Peter Kalkavage

Ode to an Insightingale

No collection of great books, nor even the most wisely designed curriculum, which is but a recipe, can equal or even approach the importance of the faculty, whose members bring the program to life year after year. Eva Brann knows all this, and preaches it eloquently...

Winged Words: Reading & Discussing Great Books

Great books introduce us to ideas and to ways of looking at the world that are new to us. They provide a refreshing distance from the trends, fashions, tastes, opinions, and political correctness of our current culture. Great books invite us to put aside for a while...

On Music and Metaphysics

Please join Peter Kalkavage as he discusses the metaphysics of music: music's role in the liberal arts, the paradox in the union of rational and irrational, order and feeling in its composition, and music's connection and reflection of the deeper order of the natural...

The Power of Song in Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”

In the St. Matthew Passion, Bach indulges his gypsy soul. It is as though Bach, in his broad and deep humanity, his capacity for feeling all kinds and degrees of sorrow and joy, was reaching out to all his fellow human beings, believers and non-believers alike, and...

Plato’s “Symposium”: Beguiling Eros

The vivid love-speeches of the Symposium come to us, reach us, through several layers of incomplete remembrance, and as though from a mythic past... Symposium (or Drinking Party) by Plato, translated and edited by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Hackett, 2017)

Music and the Idea of a World

Music assures us that we are not alone: that there is something out there in the world that knows our hearts and may even teach us to know them better. Thanks to music, we experience what it means to be connected to the whole of all things...

The Unbounded Eros of “Tristan and Isolde”

Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde should prompt us to search for an antidote to the lovers’ death wish—to pursue a love that preserves rather than destroys, celebrates rather than abolishes individuality, and seeks life rather than death... “They who were two and divided now became one and...

Schopenhauer’s Will and Wagner’s Eros

There is nothing in the natural world, or in the inner and outer life of man, that does not find its counterpart in the all-embracing realm of tones. Music as symbol is the whole of all things... “They who were two and divided now became one...

Virtue, Courage, & Moderation in Plato’s “Statesman”

I want to begin by saying how my theme is related to justice. Plato and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And it is wholeness—the whole of virtue and the whole of a political community—that...

The Neglected Muse: Why Music Is An Essential Liberal Art

Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Peter Kalkavage as he considers why music is an essential liberal art. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher Music and rhythm...

Dante’s Global Vision: Seeing & Being Seen in the “Divine Comedy”

“The things of friends are common.” —Greek proverb (quoted by Socrates in the Phaedrus) It is a pleasure to be with you today, to visit Belmont University and see Nashville...

Hegel & Spirit: The Logic of Desire

Peter Kalkavage, The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Paul Dry books Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is an enthralling “picture gallery” (447)* of...

Plato’s “Timaeus”: A Unique Universe of Discourse

Before reviewing Peter Kalkavage’s Focus Press translation of the Timaeus, I must, in all fairness, confess my partiality. He, Eric Salem, and myself were the co-translators of Plato’s Phaedo and his Sophist for the same...

In the Heaven of Knowing: Dante’s Paradiso

“For we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2 The focus of my talk this evening is the Paradiso, the culminating and most beautiful part of Dante’s Comedy. The Paradiso has much to...