Respect is (1) an alternative to tolerance and (2) the better one. It is an alternative because it concerns the same issue: how to live with fellow humans who appear to be identically constituted in their need to formulate opinions and to assert them in speech (not always in that order) but disparately developed in [...]
Now is the time of year when students finishing high school have to make a thrilling and at the same time daunting choice: Which college should I attend in the fall? Those who are lucky enough to have multiple options often must choose among schools that are quite different in character. The decisions are difficult [...]
It is been a long winter in the eastern United States, including here in the mid-Atlantic. It’s late March as I write this, and we are just starting to see the tops of daffodils and crocuses that usually appear a month earlier. Delayed spring means delayed renewal. Everyone feels it—the desire to get outside and [...]
This June, I spent a week reading and listening to many conversations about Homer’s Iliad at St. John’s College, Annapolis. The rules of a Summer Classics seminar are simple, explained the legendary tutor Ms. Eva Brann (instructors are addressed formally at the school). To start with, one should have read the book being discussed. Then it’s important [...]
“Extreme” activities have come into fashion in recent years. Extreme sports, extreme travel, extreme survival expeditions now seem to be a fixture of the cultural landscape. Few know, however, that there is such a thing as extreme liberal education, or that St. John’s College has been practicing it for more than seventy-five years. What is extreme liberal education? [...]
The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson by William Murchison Few habits of speech and thought inhibit our appreciation of those who created the United States of America more than our tendency to refer to them as “the Founders.” Not that the Founders do not form an identifiable group, and not that they are undeserving of [...]
President Obama has been a strong supporter of programs designed to help families pay for a college education, most notably through the Pell Grant and the Opportunity Tax Credit. However, in the summer of 2013, President Obama announced a new “Plan to Make College More Affordable.” In his speech announcing the plan, the president affirmed that “a [...]
Corporate scandals over the last two decades, followed by the crash of the economy in 2008, have brought about widespread skepticism toward America’s corporate leaders. Almost daily there are calls for new legal and regulatory reforms directed at businesses, especially banks and investment firms. Some corporations have even begun to reassess their own business practices. [...]
Lone Survivor, the new film recounting an ill-fated search and rescue attempt in Afghanistan, has a tragic connection with my school, St. John’s College in Annapolis. Lt. Cmdr. Erik S. Kristensen, the Navy SEAL who led the bold mission and who died bravely along with many others in the daring operation, received a master’s degree from [...]
Barnacles do not often occupy the thoughts of landlubbers. Most people can go for weeks without thinking about them. It had been at least that long for me when I found in my files John Gardner’s marvelous 1990 address called “Personal Renewal.” Gardner begins his speech with an arresting quotation from an article he had [...]
On s’est trompé lorsqu’on a cru que l’esprit et le jugement étaient deux choses différentes: le jugement n’est que la grandeur de la lumière de l’esprit; cette lumière pénètre le fond des choses, elle y remarque tout ce qui’il faut remarquer, et aperçoit celles qui semblent imperceptibles… We are deceived if we think that mind [...]
What is the world like, and how can we understand it? Heraclitus thinks that the answer to both questions is found in “the logos,” which is a Greek word with multiple meanings: it can be an explanation, a word or linguistic meaning, science, rationality (the Latin word is “ratio”), the principle of exchange between things…So [...]
Pine by Albrecht Durer I wish to dedicate this essay to a writer of books whose greatness is at once utterly at home in America and quite without spatio-temporal boundaries, Marilynne Robinson, who produces in reality the images I only analyze, and thereby not only saves but augments the tradition I love–the aboriginal [...]
I imagine that on Parents’ Weekend there might be some parents attending this once weekly occasion when the college assembles to hear a lecture. By its very name, a lecture is read—but read out loud, delivered in the writer’s voice. Thus, the sequence goes: I thought, I wrote, I read, I speak. Although this is the principal way of [...]