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 [...]
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 [...]
Virtue is what the good city aims to achieve as part of the common good. Since humans are social animals and creatures of actions, the call to cultivate virtue within civil society is a fundamental aspect of the good society and the good regime... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the [...]
If one cannot hope for an informed citizenry—and the evidence is overwhelming that such a hope is futile—one must hope for something else: a formed citizenry. For the remedy for thoughtlessness is not information; it is thought, thought about what man is, what the good man is, what the good society is, what virtues and [...]
Habits, mores, manners, and customs should prove more important in a republic than the law… “With Cicero fell the republic.”—Russell Kirk As one of my grand Hillsdale colleagues, Dr. Stephen Smith, once said to me, there has never been a serious reform or renaissance in Western Civilization since the fall of the Roman Republic without [...]
To attain virtue in solitude defeats the communitarian instincts of human nature. The avenue of politics is one of the mediums by which moral excellence can, and should, be practiced—for there are tremendous benefits wrought to the rest of society as a result… “We see that every city is some sort of community, and that [...]
The Author’s outcry against Octavianus Caesar Augustus as he contemplated Schleissen’s marble effigy of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Extemporaneous poem. He was an ingrate, more a barbarian, Marcus, then even the lictor, when he left you beneath some lictor’s ignominious blow. Octavianus was almost more deadly […]
The Roman teachers were acutely aware of the role of audience. In its classical sense, rhetoric means the use of language, whether in speech or tex, to persuade an audience… The word rhetoric is thrown about in mostly negative ways—accuse someone of employing rhetoric and you have implied a lack of sincerity or content (which [...]
By thinking through the limits and possibilities of political life, as presented in “Utopia,” the careful reader imitates Cicero and Thomas More by preparing for politics through the careful study of great literature. “The struggle is not merely over an isolated work of genius but over a whole culture”—so says Stephen Greenblatt about Thomas More’s [...]
The Augustan Age refers to a time period broadly revolving around the restoration of order (if not necessarily liberty) at the end of the Roman republic and the beginning of the empire—roughly 50BC to 120AD. Many scholars label it the “Silver Age of Roman Literature.” Every one of the authors listed below held numerous qualms [...]
Here is the grand fact that Protestant theologians always overlook. They, in reality, always present nature and grace as two antagonistic powers, and suppose the presence of the one must be the physical destruction of the other. Luther and Calvin, weary of the good works, and shrinking from the efforts to acquire the personal virtues [...]
Plato tried to act as a political advisor to the tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse. Famously, it was a fiasco. What are the sources of this failure? Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, has an interesting section on Dionysius. He tells us how Dionysius ruled over the Syracusans for thirty-eight years, beginning his rule when he [...]
Statesmanship is concerned with the virtues of justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom. Education in the city should be set up so as to cancel political ambition Cicero famously said of Socrates that he was the one who brought philosophy down from heaven to earth. This must be some other Socrates than the one of the [...]
Plato’s dialogue Gorgias ends with a long speech culminating in a rousing cry by an aroused Socrates. He is speaking to Gorgias’s student Callicles about his swaggering opinionatedness and their common uneducatedness. The words he uses are neanieusthai, ‟to act like a youth,” to behave like a kid, and apaideusia, ‟lack of teaching,” ignorance. And [...]