning of a thing within and around the very existence of [...]

True Law is Right Reason in Agreement With Nature

By |2019-06-06T10:13:21-05:00June 2nd, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Cicero's Republic Series, Civilization, Great Books, Senior Contributors|

Cicero’s “On the Republic” has influenced the West for centuries, calling to harmony the various aspects of government. In his call to harmony, Cicero portrays a republic in which a proper action demands the balance of the three faculties of man, as well as one in which true law is understood as coming not from [...]

The Natural and the Foreign: Republics from Rome to America

By |2020-11-16T16:59:46-06:00May 31st, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Cicero's Republic Series, Civil Society, Civilization, Senior Contributors|

According to Cicero, the Republic follows the paths of nature and god in all its activities. As such, the true statesman—like the gardener—knows when to plant, when to fertilize, when to water, when to weed, when to prune, and when to harvest. Yet there is still, to be certain, a season for everything. And, as [...]

Cicero’s Republic: Three in One

By |2019-10-10T14:57:16-05:00May 20th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Cicero's Republic Series, Civil Society, Government, Senior Contributors|

A republic, by its very essence, imitates the highest of creation: man endowed with understanding and free will. Yet, in this greatest of strengths also resides the deepest of weaknesses. When the people enjoy true liberty, they often fail to identify its source, admiring its effects rather than its causes. In particular, they misunderstand the [...]

Cicero’s Republic: Implanted in the Nature of Man

By |2019-12-26T17:19:05-06:00May 17th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Cicero, Cicero's Republic Series, Civil Society, Civilization, Senior Contributors|

The best society, Cicero argues, cultivates us as free individuals for the benefit of the community. Virtue exists in every being, but few realize it or cultivate it. Yet, it is what makes men, men, and allows them to be free. Usually remembered for his political triumphs and defeats as well as for his stunning [...]

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