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Our Hero: Socrates in the Underworld

May 23, 2013 By 1 Comment

by Peter A. Lawlersocrates in the underworld, ranasinghe

It is my pleasure to be able to introduce Nalin Ranasinghe’s Socrates in the Underworld: On Plato’s Gorgias to you as one of the most able, eloquent, noble, profound, and loving books ever written on Socrates. Ranasinghe restores for us the example of a moral hero who inaugurated a moral revolution in opposition to his country’s post-imperial cynicism and nihilism. What Socrates discovered about the human soul remains true for us in our similarly cynical and nihilistic age. Here’s the truth: “Self-knowledge is both the cure and the punishment for evil.” We are the beings who can’t help but know the truth about ourselves and be open to the truth about all things. The truth is real; we lack the power to command or negate it. The truth has authority over us; we can’t live well unless we see that it is the power that allows us to perform genuinely free and deliberate acts. The truth is attractive; it both draws us out of ourselves and is a sort of magnet that puts our souls in order. And the truth is genuinely moral or beautiful.

Each of us and the cosmos itself “is so structured that true happiness can only result from virtue.” Both intellectual and moral virtue are required to be genuinely open to the whole truth, and so the view that one sort of virtue is possible without the other is mistaken. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Books, Peter A. Lawler, Philosophy, Socrates Tagged With: , May 23, 2013

The Dalai, the Dinosaur, and the Tao

May 23, 2013 By 1 Comment
Tao cs lewis

The Dalai Lama

by Gary L. Gregg

In his inaugural lecture at Cambridge University, C. S. Lewis referred to himself as a type of dinosaur; a species of “Old Western man” that was about to go extinct in the mid-20th century. Today I had the extraordinary opportunity to spend some time watching a man who I fear might also be one of the last of his kind.  The Dalai Lama taught and interacted with several thousand young people in Louisville, Kentucky earlier today.  His overarching teaching was on the virtue of compassion and his underlying conception of the good life was one conservatives should embrace. [Read more...]

Filed Under: C.S. Lewis, Dalai Lama, Gary Gregg, Moral Imagination, Morality May 23, 2013

Damsels in Distress: a Cultural Anti-Depressant

May 22, 2013 By 2 Comments

DamselsInDistressby Barbara J. Elliott

If you’re feeling depressed about the culture around you, Dr. Elliott has a prescription for you:  one full dose of Whit Stillman’s most recent film, Damsels in Distress, followed by tap dancing.  I am perfectly serious. This charming story unfolds with a group of quirky college girls on the campus of Seven Oaks, a fictitious Ivy League college, set in an indeterminate time with a retro feel.  Violet, played effortlessly by Greta Gerwig, is a big-hearted but sometimes manic student, determined to prevent suicides and reform frat boys.  It’s better to “find someone frankly inferior and improve them,” she tells her girlfriends as they approach the fraternity party wearing dresses and heels. “There’s enough material here for a lifetime of social work,” she remarks drily as one of the drunken lads lurches off the porch. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Barbara J. Elliott, Culture, Film, Modernity, Moral Imagination, Whit Stillman May 22, 2013

Great Books, Higher Education, and the Logos

May 22, 2013 By 1 Comment
great books

Michael M. Jordan

by Michael M. Jordan

Generally speaking, there are two major philosophies of education: an older model which addresses moral and spiritual concerns of the mind and heart of man, and a newer one which trains us to manipulate and control the material world for the good of the body. The older model prevailed in higher education from around 400 b.c. until the mid-nineteenth century, when it began to be replaced by the newer, utilitarian model. Since the 1960s, the utilitarian model has competed with a modern version of the older model, one that usually features either ideological or trivial studies. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Education, Liberal Learning, Michael M. Jordan, Modern Age May 22, 2013

Why “Value” Families?

May 21, 2013 By 8 Comments
family

Bruce Frohnen

by Bruce Frohnen

In responding to a recent post of mine criticizing our liberal culture for its hostility toward the traditional family, a commenter wrote: “I don’t know a single liberal who…doesn’t value (and participate in) both traditional and non-traditional families.” I think it is important to examine this liberal response to conservative criticism, not because the issue can be “settled,” but because it can tell us why liberals and conservatives so often seem to be talking past one another when it comes to social issues.

