The demise of imitation has been devastating for personal growth. It used to be a commonplace that successful people need to have extraordinary “heroes” whom they admire and try to emulate. But the historical disciplines in the twentieth century waged something of a war against the very idea of the hero. Imitation, like so many [...]
Music, as a living presence that comes to us, offers itself to us, 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. Music, too, is nature. —Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol. This essay explores the [...]
Dante’s globalism, his vision of the whole, is not confined to the earth but extends to the entire universe. This includes the invisible, spiritual world as well as the visible, corporeal one. It embraces the human and the divine, the natural and the supernatural… it celebrates the victory of hope over despair. “The things of [...]
The “Iliad” has a kind of immediacy you will find nowhere else. It has irresistible momentum. It grabs you in the middle, somewhere in the vicinity of the chest or the heart, and it demands the attention of your sensibility. One of the many things I love about this college is that everyone must begin [...]
Plato and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And it is wholeness—the whole of virtue and the whole of a political community—that is very much at issue, and at risk, 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 [...]
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 [...]
“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.” So begins Homer’s Odyssey. Long ago I launched my ship in pursuit of the true, the good, and [...]
The tradition, for us in America, is the Western Tradition, most ours because it has given us the two notions and their realizations which we live by in much of our private and civic life. The ancient rhetoricians, who knew their business, taught that the way to begin a speech, the more so a breakfast [...]
In his generous and beautifully written book, Robert Reilly leads us through the vast, largely unknown territory of twentieth-century music. Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music, Robert R. Reilly, Washington, D. C.: Morley Books, 2002. In his generous and beautifully written book, Robert Reilly leads us through the vast, [...]
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 [...]
Historical consciousness is to civilized society what memory is to individual identity. Without memory there are no workable rules of conduct, no standard of justice, no basis for restraining passions, no sense of the connection between an action and its consequences. A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous. I am delighted to be with [...]
The “Paradiso” has much to tell us about happiness, the perfection of the intellect, the nature of true freedom, the flourishing of community, the role of love in education, and the profound connection that the good and the true have to beauty. “For we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2 The focus [...]
What is the duty of government? What are the rights of man in a civilized society? What is the purpose of law? Mortimer Adler, scholar of, and advocate for, the Great Books, attempts to answer these questions and more in the following interview. Interposed with scenes of discussion from a seminar conducted at St. John's [...]
Abraham Lincoln did all that he could to preserve constitutional rule by trying to teach his fellow citizens what it means to be an American. The paradox of Abraham Lincoln’s appearance in the United States’ sectional conflict becomes manifest if one considers a passage written by James Madison in Federalist No. 10. In that paper, [...]