In Plato's "Republic," Socrates descends to Hades, is caught in conversation in the house of Pluto, and tells down there the story of his own descent. This then is the setting of the "Republic": Hades with its tales and a deliverer willing to go down and able to come up. A. "Socrates begins most of [...]
In the history of philosophy, what is the permanent achievement of the Pre-Socratics? Did they attain anything in thought that we can rightly credit to them? Or must they forever be seen as precursors to something greater? The very name used by scholars to classify them seems to condemn them forever to the status of [...]
Two virtues ride, by stallion, by nag, To grind our knives and scissors: Lantern-jawed Reason, squat Common Sense, One courting doctors of all sorts, One, housewives and shopkeepers. The trees are lopped, the poodles trim, The laborer’s nails pared level Since those two civil servants set […]
For the ancient Greeks, a pig was “the cheapest sacrificial animal,” easily raised in large quantities. Not only that, but “pig-sacrifice for Demeter was the most common feature of all forms of the Demeter cult.”[1] In particular, we should consider that the pig was the animal that died in the place of the initiate at [...]
There is, in myth, a recurring structure that, once deconstructed, indicates how myth is generated. Myth hides the truth about its “missing link” to reality: namely, the real and innocent victims of a sacrificial crisis.[1] In the myth of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, one key element of this recurring structure is the role that [...]
There seems to be a kind of symbolic religious literary code written into human experience. What all stories and myth, including the pagan ones, then point to is the Christian Truth. The Greeks told the tragic story of Orpheus, the son of the great god Apollo. Orpheus was the master of music, the prince of [...]
The past few years have shown some waning in the exceptional popularity of J.J.R. Tolkien’s fantasy writings, but the “Tolkien phenomenon” is a clearly established fact of modern literary history. I am certain that his works will be read and studied for many decades and even more certain that they are deserving of such reading and study. [...]
Even J.R.R. Tolkien, interestingly enough, could not pinpoint exactly when the mythology began. One can most certainly date the mythology if only in its barest, least recognizable form sometime prior to his participation in the Great War, when the young man wrote his poem, “The Voyage of Eärendil the Evening Star.”[1] In a letter written [...]
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake. –Robert Penn Warren, Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices (Voices of the South) […]
The wisdom of poetic cosmology is that it gives us a complete experience of the hierarchies of order within creation, ranging from the celestial to the corporeal. We ourselves can see the poetic wisdom about song and creation operative, for example, in the book of Genesis. This is possible if we read the poetry of [...]
Conservatism and truth-seeking historical scholarship are not only compatible but inseparable. One reason has directly to do with foundations: It is impossible to guard or defend anything if the ground is continually shifting underfoot. On the face of things, conservatism and historical scholarship would appear to be antithetical ideals. A viable social order seems to [...]
The great G.K. Chesterton had a huge impact on my embrace of Christian orthodoxy. It would, in fact, be no exaggeration to say that his was the greatest single influence, under grace, on my conversion. I was, therefore, highly gratified to discover, during the research for my book Literary Converts, that Chesterton also had a [...]
One of the worst crimes committed by the modern academy is what might be called Shakespeare abuse. It takes many forms. There are those who say that Shakespeare was a cynic who sneered at religion, or those who claim that he was a homosexual, or those who claim that Shakespeare was not really Shakespeare but [...]
Our stark choice is indeed as Nietzsche puts it, says René Girard. It is a choice between Dionysus and the Crucified: between the Biblical concern for the mob’s victim, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, the justifications and defenses of the lies of myth. The lies of myth are offered in the [...]