Conservatives (like me) often are accused of being unfairly censorious in accusing liberals of undermining primary institutions like the family.  After all, the argument goes, we talk about “attacks” on relationships liberals genuinely value.  And there is a way in which this is true—a way that shows why the “culture wars” are not likely to end any time soon.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Bruce Frohnen, Culture May 21, 2013

Agrarianism Reborn: On the Curious Return of the Small Family Farm

May 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment

agraianismby Allan C. Carlson

In 1941 the Prairie Farmer, America’s oldest farm periodical, celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. The centennial cover features a drawing of the iconic twentieth-century “new” farmer: tall, young, and slender. Bulky overalls have given way to tailored city clothes; the straw hat to a fedora. In the artist’s words, he is “a strong, virile, keen, friendly, forward-looking citizen standing in a field of gold.”[1] Importantly, there are no horses or mules in that golden field. Instead, a tractor tills the ground. “Modern machinery has straightened the farmer’s back,” the artist happily reports. More boldly, an ad on the inside cover features a slender farm wife in stylish garb beaming over four happy children, with her husband on a tractor in the background. It declares that “[e]very new MM [Minneapolis-Moline] machine put into action on your farm brings you closer to FREEDOM, and closer to the young folks for whom you are farming.”[2] At that moment, American farmers and their families still numbered about 29 million souls. The average farm was 160 acres in size.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Agrarianism, Allan Carlson, Culture, Intercollegiate Review Tagged With: May 21, 2013

Letter to a Young Essayist

May 20, 2013 By 1 Comment
essayisy

Eva Brann

by Eva Brann

Dear —

The dash signifies that you are reading the answer to a question unasked, the reply to a letter unreceived. No one’s written beseeching me to reveal the Art of Being an Essayist. You aren’t the heavy-hearted Mr. Kappus to whom Rainer Maria Rilke addresses his consolatory Letters to a Young Poet (last letter, Paris 1908) or the Dear Friend to whom Mario Vargas Llosa fondly writes his Lettea to a Young Novelist (last letter, Lima 1997). There isn’t likely to be such a suppliant, for an ardent young essayist is an oxymoron, like, say, a “spirited bureaucrat.” “Young poet” has a fine pathos to it, and “young novelist” a sense of high vocation, but “young essayist”—well, it is the faint comicality of the notion that gives me the temerity to range myself as a third in this famous duo, for at least I am way down in a descending order of mundanity. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Eva Brann, Liberal Learning, St. John's College May 20, 2013

Learning to Love Berlioz

May 20, 2013 By 2 Comments

Berliozby Stephen M. Klugewicz

He has the unfortunate reputation of being a one-hit wonder, as he is so closely identified with the remarkable and revolutionary Symphonie Fantastique. Aside from that work and the occasional overture, orchestras rarely program him, as his symphonic pieces are typically lengthy works that would dominate the evening’s program, and what orchestra director wants to have this composer’s name as top billing? Ticket sales would be guaranteed to be slow. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Art, Hector Berlioz, Music, Stephen M. Klugewicz May 20, 2013

Wit and Wisdom of Imaginative Conservatives (May 11-17)

May 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Wit Wisdomby Winston Elliott, III

This week The Imaginative Conservative provided a thoughtful look at the world of economics and government, world and American history, politics, classic literature, culture, Christianity, and the moral imagination. Included were a broad range of essays that considered capitalism, conspiracy, paradox, compromise, and common ground. Pour a cup of coffee, light a pipe or warm a scone, and immerse yourself in the wit and wisdom of these essays.

Filed Under: Week in Review May 19, 2013

Romano Guardini and the Personality of Man

May 19, 2013 By 3 Comments
Romano Guardini

Romano Guardini

by Bradley J. Birzer

The profound Germano-Italian philosopher and theologian Romano Guardini (1885-1968) remains, by and large, one of the most unsung heroes of twentieth-century conservatism.

His reputation revived a bit during the all-too brief pontificate of Benedict XVI as so much of Ratzinger’s thought came from Guardini, directly and indirectly. But, he and his work should stand much higher than they do in our memory and in our adulation. In particular, his various books–a biography of Jesus; a discourse on technology; a metahistory on the meaning of modernity and post-modernity; and a meditation on the death of Socrates–should signal to us his depth of thought as well as his breadth of interests. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Romano Guardini May 19, 2013

The Ballad of King Canute

May 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Canute And Aelfgifu

King Canute

by Stephen Masty

Canute, the king of Englishmen,

Norwegians and the Danes,

Had glib courtiers, you may be sure,

Who soothed for every sinecure

Or privilege they might procure,

And caused him royal pains.

 

He bade them all take up his throne

Despite the morning damp,

And carry it into the sea,

With king and court into the sea,

And hoped such sycophants might be

Inflicted with a cramp. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Poetry, Stephen Masty Tagged With: May 19, 2013

The Humane and The Inhumane

May 18, 2013 By 1 Comment

Brave New World humane inhumaneby Robert M. Woods

Over the years I’ve seen countless book lists and there are two books on “must read lists” that speak to the modern world insightfully, but in differing manners. As dystopian works, people have tended to see them both as “prophetic” and yet, of the two, most think that the one literary vision was closer to reality than the other.

The two works are George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Just prior to the year 1984 Orwell’s book became a best seller even though it was originally published in 1949. However, of the two works the case could be made that Huxley’s vision was closer to getting it right and it has remained increasingly contemporary even though it was originally published in 1932. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Aldous Huxley, Books, George Orwell, Robert M. Woods, Truth Tagged With: May 18, 2013
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