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 profit that I figured might come to you and to me if I gave what one might [...]
It is surprising that contemporary political thinking has paid relatively scant attention to St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo. It may be true, as some say, that we live in the post-Christian era. It certainly cannot be gainsaid that we live in an age of pervasive secularism in which a name such as Augustine seems [...]
Astute thinkers from Hegel onward have claimed that we live at the end of the modern world. That does not mean the modern world is about to disappear: the world, in truth, is more modern than ever. So we must contest Hegel’s assertion that the modern world is the end, the fulfillment, of history. The [...]
“Shall it (the happy life) be that of the philosophers, who put forward as the chief good, the good which is in ourselves? Is this the true good? Have they found the remedy for our ills? Is man’s pride cured by placing him on an equality with God?”— Pascal, Pensēes, #430. “Salvation, such as it shall [...]
Thanksgiving is the holiday that brings us all together, whether or not we’re Christians and whether or not we’re American citizens. It’s the first holiday of the Holiday Season that begins around now and lasts until New Year. We’re so sure that saying Merry Christmas is intolerant and dogmatic that we’re all about Happy Holidays—an [...]
Nowhere are Roman ruins thicker than in Tunisia. For this, from the days when Scipio took Punic Carthage until the Vandals broke into the city, was the Province of Africa, wondrously rich and populous. St. Augustine was born in Carthage—of a patrician family—and died in neighboring Hippo, when the Vandals were at the gates. I [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien In 1958, at a Dutch bash held in his honor, Tolkien told his audience: “I look East, West, North, South, and I do not see Sauron. But I see that Saruman has many descendants. We Hobbits have against them no magic weapons. Yet, my gentle hobbits, I give you this toast: [...]
As Cicero watched his own republic descend into chaos and madness, he recorded as quickly as he could the most important aspects of the Roman Republic, preserved if not in temporal reality, than in poetry, history, and memory. Famously, he wrote (quoted by our patron Winston Elliott often): Ancestral morality provided outstanding men, and great [...]