It is a wondrous turn of events how a conversation, a new book on Heraclitus (The Logos of Heraclitus) by the magnificent Great Books scholar, Eva Brann, finding Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, and my particular sitz im laben moved me to reread and rethink an important pre-Socratic philosopher. To begin, I find the [...]
Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again... Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns, nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to [...]
If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life. —The Lessons of History [...]