It is no mean feat to bring together the thought of Thucydides and Tocqueville when discussing the topic of equality, a concept seemingly so ancient and timeless. In her new book, Eva Brann has crafted a bridge beyond these revered sources onto the banks of newer, gleaned insights; it is a bridge that invites the [...]
There may be intellects capable of pure ācontemplationā but most of us must envision just to think. Plotinus describes an eidetic experience, which means that the mental form is not attributionally transcendent but actually so. We are, for that moment, theophorai, āgodbearers,ā possessed by immortals. Iāll begin by asking your indulgence for speaking to you [...]
None of the works of the Tradition are to be considered old, except insofar as in human worksānot so much in human beingsāold age often brings beauty. These works are hardly ever doctrinal catechisms or operational manuals but something in-between: places where incitements to ever-active questions and treasures of attempted answers are recorded. Editorās Note: [...]
āFirst attend to the adjustment of your own soul, particularly the regulative liberal learning of your intellect, then project your internal economy on the world as social and political justice. The other way around is headless.ā Ā ā Eva Brann, The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socratesā Conversations and Platoās Writings Eva Brann is a [...]
The following is the text of Dr. Eva Brannās Commencement Address at Zaytuna College, the Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, CA, delivered during a virtual ceremony on May 23, 2021. Hello to the about-to-be alumni of Zaytuna College! How I wish I could be with you face-to-face and hear your individual accounts of the [...]
Our readers have come to know and to admireĀ Eva Brann, Senior Contributor toĀ The Imaginative Conservative and tutor at St. Johnās College, who always challenges us with her insightfulĀ writings onĀ liberal learning, the hidden treasures in Homerās poems, the artful devices of the dialogues of Socrates, and the wonders found in āthe conservatory of the imagination.ā I [...]
Jane Austenās world is as merry as it is good. All the novels are perfect comediesāmirthful throughout and happy in outcome. Despite their brightness and lightness, these novels are in no way trivialāthey are simply not concerned with those terrific follies presented to the scourge of public laughter in classical comic drama. Since this lecture [...]
Whatās āimaginative?ā Whatās āconservative?ā And how does the adjective modify the noun and the noun support its adjective? My first and last care is not politics but education. Education seems to me inherently conservative, being the transmission, and thus the saving, of a traditionās treasures of fiction and thought. But education is also inherently imaginative. [...]
Let us offer to the young some clear years for becoming not a this or a that, but for learning to be a human being, whose powers of thought are well exercised, whose imagination is well stocked, whose will has conceived some large human purpose, and whose passions have found some fine object of love [...]
Eva Brannās contributions to the larger academic community are twofold: She gives her students, colleagues, and readers a sweeping variety of writings and offers herself as a model of one who never shies from thinking, discussing, and seeking knowledge; and she is a tireless defender of the educational practices at St. Johnās College, where she [...]
This book is full of observations about friendshipādiscerningly borrowed and observantly original; it is a credible descendant of those wonders of human perspicacity, Aristotleās books on friendship. One of those borrowed observations is that āthe point of being friends is to charm each other.ā Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs by Gary [...]
This is what Courage means to Socrates: It is descriptively distinct from and essentially identical with all the virtues. For us this āparadoxicalā outcome sets a taskāwe are to figure out how it might become intelligible. Euripides, it is reported, was āSocrato-nailed-downā (ĻĻĪŗĻĪ±ĻĪæĪ³ĻĪ¼ĻĪæĻ Ļ) ā that is, patched up, bolted together, by Socrates.1 IĀ understand this term [...]
James Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" is in truth among the finest of those works of republican rhetoric in which one finds an adroit enunciation of liberty. The document entitled āTo the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, A Memorial and Remonstranceā is a jewel of republican rhetoric.[1] Nor has this choice example [...]
Fairness is an acknowledgement of just desserts, and therefore implies equality in dealings with similarly entitled partners. So it is indeed equality adjusted to circumstances that I desire. Thus there is an intimation that equality will come into play when justice is administered communally. Regarding the title: 1. The question mark expresses a genuine perplexity [...]