The Augustan Age refers to a time period broadly revolving around the restoration of order (if not necessarily liberty) at the end of the Roman republic and the beginning of the empire—roughly 50BC to 120AD. Many scholars label it the “Silver Age of Roman Literature.” Every one of the authors listed below held numerous qualms [...]
I have always sought to instill into my students that a knowledge of literature is not possible without an adequate knowledge of history, philosophy, and theology. I stress, for instance, that we cannot know the plays of Shakespeare unless we know something about the time and culture in which he was living and the philosophical [...]
Dwelling on Delphi: Thinking Christianly about the Liberal Arts, by Robert Woods (Westbow Press, 2016) We live in a curious moment in Western history. Despite the past few decades’ real technological and material advances, which the overwhelming majority of us enjoy, most of us feel that something is seriously wrong. Smart phones and spectator sports have [...]
The Politics of Prudence, by Russell Kirk (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1993) Dr. Russell Kirk observes in this book that “the greatest works of politics are poetic.” The rationalistic formulae set forth by most contemporary philosophers will not endure because they are not poetic; they divorce politics from religion, from imaginative literature, and from tradition, and [...]
In 2016 Americans are feeling anxious. It’s not that we are experiencing crises—we are neither in total war nor economic depression. Yet 2016 has forced us to rethink all we thought we knew. A Socialist made a credible run for the Democratic nomination and succeeded in moving the Democratic Party platform farther left than it [...]
The message is loud and clear. Your actions have no more significance than those of a cockroach. Furthermore, like a cockroach, you are in no position to make moral choices of your own free will. When you commit some hideous brutality, it is not that you decided to do so. No, on the contrary, external [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Eric Voegelin as he explores the importance of studying the classics. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher A reflection on classical studies, their purpose and prospects, will properly start from Wolf’s definition of classic philology as the study of man’s nature as it has become [...]
Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone of dark that wives put on when all their love is done. […]
To understand the concept of God in Modernity, I first turned to the high point of Christianity in both the East and West. According to patristic tradition, God can be known in two ways. Cataphatic, or rational, knowledge defines God by positive statements; apophatic knowledge is direct experience of God, although such knowledge cannot be [...]
Ludwig von Mises was born on September 29, 1881, in the city of Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian empire. His mother was Adele (Landau) von Mises; his father, Arthur Edler von Mises, a construction engineer in government service to the Ministry of Railroads, died at the age of forty-six (after a gall bladder operation) when Ludwig [...]
When a death is reported, the first task is to identify the body. Who was the deceased? If, however, that somebody has deliberately left as few clues to her real identity as possible, then the identification is all but meaningless. […]
Will Hillary Clinton clean out the nest of anti-Catholic bigots in her inner circle? Or is anti-Catholicism acceptable in her crowd? In a 2011 email on which Clinton campaign chief John Podesta was copied, John Halpin, a fellow at the Center for American Progress that Mr. Podesta founded, trashed Rupert Murdoch for raising his kids [...]
Although Hilaire Belloc and J.R.R. Tolkien had much in common, not least of which was their shared and impassioned Catholicism, it is intriguing that they should differ so profoundly on the importance of the Anglo-Saxons. Picture the scene. An expectant audience, which includes the great Catholic writer, J.R.R. Tolkien, awaits the arrival of another great [...]
Editor’s Note: In 1645, John Winthrop, the deputy-governor of Massachusetts, was impeached for interfering in a local militia election. Following his acquittal, Winthrop delivered a short speech, “On Liberty,” which is reproduced below. Please note that spelling and punctuation have been modernized for the sake of clarity and convenience to the reader. I suppose something [...]