To attain virtue in solitude defeats the communitarian instincts of human nature. The avenue of politics is one of the mediums by which moral excellence can, and should, be practiced—for there are tremendous benefits wrought to the rest of society as a result… “We see that every city is some sort of community, and that [...]
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 [...]
I’ve not been fully sure what to “make” of Pope Francis. He is clearly a man of God with a deep love for the poor and an even deeper personal humility. But how is one to respond to his pronouncements on economic and environmental issues? Pope Francis and the Caring Society, ed. Robert M. Whaples (Independent [...]
With an unsettling sense of déjà vu I watched the events in Charlottesville unfold. I had seen it all before, not merely as a passive spectator watching it happen on television but as an active participant, feeling the rage and the anger and experiencing the violence at first hand… As I read reports of the violence [...]
The mediocre man perhaps takes comfort from the fact that there will never be a monument erected in his honor. He has taken great pains to do nothing extraordinary to merit such an action… As the violent Statue War now rages, a nervous man scornfully watches from a distance. He doesn’t understand what the uproar [...]
“The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions.” I have a bit of a confession to make. I have never played chess [...]
Capitalism offers us outstanding new ways to be good. As a civilization, we should concentrate on taking advantage of these remarkable opportunities rather than entertaining idle suggestions, born of intellectual confusion if not sloth and envy, that the great boon of capitalistic plenty is undesirable or an illusion… Around the year 1885, the American economy [...]
The peculiar conditions of our time and our society demand now, more than ever before, a reinvigoration of truly liberal learning. This hour is favorable to the restoration or establishment of a college with principle… A few years ago, a graduate of New York University brought suit against that institution. He had been induced to enter [...]
The theme of C.R. Wiley’s “Man of the House” is that the Great Progressive Fallacy—the individual is the moral center of the culture, and that the state is the individual’s protector—serves only the forces of destruction… Man of the House: A Handbook for Building a Shelter that will Last in a World that is Falling [...]
Diogenes believed that the plaudits, power, honor, and gain that people spent their lives seeking were “mere fancy and illusion.” But did Diogenes truly practice what he preached?… Diogenes is one of my heroes. When I think of him I often think of a well-known story: As a throng exited a theater, the famous philosopher [...]
In our confusing and chaotic times, we do not need technocrats, economists, and politicians to craft their complex programs to solve our problems. We need captains who selflessly dedicate themselves to defending the common good… Traveling by air these days can be stressful. It is increasingly difficult to go on a trip without some incident [...]
As a professor who values intelligence, I tend to like most those students who talk to me about books and ideas. Yet recently when a student, unasked, quietly shoveled the snow from my sidewalk, he taught me a lesson about a profound depth of goodness that I need to study up on. G.K. Chesterton joked, [...]
The country appears to be radically divided. We even hear talk of a new kind of civil war. Civic unity depends on an agreed vision of what man is and what the world is. When this agreement is lacking, nothing can really hold that society together… Civility means to act as one would in a [...]
12 Angry Men is a film connected to the Western moral imagination, speaking to us on a primal, even a classical level, with themes that are as old as the Bible and Greek tragedy. The characters of the twelve jurors are archetypes representing the virtues and vices of all of us, and their search for the [...]