I am to write about my hero Odysseus and to connect him to Liberal Arts. A tall order, you might think, considering that this clever young king of Ithaca and wily old warrior at Troy probably — no, certainly — never read a book in his life, and that to me, at least, the liberal [...]
Several centuries before Edmund Burke, Thomas More warned against theorizing about the perfect society and advised statesmen to do their best with the form of government their people have passed on to them. Though he himself favored one form of government over another, he admitted that we rarely have the power to create the government [...]
The liberal arts allow us the freedom to become more fully human by sharing as fully as possible in that which makes us distinct, and the freedom to flourish through the reality of our nature, our humanity, and, yes, perhaps even our divinity. Why My Favorite Nun Was Right: The Recovery and Renewal of the Liberal [...]
One of the chief aims of mathematics has always been to reveal and describe an order in the natural world. Mathematics, as a language, reveals this order and harmony, yet it should also be lifted from this concrete foundation and brought into the world of the abstract. A resurgence of interest in classical education has [...]
The end of a liberal education should not be escape from the corrupt contemporary world or the achievement of a purity that increasingly excludes others, but rather the cultural incarnation of the Word in our own time and our own history. Almost fifteen years ago, my wife and I took a trip to Ireland—part vacation, [...]
An odyssey is an adventurous and searching journey, or an intellectual or spiritual quest. It is the proper name for the life of learning. One can shape one’s own odyssey into a journey that lacks neither enchantment nor definition. My title is a question: “Do you know what an odyssey is?” I am asking each of [...]
Distinguished scholar Eva Brann, of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, shares her thoughts, discusses how St. John's is truly unique among American colleges, why students should read Homer first, how Aristotle speaks to us today, and why Yogi Berra is one of her favorite philosophers. Ms. Brann is Senior Contributor to The Imaginative Conservative. [...]
Essayists are like poets and novelists in writing what is uncalled for. But essayists differ from poets, the masters of the genre of concentrated concision, by being long but not overlong. Dear— The dash signifies that you are reading the answer to a question unasked, the reply to a letter unreceived. No one’s written beseeching [...]
Modernity consists of perversions of notions drawn from Christianity; to be a modern means to be deeply enmeshed in them. The part of the title of this talk which I asked to have announced is “The Roots of Modernity.” But there is a second part which I wanted to tell you myself. The full title [...]
At this celebratory time of year, when sparks of magic dance on the cold night air, let us wonder about the worlds we want to live in, and give thanks for the miracle of imagination. Making choices about life depends critically on the ability to imagine possibilities. Speaking as an advocate for liberal education, I [...]
Will you join us in our mission to pursue Truth, Goodness, and Beauty by making a gift to us today? I am yearning for conservative voices offering great depth, thoughtfulness, and dare we say, grace. Is it possible to be strong in conservative principles and to present those principles in a manner which is attractive, [...]
At a time when a child should be exposed to wonder, awe, play, and fairy stories, the STEM brigade tells us we should instead prepare children for careers in engineering and the sciences. My mother-in-law, a wonderful grandmother and award-winning artist to boot, is fond of buying my nine-year-old daughter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) [...]
Born in 1729, Edmund Burke was in his twenties during the 1750s. Some of his notes from that period were collected in a slim volume called A Note-Book of Edmund Burke, edited by H.V.F. Somerset, published in 1957. An essay in the volume is “Several Scattered Hints Concerning Philosophy and Learning Collected Here from My [...]
A belief that all that is needed for living or even preaching is the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, has so invaded certain segments of modern American Christianity that an educated man might be looked at with suspicion. J.P. Moreland’s Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the [...]