A hero is someone you admire to the point of losing sleep over. A hero is one the ancients were tempted to worship, with the ardent hope that some of the strength from his dead body would seep into the ground and make their crops fertile. A hero, you admit, is better than you are, [...]
I had not seen my former student, Adam, for a decade or so after his graduation from Hillsdale College when I ran into him and his young family at the supermarket. "You once asked me" he said, "for what purpose was the soul of man made. I had little in the way of an answer [...]
A professional philosopher my friend Siobhan Nash-Marshall certainly was. But her own love of wisdom included the desire to change the world as well as interpret it. She constantly attempted to do so according to the wisdom that is foolishness to men. Perhaps it was because she was the child of diplomats and had learned [...]
One of the most heinous crimes against humanity that modernity has perpetrated is its war on the humanities. And let’s not forget that the humanities are thus called because they teach us about our own humanity. A failure to appreciate the humanities must inevitably lead to the dehumanizing of culture and a disastrous loss of [...]
Rules are good things to have. We need to learn not to wipe our noses on our sleeves, not to take stuff that isn’t ours, not to scream at people when we’re debating them on television, not to shout abuse at politicians even if they deserve it. But as useful as rules like that can [...]
Charles Eliot Norton is unknown today outside historians of literature or education, but between Fort Sumter and Teddy Roosevelt he dominated Anglo-American literature and Harvard lecture halls. Beginning with optimism, in the years following Appomattox his perspective darkened into fears that American democracy encouraged selfishness, corruption, and the hatred of excellence. In the 1890s, Harvard [...]
Great poetry can come from deep engagement with the problems of politics, but it is especially moving to see how exile—often the consequence of that engagement—subtly becomes the symbol of the condition of fallen man. Students at Wyoming Catholic College memorize many poems in the four years of the humanities curriculum, but few of the [...]
What is the intention of a Great Books education? Does it need to make the student feel at every moment as though there were a palpable design upon him? I ask because making things “intentional” seems to have become something of a buzzword, even in spiritual matters. Guided tours can be a wonderful thing. I [...]
The crisis in the humanities that we see today does not concern numbers so much as belief. A society dedicated to empiricism and utilitarianism is a society that does not recognize the superiority of philosophic knowledge, or the importance of the aesthetic. It is now a year-and-a-half since I had the opportunity to visit the [...]
Opposition to greatness comes from the kind of irrational irritation that made the Athenians ostracize Aristides because they were tired of hearing him called "the Just," or from egalitarian resentment, or from fear of the demands things of quality make on us. I want to steal four minutes of my talking time to speak of [...]
Classical Education as practiced in the United States over the past 30 years is the most up-to-date, cutting edge development in K-12 education. It is also the oldest, most tried-and-true alternative on today’s educational scene. America needs the Classical Tradition. In 1999 the A&E cable network broadcast a list of “The 100 Most Influential People [...]
The removal of intellectual life from the world, the withdrawn person’s independence from contests over wealth or status, provides or reveals a dignity that can’t be ranked or traded. This dignity, along with the universality of the objects of the intellect—that is, that they are available to everyone—is what opens up space for real communion. [...]
What does courage actually look like? Why is it that many who can face mortal dangers in battle lack the other virtues? How do you account for a man like Cicero, whose voice trembled at the beginning of every speech and who never distinguished himself in battle, yet who stood up to Catiline and saved [...]
The pursuit of ideological history always ends with the installation of a new elite, a new ruling class, a new set of exploiters. Instead, historians should practice good history and humane learning, avoid the temptations of ideology and “relevance,” and defend the universities. In 1969, the American Historical Association broke down into hostile wings, one [...]