About Thaddeus Kozinski

Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski is the author of Modernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos (Angelico Press) and The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism: And Why Philosophers Cannot Solve It (Lexington Books). He teaches Great Books for Angelicum Academy.

Why the Christian Philosopher & Christian College Need Each Other

By |2018-12-21T14:21:14-06:00October 20th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Education, Faith, Humanities, Liberal Arts, Wyoming Catholic College|

Just as the good philosopher needs to be a master of the Christian philosophical tradition and adept at the dialectical, analytical, synthetic, and imaginative skills with which his trade is plied, the good Christian college also requires a rigorous and sophisticated curriculum and pedagogy firmly rooted in the Christian philosophical tradition... As Alasdair MacIntyre has [...]

Inside Plato’s Cave

By |2021-04-29T10:03:10-05:00October 13th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Philosophy, Plato, Socrates, Truth, Virtue|

If you have an open mind and inquiring heart, you will recognize something incomparably wonderful in Plato’s writings, if only their profound resonance with Christian teachings. The Cave is a masterful metaphor for the soul trapped in sin. “All education is conversion” —Pierre Hadot I. Why Read Plato? We know as Catholics, from the Divine [...]

The Intellectual Life: A Call to Arms

By |2022-01-25T11:52:32-06:00October 7th, 2017|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Humanities, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Philosophy, Wyoming Catholic College|

A.G. Sertillanges sees the intellectual life as essentially a vocation, and in the most spiritual sense of the word. It is, as he says, “a sacred call.” “More than ever before thought is waiting for men, and men for thought. The world is in danger for lack of life-giving maxims. We are in a train rushing [...]

Why Mysticism Is Not an Option

By |2023-03-07T08:48:07-06:00August 12th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Civilization, Modernity, Romano Guardini, Wyoming Catholic College|

Our situation is a gift, for God will give each of us who ask for it the grace to endure the darkness, barbarism, and loss of our customary sensible and cultural signs of God’s love and presence…   Only someone who has broken out of the restricted horizon of ideology can see clearly what has [...]

Can Studying Grammar Save Our Culture?

By |2019-11-21T13:57:11-06:00December 11th, 2016|Categories: Christianity, Culture, Featured, George Orwell, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Wyoming Catholic College|

There is tremendous need for conscious and vigorous action to shape and reshape our behavior in accordance with virtue, the common good, and God’s Law. What could studying grammar have to do with saving our culture..? In his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell sounds an almost despairing note: Most people who [...]

Why Philosophy?

By |2019-02-07T12:07:57-06:00December 1st, 2016|Categories: Catholicism, Classical Education, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Philosophy, Wyoming Catholic College|

Philosophy is many things to many people, but to me it is the art of questioning. If we can learn to ask the right questions in the right spirit, then the answers for which our hearts yearn will be given to us… “What are you majoring in?” “Philosophy.” “Oh…” Translation: “You’re one of those weird [...]

Becoming Children of Modernity

By |2019-02-05T16:30:16-06:00November 4th, 2016|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Culture, Featured, History, Philosophy, Reason, Wyoming Catholic College|

The Relative Absoluteness of Truth The first false dichotomy I would like to expose is the one between relativism and absolutism. From this viewpoint, truth is either “absolutely absolute” or “absolutely relative,” with no tertium quid. However, truth is neither of these. If we understand truth as a relationship between what are relative, human beings [...]

The “Disease” of Modernity: Both Cause and Cure

By |2019-09-24T13:41:57-05:00October 28th, 2016|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Culture, Featured, Modernity, Pope Benedict XVI, Wyoming Catholic College|

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 [...]

What Is Education?

By |2016-10-28T12:13:55-05:00September 24th, 2016|Categories: Classical Education, Classical Learning, Featured, Humanities, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Wyoming Catholic College|

It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation. —St. Thomas Aquinas The trouble with mere pragmatism is that it doesn’t work. —G.K. Chesterton What is education? I emphasize “is” because I am not here asking what education is thought to be, or what [...]

René Girard and Secular Modernity

By |2023-11-25T12:50:07-06:00September 2nd, 2016|Categories: Books, Christianity, Modernity, Rene Girard, Secularism, Wyoming Catholic College|

René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis, by Scott Cowdell (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2013) The work of René Girard would not seem all that relevant to Thomists. A French literary critic turned anthropologist and amateur scripture exegete, one who identifies ritual murder as the basis of all religion, culture, myth, [...]

The Heart of Liberal Education

By |2019-09-03T14:12:31-05:00August 17th, 2016|Categories: Featured, Liberal Learning, Wyoming Catholic College|

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally given as a talk to participants in Wyoming Catholic College’s PEAK camp. I hope you all enjoyed your summer camp at Wyoming Catholic College, what we call PEAK (Powerful Experience of Adventure and Knowledge): stimulating classes on dialectic, astronomy, theology, humanities, and philosophy; wonderful outdoor adventures repelling and horseback riding; [...]

Alasdair MacIntyre: From Socratic Subverter to Supporter of the State

By |2020-05-20T16:23:46-05:00April 7th, 2016|Categories: Foreign Affairs, Government, Liberalism, Political Philosophy, Politics, Socrates, War|

What Alasdair MacIntyre used to know is that the modern nation-state cannot do anything truly good for its citizens. So how can we explain his recent call for the strong use of nation-state power in the realms of health, education, military service, and public speech? I. What Alasdair MacIntyre Knows What Alasdair MacIntyre used to [...]

Did the Constitution Kill the Common Good?

By |2017-06-28T21:15:48-05:00November 30th, 2015|Categories: Aristotle, Featured, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Politics, Wyoming Catholic College|

Michael Hannon and Robert George are both orthodox Catholic thinkers who subscribe to a personalist anthropology and Aristotelian/Thomistic social philosophy, one that interprets the character of the modern, autonomous individual as an evil fiction, one that recognizes the existence and priority of intrinsic, common goods, and one that posits the indispensability of social communities ordered [...]

The Obergefell Decision & the Triumph of the Therapeutic

By |2016-06-22T16:00:35-05:00August 29th, 2015|Categories: Catholicism, Culture, Featured, Freedom, Morality, Religion, Wyoming Catholic College|

“Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.” “The rules of health indicate activity; psychological man can exploit older cultural precepts, ritual struggle no less than play therapy, in order to maintain the dynamism of his culture. Of course, the newest Adam cannot be expected to limit himself to [...]

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