The tragedy of modern education is that it has left us perilously ignorant of who we are, where we are, where we have come from, and where we are going. We are lost and blissfully unaware that we are heading for the abyss… Many years ago the English writer G.K. Chesterton claimed that the “coming [...]
When politicians succumb to the temptation of turning policy into spectacle—even if it is good policy—it makes the show more important than the policy… It has become trendy to call everything fake. This is helped by the fact that so many things are fake. The world is awash in “fake news.” So much of what [...]
Christians who live so that they are never contaminated are useless, and they are liars, because we are all contaminated more seriously than we can imagine if we have ever seen a human soul as it was meant to be. When first a more serious, idealistic Christian, I didn’t think this was even a possibility. [...]
We were preparing the annual financial report to the parish the other day, and the tricky part of the debate was how to present complex details in a simple way that was not misleading or open to misinterpretation. I commented that we must aim for complete transparency, at which point a member of the committee [...]
Socrates in the Underworld: On Plato’s Gorgia, by Nalin Ranasinghe (192 pages, St. Augustine Press, 2009) Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Peter Augustine Lawler as he reflects on how Socrates models both rightly-ordered eros and logos, in contrast to the Stoics and Sophists. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher [...]
4a. Let us return to the invitation to reflection that is extended to Glaucon by the sectioning of the realms “as if” they were a line; he must wonder why, as has been said, the Republic has no dialectical treatment either of the Good or of the eide under it. This missing logos is, however, absent [...]
1. Socrates yields to Glaucon. He will speak, though not of the Good itself but rather of its “offspring,” which is most like it (506e). Socrates reminds Glaucon of the “oft-told” story of the one and the many (cf. 476). Those many good and beautiful things are seen but not known, while the thing [...]
We are in dire need of a recovery of truth in speech, a recovery of the true value of language. “Gender” is just the latest and most profound in a long string of misused words over the centuries, not the first or the last—but a misuse that has profound and dire consequences for modern society. [...]
A. 1. Glaucon’s introduction to philosophy will itself have a prelude. He will discover for himself the meaning of “opinion,” doxa. Opinion in its various meanings determines the musical key of the different parts of the dialogue by its absence or presence. The outer ring of logoi is explicitly spoken in a signature appropriate to the [...]
I recently listened to a public radio segment on CERN, the scientific research facility in Switzerland. I was struck by what the reporter referred to as, “the heart of CERN.” One might think it’s the laboratory or the complex scientific instruments used there. Turns out it’s the cafeteria. The European Nuclear Research Center, also known [...]
As a word, “modernism” has several definitions, or, to put the matter the other way round, there are a number of things to which the label “modernism” has been appended. As such, and as usual, it is important to define our terms before we proceed any further with a discussion of this crucially important word, [...]
The first thing everyone says when they see the new church we are building in Greenville, South Carolina is, “It’s beautiful!” This is not the response I hear when they look on the utilitarian, fan-shaped Catholic auditoria that dominate our suburbs. The instantaneous and unsolicited observation that our new church is beautiful should not be [...]
Apart from occasionally going to a sports bar to watch my favourite English soccer team, the only time I ever watch television is in hotel rooms or at the gym. Almost every time I do so I am reminded of the great blessing of not having one of these palantiri in my home. Occasionally, however, [...]
Broadly speaking there are two types of atheism. One is, or can be, truly noble; the other is, and always will be, truly ignoble. The noble sort of atheism is that which is genuinely interested in the quest for truth and pursues it in a disinterested way, as something that is worth doing because it [...]