The Peloponnesian War is an example of how, if not properly managed, a small crisis can spiral out of control and eventually into a full-blown war. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was actually the second war fought between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century. Why did hostilities break out into the open again? The [...]
I have always been a keen walker, or “hiker” in the American idiom. I have ambled, rambled, scrambled or otherwise perambulated across large swathes of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland; I have roamed around Europe; and I have even ventured, since my arrival on this side of the Pond fourteen years ago, to traipse through [...]
The Great Tradition patiently endures, ready to speak on its own behalf, ready to challenge narrow prejudices, ready to examine those with the courage to be interrogated by it, ready to teach those who are willing to be made unfit for the modern world. The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be [...]
Was Albert Jay Nock correct in saying that the educated man is a superfluous man in modern society? One of the greatest intellectual pleasures of my summer has been the discovery of the writings of Albert Jay Nock. Well, really, the re-discovery. I had twice read Nock’s Our Enemy, the State, but I’d never found [...]
Anna Julia Cooper passionately defended classical education during the Reconstruction Era when the dilemma of how to educate former slaves arose. Cooper, a former slave herself, preached the virtue of classics and their necessary vitality to the soul. Anna Julia Cooper Why would a Black American female ex-slave revere the wisdom of dead [...]
Surely it is a noble desire to try to create a heaven on earth, to make a paradise in this valley of tears, but that is an end that ultimately requires the denial of the reality of human existence. We are fallen, we are mortal, we are not meant to end in perfecting this created [...]
In Mary’s body, we see the total gift of God’s grace in raising and glorifying our lowly bodies to that “lofty goal” unattainable by our own efforts. All the evil which eats up our bodies—our diseases, discomforts, lusts, and addictions—will be trampled upon not by abandoning the body, but by glorifying it. As a child, [...]
The HBO series “Chernobyl” serves to warn us about the danger of persistent lies in a society that refuses to acknowledge truth. It would be a grave error not to take stock of our own tendencies toward deceit, as if our lies are radically different from those that underpinned the Soviet Union. Over several long [...]
As one awaits renewal, the figure of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the integration of faith and culture which he achieved in his life and in his work guide wayfarers in that dark night, a beacon of light pointing the way to spiritual renewal of the culture—a light, which Balthasar himself would no doubt be [...]
Since humanism has been the core of the Western tradition through the centuries, the emergence of anti-humanism and post-humanism represents an inflection point of our civilizational crisis. In confronting this crisis, conservative humanism aims not to erase the positive achievements of modern humanism, but to graft them back onto their roots where they can draw [...]
The film “Nothing But the Truth” is a well-played, honest effort to flesh out First Amendment issues in a dangerous world of often divided loyalties. “I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” [...]
Metaphor should not be approached as some “thing,” but as a transformative power, the invisible process by which “things” come into being. Using metaphor, even very simple language and very common-place images can be brought into new, unique constellations. Contrary to the sundry definitions of metaphor proffered by many school teachers and dictionaries, metaphor is [...]
It is in the products of great art that we encounter our condition as human beings as metaxic: in between. We come from non-existence and journey to our departure from this existence; the “middle” can seem to be all there is whilst we are in the midst of things. Yet we possess that constant eagerness [...]
To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. More than half a century ago, while I [...]