Turning the Whole Soul: The Moral Journey of the Philosophic Nature in Plato’s “Republic”

By |2024-03-17T16:52:56-05:00March 17th, 2024|Categories: Andrew Seeley, Culture, Education, Philosophy, Plato, Socrates, Timeless Essays|

According to Socrates, to save Philosophy, to save young souls destined for greatness, to save human society itself, the true, philosophic nature must be freed from the corruptive influences that have formed him and receive the best education. The soul must be turned around. I forgot that we were playing and spoke rather intensely. For, [...]

Nietzsche & Martin Luther King Jr. on Christian Suffering

By |2024-03-01T05:37:06-06:00February 29th, 2024|Categories: Christianity, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Luther King Jr., Philosophy|

Friedrich Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, targets Christianity, in the form most accessible to him: Catholicism. He critiques the virtues it fosters and the religion’s effects, particularly highlighting Christianity’s stance on suffering. On the other hand, Martin Luther King Jr. rejects Nietzsche’s accusations of Christian notions encouraging mediocrity and weakness. Despite the philosophers' adherence [...]

Thomas More on Conscience, Courage, & the Comedy of Politics

By |2024-02-06T18:00:46-06:00February 6th, 2024|Categories: Christendom, Christian Humanism, Civil Society, England, History, Natural Law, Philosophy, Politics, St. Thomas More, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

As the gulf between classical and postmodern notions of conscience and government grows ever wider and their clashes more explosive, it is high time for the jury to give renewed attention to the nuances of Thomas More’s understanding of the apparently competing, but ultimately harmonious, demands of divine, natural, and human law. In August of [...]

Plato’s Big Mistake

By |2024-01-31T21:32:52-06:00January 31st, 2024|Categories: Classics, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Louis Markos, Plato, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Every time I reread the “Protagoras” or “Meno,” I am surprised anew that a man of Plato’s towering intellect and searing insight into human nature could have been so mistaken about the human propensity to sin and rebellion. Plato never cared much for the sophists, viewing them as amoral peddlers of a relativistic kind of [...]

The Romantic Reaction

By |2024-01-19T18:09:42-06:00January 19th, 2024|Categories: Art, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Philosophy, Romanticism, Senior Contributors|

C.S. Lewis thought that "Romanticism" had acquired so many different meanings that, as a word, it had become meaningless "and should be banished from our vocabulary.” But is Lewis right? In the “Afterword” to the third edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress C.S. Lewis complained that “Romanticism” had acquired so many different meanings that, as a [...]

Montesquieu & the Two Historical Foundations of Tolerance

By |2024-01-17T17:44:59-06:00January 17th, 2024|Categories: Books, Conservatism, Culture, Philosophy, Timeless Essays|

Westerners today ought to meditate upon Montesquieu’s admirable reflections whenever they decide to launch a war of humanitarian intervention. These reflections especially call into question the institutionalization and systematization at work in contemporary demands for international justice. In The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu effected a revolution, one that called into question the character of Christian [...]

The Lippmann “Gap”: The Great Society & the Good Society

By |2024-01-11T19:19:11-06:00January 11th, 2024|Categories: Books, Journalism, Natural Rights Tradition, Philosophy|

Walter Lippmann believed that Natural Laws are the principles of right reason and behavior in the good society governed by Western traditions of civility. It is possible to organize a state and conduct a government on quite different principles, but the outcome will not be freedom and the good life. Thus the environment with which [...]

Permanent Things: T.S. Eliot’s Conservatism

By |2024-01-03T21:50:31-06:00January 3rd, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Conservatism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

T.S. Eliot’s conservatism is “pre-political,” offering no simple formula for the modern polity. He reminds us that even if we could have our way in the political arena we would be unable to create a perfect society, given our own fallen nature. Such a wise mixture of hope and humility is what can keep conservatism [...]

Charles Peguy on the Hubris of Modernism

By |2023-11-29T18:11:41-06:00November 29th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Culture, Modernity, Philosophy, Timeless Essays|

In Western society we are so immersed in and surrounded by the philosophy of modernism, that many are hardly aware of it. Modernism may present itself in various forms. Most recently, some aspects of it seem to have appeared among clergy in the Vatican. It is, therefore, relevant to revisit Charles Peguy’s hard-hitting critique of [...]

Christian Platonism in Boethius’ “Consolation of Philosophy”

By |2023-10-23T09:50:47-05:00October 22nd, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Great Books, Philosophy, Plato, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

As a robust Christian Platonist, Boethius saw a profound resonance between the truths of Platonic philosophy and Christian faith. The articulation of Platonic thought furnished an occasion for Boethius to tacitly meditate upon and be nourished by his own Christian faith, without having to draw explicit parallels in “The Consolation of Philosophy.” The Consolation of [...]

Leviathan, Inc.: Robert Nisbet & the Modern Nation-State

By |2023-09-29T17:48:04-05:00September 29th, 2023|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Nisbet, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Robert Nisbet feared that modern totalitarians had succeeded in undermining the very foundations of goodness, truth, and morality. They had not only redefined liberty as power, but they had transformed the modern political state into a secular church, exchanging real religion for civic religion, creating a “New Leviathan.” Like most Americans during the Great Depression, [...]

The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self

By |2023-11-25T12:28:01-06:00September 14th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Dwight Longenecker, Philosophy, Rene Girard, Senior Contributors, Theology|

The prevalent tendency in our society to overestimate individual freedom is wreaking havoc on personal happiness and threatening to bring down Western culture. This culture is built on a Judeo-Christian foundation and it will not survive the dismantling of that foundation. Fr. Longenecker concludes his interview with author and friend of René Girard with a [...]

Should Beauty Have a Purpose?

By |2023-09-15T19:49:21-05:00September 14th, 2023|Categories: Art, Books, Culture, Featured, Literature, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

The love of beauty as such is one of the things that can attract men to the God who is infinitely beautiful. But is it the case that we ought to pursue beauty only to the extent that it is joined to some function? A previous essay of mine published in this journal made passing reference [...]

Go to Top