To my mind, there never was a more serious teacher than Socrates. So let us imitate him to the best of our ability, and strive continually to improve our ability. I have written about Socrates as a model for imitating heroes, because he shows us how to use the lives of extraordinary people to help [...]
The key to understanding Thomas More’s generous dedication to the real but limited good he could do on earth is, as Frank Mitjans makes clear, that More’s constant contemplation of God was the source of his boundless care for the souls surrounding him. Thomas More’s Vocation, by Frank Mitjans (320 pages, The Catholic University of [...]
Whatever hells have been loosed upon the world, here in America and abroad, never forget that our ancestors, even pagan ones, called us to love and cherish that which is best. Every autumn, I have the grand privilege of teaching Socrates (the Apology, the Crito), Plato (Book VIII of the Republic, the Timaeus), and Aristotle [...]
Storytelling is an excellent exercise for cultivating the imagination especially, not just the powers of the intellect. I have been giving some special thought lately to the question of how one might develop a capacity for sound judgment and a desire to build good character through the exercise of the imagination—that is through the careful use [...]
What happens when one mixes science and poetry in the way that Timaeus does? What can we learn from this strange mix? My intention is to place before us some important themes that connect poetry and science. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, [...]
Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue can be taught? [to continue] Or if not teachable, is it acquired by practice, or if neither, whether men possess it by nature or in some other way?” So begins Plato’s dialogue, Meno, opening as abruptly upon the reader as my remarks have upon you this afternoon. You [...]
The Platonic world of Forms was shattered by God, bursting down through the clouds to enter into the womb of a young Jewish girl! Picture yourself sitting alongside Plato at a local Greek restaurant, a couple of gyros between the two of you. What do you say? Is there anything you know that could possibly [...]
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. After twenty years of [...]
Music assures us that we are not alone: that there is something out there in the world that knows our hearts and may even teach us to know them better. Thanks to music, we experience what it means to be connected to the whole of all things. “Music, too, is nature.” —Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and [...]
The demise of imitation has been devastating for personal growth. It used to be a commonplace that successful people need to have extraordinary “heroes” whom they admire and try to emulate. But the historical disciplines in the twentieth century waged something of a war against the very idea of the hero. Imitation, like so many [...]
Music, as a living presence that comes to us, offers itself to us, assures us that we are not alone: that there is something out there in the world that knows our hearts and may even teach us to know them better. Music, too, is nature. —Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol. This essay explores the [...]
Plato and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And it is wholeness—the whole of virtue and the whole of a political community—that is very much at issue, and at risk, in Plato’s “Statesman.” I want to begin by saying how my theme is related to justice. Plato and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And [...]
If we reject the Christian account of liberty, the Declaration ceases to cohere. If we accept the Christian account of liberty, we can recover a Declaration that is both philosophic and poetic. The most famous sentence of the Declaration of Independence attempts to be a work of poetry and philosophy: “We hold these truths to [...]
The mysteries of the human heart, and of the soul within you, are every bit as wondrous as the mysteries of the political and the natural worlds. And so you have asked questions of the world, in part because it is your nature to wish to know, in part because you wish to know your [...]