The Copernican Revolution elevated the scientist above the stars, planets, and Earth to a position of the highest being in the cosmos. The Myth Like most, if not all religions, science has a creation myth that proclaims a new cosmic situation. The Copernican myth tells how science began and, like all myths, is recited again [...]
Franz Schubert wrote "Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen" in 1816 after a text by Johann Georg Jacobi, which is reproduced below in English translation. Three recordings of this exquisite piece—arranged for soprano and piano, for chorus and piano, and for cello and piano—are provided at the bottom of the text. Litany for the Feast [...]
It is possible that Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. My intention in saying this is not to discourage supporters of and potential voters for Donald Trump. These people know from experience that it is best to dismiss or fight to prove wrong the self-interested doomsday predictions of the mainstream [...]
William Shakespeare’s women display virtue while being tested in extreme situations not of their own making. One of the greatest of them, Viola in Twelfth Night, is in extreme circumstances to which she must apply the virtue of patience. That “patience is a virtue” has been proverbial since the Middle Ages—Chaucer’s Franklin in The Canterbury Tales [...]
Spain and the Catholic Church are indebted to the man who saved the original letters of St. John of the Cross because he preserved a priceless part of their inheritance. It was March 1936. A series of anti-clerical riots swept through Toledo. Churches were burnt and priests and monks were attacked in the streets. During [...]
Should one generation ever consider itself greater than any other generation, past or future, Edmund Burke warned in his magisterial Reflections on the Revolution in France, the entire fabric of a civilization might very well unravel and, ultimately, disintegrate. Our modern ears have no right to discount Burke’s argument as simple hyperbole. What takes centuries [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Robert C. Koons, as he explores the ways in which we may reform the higher education system. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher The “higher education system” in the United States has metastasized to the point that the body politic will soon be unable [...]
I died for beauty — but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining room— He questioned softly "Why I failed?" "For beauty," I replied— "And I — for truth, — Themself are One — We brethren, are," He said— And so, as Kinsmen, met at Night— We [...]
This summer I taught a week-long music course for high school students. As the week progressed, I brought in samples of music to listen to, pieces by Bach or Beethoven, Mozart or Palestrina, that would illustrate this or that aspect of what we were reading and discussing. Although a few of the students had clearly been [...]
It’s always refreshing to read essays these days that are intelligent and genuinely engaging, principally because such essays are becoming fewer and farther between. One such, which I enjoyed reading even though I ultimately disagreed with it, was Paul Berman’s “Why the French Ban the Veil: The Secular Republic Debates How Best to Contain and Suppress [...]
Liquidation does not mean punishment, subjugation, conquest, or even execution. Liquidation means extermination merely on the basis of otherness…. ‘Whoever is different will be liquidated,’ works like a poison, a constant temptation to human thought, destroying or at least menacing it. —Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues One of the most distinctive and, I would [...]
Here’s a cause close to my heart: public and semi-public speech. I mean occasions when we are addressed by our political leaders on grand occasions of concern to the whole republic, and times, like the present, when we choose to come together to hear what someone invited to do so says about a matter of [...]
Language…most shows a man. —Ben Jonson Aristotle’s famous statement that virtue is a mean between two extremes is generally not quoted in its entirety. He does indeed say, “In respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean”—that is, a mean between two opposed vices. Courage is a mean between [...]
So much has been said and written about the present Presidential election campaign that many of us are no doubt feeling overloaded with unwanted and ill-tempered debate and are suffering from political-spin-fatigue. This being so, I have no desire to add to the political overload nor do I intend to descend to the sewers and [...]