The Soundminded Schizophrenic: Living in the Just-Nowness

By |2023-11-15T17:50:53-06:00November 15th, 2023|Categories: E.B., Eva Brann, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, Liberal Learning, Modernity, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Time, Timeless Essays|

“Modernity” comes from Latin "modo," meaning “just-now.” Thus modernity is any generation’s own time; it is the mode of the recent, the contemporary—with a hint of time-pride: the latest is the newest, and the newest is the best. Mr. Ropoulos and I were talking in the St. John’s College Coffee Shop, and the subject of [...]

Liberal Learning, Great Books, & Paideia

By |2023-10-24T05:55:19-05:00October 23rd, 2023|Categories: E.B., Education, Eva Brann, Featured, Russell Kirk, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

First, I want to say how honored I feel at receiving this prize named after Russell Kirk, an admirable writer, and Paideia, a noble practice. Even those of you who have not studied Greek may recognize what paideia means. It is the same word you can hear in “pediatrics,” the medical care of children, or [...]

Some Advice to Fellow Lovers of Liberal Learning

By |2023-10-10T18:18:44-05:00October 10th, 2023|Categories: E.B., Education, Eva Brann, Featured, Graduation, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

A preliminary function of a liberal education must be to serve as a purgative, a cleansing, of those who wish to be free. By its means we can cleanse ourselves of our undigested and unconscious prejudices. When it first came home to me that I would not be a tutor at the Graduate Institute in [...]

Immediacy: The Ways of Humanity

By |2023-08-24T18:04:24-05:00August 24th, 2023|Categories: E.B., Eva Brann, Humanities, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Time, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

Opposition to greatness comes from the kind of irrational irritation that made the Athenians ostracize Aristides because they were tired of hearing him called "the Just," or from egalitarian resentment, or from fear of the demands things of quality make on us. I want to steal four minutes of my talking time to speak of [...]

The Declaration of Independence: Translucent Poetry

By |2023-07-03T16:15:18-05:00July 3rd, 2023|Categories: American Founding, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, E.B., Essential, Eva Brann, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, James Madison, Samuel Adams, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

The Declaration of Independence, intended as an expression of the common opinion, is truly a text of "right opinion," a benign practical text which also has a peculiarly sound relation to the realm of thought. Section I:  The Legacy of the Declaration When American schoolchildren first discover that they have a place in the world they [...]

Image, Being, & Form in the Platonic Dialogues

By |2023-06-26T16:55:38-05:00June 26th, 2023|Categories: Books, E.B., Eva Brann, Featured, Jacob Klein, Plato, Senior Contributors, Socrates, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Modernity is best apprehended as being in a ruptured continuum with Greek antiquity—a continuum insofar as the terms persist, ruptured insofar as they take on new meanings and missions. That perspective makes those who hold it avid participants in the present. Jacob Klein was in the last year of his nine-year tenure as dean of [...]

Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance”: A Jewel of Republican Rhetoric

By |2023-06-22T07:55:13-05:00June 21st, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, E.B., Eva Brann, Freedom of Religion, James Madison, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

The document entitled “To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, A Memorial and Remonstrance” is a jewel of republican rhetoric.[1] Nor has this choice example of American eloquence gone without notice. And yet, compared to the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, it has remained obscure—more often quarried for stately [...]

Graduation Day: Do You Want to Change the World?

By |2023-06-02T11:27:00-05:00May 27th, 2023|Categories: E.B., Eva Brann, Graduation, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, St. John's College|

Across the nation commencement speakers bid the graduates, “Go forth and change the world” or “make a difference.” But should you want to change the world? Parents and Relatives, Fellow Tutors and Mr. President, Board Members and, above all, Santa Fe Seniors and Graduate Institute students! Some of you will remember that radio-telephone distress signal [...]

Myths versus Novels

By |2023-05-21T11:28:40-05:00April 11th, 2023|Categories: E.B., Eva Brann, Fiction, Literature, Myth, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, Virginia Woolf|

Although myths and novels belong to different categories, they are alike in being the venues of human figures who are not presented as images of actually existent, “real-world” people. They have their being in a specific work of art, a drama or a narrative, such as the “Oresteia,” or a novel, such as Edith Wharton’s [...]

Odysseus: Patron Hero of the Liberal Arts

By |2023-05-21T11:28:41-05:00February 19th, 2023|Categories: Classics, E.B., Education, Eva Brann, Featured, Homer, Liberal Arts, Odyssey, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

I am to write about my hero Odysseus and to connect him to Liberal Arts. A tall order, you might think, considering that this clever young king of Ithaca and wily old warrior at Troy probably — no, certainly — never read a book in his life, and that to me, at least, the liberal [...]

Do You Know What an Odyssey Is?

By |2023-08-13T19:30:08-05:00January 20th, 2023|Categories: Classics, E.B., Essential, Greek Epic Poetry, Homer, Liberal Learning, Odyssey, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

An odyssey is an adventurous and searching journey, or an intellectual or spiritual quest. It is the proper name for the life of learning. One can shape one’s own odyssey into a journey that lacks neither enchantment nor definition. My title is a question: “Do you know what an odyssey is?” I am asking each of [...]

A Writer’s Life

By |2023-05-21T11:28:43-05:00January 20th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, E.B., Eva Brann, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Distinguished scholar Eva Brann, of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, shares her thoughts, discusses how St. John's is truly unique among American colleges, why students should read Homer first, how Aristotle speaks to us today, and why Yogi Berra is one of her favorite philosophers. Ms. Brann is Senior Contributor to The Imaginative Conservative. [...]

Letter to a Young Essayist

By |2023-05-21T11:28:44-05:00January 19th, 2023|Categories: E.B., Eva Brann, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Essayists are like poets and novelists in writing what is uncalled for. But essayists differ from poets, the masters of the genre of concentrated concision, by being long but not overlong. 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 [...]

The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity

By |2023-05-21T11:28:45-05:00January 14th, 2023|Categories: E.B., Education, Eva Brann, Great Books, Liberal Arts, Modernity, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Modernity consists of perversions of notions drawn from Christianity; to be a modern means to be deeply enmeshed in them. The part of the title of this talk which I asked to have announced is “The Roots of Modernity.” But there is a second part which I wanted to tell you myself. The full title [...]

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