To the extent that I am a human person, Homer’s Iliad speaks to me, but my particular circumstances are my own. As a result, a great question will help all people, including me, and so might be applicable to my peculiar place in space and time without being exhausted by it. In one week I’m teaching [...]
A great books education exposes students to the best “inquirers” in the Western Tradition. Scientists and mathematicians are certainly inquirers. The best of them seek wisdom about nature, God, human beings, and the relationship among them. However, there are other ways of inquiring into these realities. The great poets, philosophers, historians, and theologians, for example, [...]
The philosophical roots of the liberal arts can free students from a life of slavery spent spelunking in the cave of ignorance, trivialities, and the merely menial… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Robert M. Woods as he examines the purpose and benefits of studying the humanities [...]
In the modern world, terms like “soul,” “spirit,” and the “life of the mind” sound antiquated, and there is no longer any sense that there is anything to life beyond the pursuit of hedonic happiness and the accumulation of money, property, and other markers of worldly success… “To reform a world, to reform a nation, [...]
It is clear today, as it was clear to Albert Einstein then, that an education obsessed with science, technology, engineering and math, to the exclusion or neglect of the humanities, stems the growth and development of the human person, on the one hand, and unleashes technology without ethical constraints, on the other. Those architects of [...]
At best, what the typical college has offered its students, in recent decades, has been defecated rationality. By that term I mean a narrow rationalism or logicalism, purged of theology, moral philosophy, symbol and allegory, tradition, reverence, and the wisdom of our ancestors. This defecated rationality is the exalting of private judgment and hedonism at [...]
The main reason Western civilization, with an emphasis on “Great Books,” deserves a prominent—indeed, the prominent—place in the curriculum of the Christian university is stewardship: This study is how we lay claim to our rightful inheritance of wisdom, nobility, and gracefulness… For many Americans, the onset of fall means pumpkin-spice lattes and cozy sweaters. For [...]
Our civilization needs zealous and dedicated young men and women to convert the barbarians. However, because the barbaric culture is pervasive, we are all barbarians now to a certain extent, and thus, we must first civilize our own souls… Nowadays the devil has made such a mess of everything in the system of life on [...]
Just as the good philosopher needs to be a master of the Christian philosophical tradition and adept at the dialectical, analytical, synthetic, and imaginative skills with which his trade is plied, the good Christian college also requires a rigorous and sophisticated curriculum and pedagogy firmly rooted in the Christian philosophical tradition... As Alasdair MacIntyre has [...]
A.G. Sertillanges sees the intellectual life as essentially a vocation, and in the most spiritual sense of the word. It is, as he says, “a sacred call.” “More than ever before thought is waiting for men, and men for thought. The world is in danger for lack of life-giving maxims. We are in a train rushing [...]
Truth, beauty, and goodness are the terms by which we understand the whole of reality and the terms that give coordinates to all of human life. And so, if you want to live well, you need to know what truth, goodness, and beauty are… I sat down with James Matthew Wilson over a beer after his [...]
Are the humanities worth studying? Art, literature, and philosophy don’t do anything. They simply are… In the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde wrote: “All art is quite useless.” Wilde meant this not in a disparaging way but rather as a compliment to all things beautiful. He didn’t want to assign any [...]
The dismantling of the idea of the West unwittingly wrought massive damage upon the very ways in which Western citizens viewed themselves, disconnecting them not only from other cultures and peoples but also from one another. The dismantling of the idea of the West began when medieval philosophers began re-introducing the Sophist notions reduced to [...]
Christopher Dawson stood as an antagonist against the conformity of progressive and professional history, and he rightly noted that such history negates not just personality but the very essence of creativity itself… While the domestic violence (criminals, cops, mobs) of this summer pales in comparison to the outrageous behaviors of the previous one, our season [...]