“To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed.”—Marcus Cato The Elder “Didst thou forget [...]
Scrupulous fear of the gods is the very thing which keeps the Roman Commonwealth together. To such an extraordinary height is this carried among them, both in private and public business, that nothing could exceed it. –Histories, Polybius Infirmity doth still neglect all office Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves When nature, [...]
In the mid-twentieth century, English historian Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) was widely considered to be one of the finest Catholic scholars in the English-speaking world. Today his name and work is largely unknown, even among Catholics. But that is beginning to change as Dawson is being discovered and recovered by a number of writers and historians. One [...]
There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God’s and not Man’s, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so [...]
by Carl Olson Dr. Bradley J. Birzer is the author of Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth. In this interview he talks with Carl E. Olson, editor of Ignatius Insight, about his most recent book, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll. Ignatius Insight: Why a book about Charles [...]