Inside Plato’s Cave

By |2021-04-29T10:03:10-05:00October 13th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Philosophy, Plato, Socrates, Truth, Virtue|

If you have an open mind and inquiring heart, you will recognize something incomparably wonderful in Plato’s writings, if only their profound resonance with Christian teachings. The Cave is a masterful metaphor for the soul trapped in sin. “All education is conversion” —Pierre Hadot I. Why Read Plato? We know as Catholics, from the Divine [...]

Restoring Poetic Vision in a Myopic Age

By |2021-05-03T15:56:37-05:00September 8th, 2017|Categories: Anthony Esolen, Art, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Culture, Flannery O'Connor, Homer, Imagination, Literature, Moral Imagination, Truth|

In a distorted world, the Christian poet is ultimately like the blind man whose vision Christ restored to see truth through grace, and those who read the poet’s words will find their vision restored as well. Editor’s Note: This essay was originally given as a part of a lecture series for the Cambridge School of [...]

On the Passing of a Philosophy

By |2017-09-01T15:00:32-05:00August 29th, 2017|Categories: History, Modernity, Philosophy, Truth|

Logical positivism and countless similar philosophies have all eventually passed. Thus, it seems, that postmodernism will likely suffer the same fate. However, until that day arrives, let us be Cheerful Soldiers, emboldened by the knowledge of just how temporary those foundations are upon which philosophical fashions are rested… “The vogue of each particular maxim of [...]

On the Mystery of Teachers I Never Met

By |2021-04-28T14:37:02-05:00July 21st, 2017|Categories: Aristotle, Christian Humanism, Education, Fr. James Schall, Great Books, Hilaire Belloc, Literature, Philosophy, Plato, St. Augustine, Tradition, Truth|

The mystery is how one person whom I never met, through recountings down the ages of how many others whom I also have never met, could shed light on each other, eventually to enlighten me. In The Apology, Socrates brought up the question of whether he was paid for being a teacher, like the Sophists, who were paid [...]

Truth, Treasure, Maps, and Traps

By |2019-04-25T12:40:56-05:00July 1st, 2017|Categories: Books, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Featured, Relativism, Religion, Senior Contributors, Truth|

Religious dogma is true— indispensably true—but Truth is truer, and bigger than dogma in the same way that a map is true, but the journey is truer and bigger than the map… Editor’s Note: This essay is an abridged version of a chapter in Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s book The Romance of Religion. When I was [...]

Truth, Cultural Renewal, and the Benedict Option

By |2017-07-01T09:45:02-05:00May 1st, 2017|Categories: Books, Christianity, Christopher Morrissey, Featured, Truth|

If rights are real, and are founded on reality, then perhaps we should also be skeptical of Rod Dreher’s notion of a “Benedict Option.” Being in the world is a necessary condition for not being of it and for generating a genuine cultural flourishing… No doubt Rod Dreher’s book, The Benedict Option, has Imaginative Conservatives talking about the [...]

Classical Christian Education and Public Witness

By |2019-10-08T16:26:02-05:00April 16th, 2017|Categories: Christianity, Classical Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays, Truth|

Today, both in our schools and wider society, the True, Good, and Beautiful are now whatever one wants them to be. There is simply no divine obligation apart from that which each person chooses to impose upon himself… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Stephen Turley as he [...]

Our Post-Truth Society: Dooming Democracy?

By |2021-05-18T15:19:42-05:00April 10th, 2017|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Donald Trump, Featured, George Stanciu, Politics, Presidency, St. John's College, Technology, Truth|

In the post-truth society, your facts are not my facts, and lies by political figures are greeted with indifference. Judged by past standards, citizens of a post-truth society have no real experience and no capacity for critical thinking. We Americans have virtually no interest in history; for us, the past pales in comparison with the [...]

What Is Authentic Education?

By |2019-02-05T16:29:38-06:00April 5th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Classical Education, Education, Featured, G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Pearce, Modernity, Truth|

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 [...]

From Fake News to Rude Awakening

By |2017-05-03T14:50:36-05:00March 13th, 2017|Categories: Culture, Featured, John Horvat, Journalism, Truth|

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 [...]

Are We a Nation of Liars?

By |2019-08-27T16:55:31-05:00September 29th, 2016|Categories: Donald Trump, Dwight Longenecker, Featured, Politics, Truth, Virtue|

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 [...]

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