Odysseus has the art we need. I think he came by it through a rare combination of acutely honed cleverness and deep-souled imagination; we can acquire it by education. This art, the art of discovering significance, is the art of interpretation...
“First attend to the adjustment of your own soul, particularly the regulative liberal learning of your intellect, then project your internal economy on the world as social and political justice. The other way around is headless.” – Eva...
Christians invented the classical curriculum; it is as much part of the broader Western inheritance as it is specifically part of the Christian inheritance...
Why study old books? How do dusty old books written by dead men...
When our dean asked me to lecture this September it was because I’ve just completed a book on time, and I’m happy to have the opportunity to talk about it. There seemed to be three possible kinds of...
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Jason Baxter, as he considers why Christians should read the works of the pagans. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher
At the end of...
We’ve reached a time when fewer and fewer on the outside know what the liberal arts are, or the value of them to the individual person, an organization, and the marketplace of ideas. In an age when people are so focused on science and technology via “STEM”...
I imagine that on Parents’ Weekend there might be some parents attending this once weekly occasion when the college assembles to hear a lecture. By its very name, a lecture is read—but read out loud, delivered in the writer’s voice. Thus, the...
It is the encounter with beauty, all-consuming beauty, the infinite, which directs the human soul back to God. The sky calls us up; the earth drags us down...
On December 2, 1805, the French Emperor...
Pick up a Jane Austen novel, and you will discover that behind the long gowns and country dances, people in her era struggled with the same weaknesses we struggle with today. Well-written stories like Austen's bring to life the human drama that is played out in every...
If people and dogs have common ground of a higher order than animal needs, it must be in the territory of the spirit. Spirit is, just as Aristotle says, where friendship is at home. Now among us humans, this capability of the spirit is both an accomplishment and a...
My title is a question: "Do you know what an odyssey is?" I am asking each of you to ask yourself: "Do I know what an odyssey is?"
In learning as in traveling and, of course,...
I'm uncertain of the joy of reading the Theban plays of Sophocles—the story is just too monstrous—but in accord with the awe. This translation conveys it...
Sophocles: The Theban Plays, translated by David R. Slavitt (256 pages, Yale University Press, 2009)
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...
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Christopher Nelson as he explores the...
What enabled men like Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas to discover their “why” in ages past can still transform young men and women today...
Over the years, I have discovered that nearly every time I come across...
