The Bible provides a different and seemingly antithetical model of poetry from that given in Greek literature. It demands one’s whole heart and one’s whole viscera. Nonetheless, without in the least giving up a faith in Scripture, Westerners still find within themselves qualities that only the classical vision can express. What has Athens to do [...]
My father was first and foremost a true philosopher, a lover of wisdom, a student, a seeker of truth, and in addition to this and as a necessary result, he became a great teacher, and more than that, a converter. Everyone who ever met him, even briefly, was affected by his intense love of truth, [...]
C.S. Lewis has written that we are all—with each and every decision—becoming more heavenly or hellish creatures. There is no other option. Which of his decisions are worth emulating? “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.”[1] “We create men without chests and bid them breathe, we [...]
The Declaration of Independence, intended as an expression of the common opinion, is truly a text of "right opinion," a benign practical text which also has a peculiarly sound relation to the realm of thought. Section I: The Legacy of the Declaration When American schoolchildren first discover that they have a place in the world they [...]
Modernity is best apprehended as being in a ruptured continuum with Greek antiquity—a continuum insofar as the terms persist, ruptured insofar as they take on new meanings and missions. That perspective makes those who hold it avid participants in the present. Jacob Klein was in the last year of his nine-year tenure as dean of [...]
The greatest books of the Western world have relied upon the knowledge of horses whose natures have so influenced and symbolized our own. When my wife Virginia and I first came to Wyoming Catholic College in 2013, we had only notions about horses. Each of us had been astride some poor rope-led nag or other [...]
Because of the strong secular faith instilled in us by education, most of us trust that science and technology, democracy, and capitalism, the three legs of Modernity, can bring about only good ends and fail to see that these three triumphs of humankind can diminish the human person. With the publication of the book The [...]
The document entitled “To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, A Memorial and Remonstrance” is a jewel of republican rhetoric.[1] Nor has this choice example of American eloquence gone without notice. And yet, compared to the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, it has remained obscure—more often quarried for stately [...]
It is the best of times and the worst of times for the pro-life movement. Though the historic Dobbs decision was a great legal victory, the cause for life continues. And it continues in both states that have severely limited abortion and those that have made it a kind of untouchable secular sacrament. The Supreme [...]
The questions for the West have now become: What it is that we should remember and teach? What are the elements of Western civilization that might sustain what is left and reconstruct what has been damaged or destroyed? In the early twenty-first century, the liberal arts curriculum at our universities is in a peculiar condition [...]
While much of Catholic education has withered for lack of connection to its roots and the water of Christian faith, the Adeodatus Foundation is preparing to nourish many gardens in the desert. Those who want to be part of this movement of renewal might consider a trip to Pasadena later this month. Much of American [...]
Intellectual life provides an escape in that it is beyond “straitened circumstances,” but the escape is again a flight into realities beyond oneself: animal behavior, astronomy, and the mechanics of the inner life. The intellect has no limit to its subject matter: It reaches greedily for the whole of everything. In 2001 I was a [...]
Classical schools honor the old. Reading and discussing a great work in high school give the mind a preparatory receptivity until greater experience can broaden and deepen the field of reference, at which time studying the same work in college can be an experience formative for life. These past two weeks, I have had occasion [...]
Across the nation commencement speakers bid the graduates, “Go forth and change the world” or “make a difference.” But should you want to change the world? Parents and Relatives, Fellow Tutors and Mr. President, Board Members and, above all, Santa Fe Seniors and Graduate Institute students! Some of you will remember that radio-telephone distress signal [...]