Invasion of the Ultra-Subtle

By |2024-01-22T22:08:04-06:00January 22nd, 2024|Categories: Books, Liberal Arts, Russell Kirk|

More and more I am convinced that our ultimate human fate will depend on whether or not we succeed in wresting the intellectual life from the professoriate. Doesn't the whole intellectual world stand or fall on this distinction: whether our intellectual understandings are mere inventions, or whether they are authentic discoveries? One purpose of cultivating [...]

Eva Brann, National Treasure

By |2024-01-20T14:33:05-06:00January 20th, 2024|Categories: Eva Brann, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, Liberal Learning, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, Truth, Wisdom|

In a moment when the forces of ideology seem to threaten to overwhelm the voice of sanity and civility, Eva Brann’s imaginative conservatism offers another way—a way rooted in, as she has put it, “talking, reading, writing, listening.” Editor’s Note: This essay is part of a series dedicated to Senior Contributor Dr. Eva Brann of St. [...]

Liberal Education and Politics: The Case of “The Tempest”

By |2024-01-19T18:06:11-06:00January 19th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Politics, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare|

A liberal education is free in the sense that it is free of practical goals. We study our language and our literature or biology and chemistry and psychology just because it is a human instinct to do so, and because it is enjoyable to do so. Everything is Political Just as I began my college [...]

The Cufflinks of Fr. Ian Boyd (1935–2024)

By |2024-01-16T18:48:39-06:00January 16th, 2024|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Death, G.K. Chesterton, Liberal Learning, Literature|

Fr. Ian Boyd was one of the most beautiful representatives of that culture that goes by the name of “conservatism.” His name will forever remain linked to that of G.K. Chesterton, and especially to "The Chesterton Review." The founder of The Chesterton Review, emblem of a conservatism we miss, passed away at 88. Fr. [...]

The End of Literature

By |2024-01-10T18:21:33-06:00January 10th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Edmund Burke, Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays|

There have been theories about literature nearly as long as there has been literature, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. But the ancient theorists all assumed that they were thinking about something that had its own functions and ends, which they might help to explain. When the new professors think of theory it is exclusively more [...]

A Masterpiece of Cultural History: Jacques Barzun’s “From Dawn to Decadence”

By |2024-01-09T18:18:32-06:00January 9th, 2024|Categories: Books, Classics, Culture, Economics, Political Economy, Robert M. Woods, Timeless Essays, Virgil|Tags: |

In the annals of writing history, there are a handful of volumes that have become established as models due to tone, insightful content, and excellence of style. The most recent historical work by Jacques Barzun is such a work. It is a cultural history of the highest standard. As a historical volume of such scope, [...]

Love to Learn, Learn to Love

By |2023-12-18T11:41:39-06:00December 17th, 2023|Categories: Beauty, Catholicism, Classical Education, Classical Learning, Classics, Education, Great Books, Liberal Learning, Truth|

To get the most out of your time here, I have some advice: Love to learn, ignore your grades, and learn to love — and then I promise that Thomas Aquinas College will radically change your life. Before I arrived here on campus for the first time 23 years ago, my high school classmates had [...]

Jane Austen Forever!

By |2023-12-15T18:08:48-06:00December 15th, 2023|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Books, Classics, Culture, Education, Fiction, Jane Austen, Literature, Television, Timeless Essays|

Pick up a Jane Austen novel, and you will discover that behind the long gowns and country dances, people in her era struggled with the same weaknesses we struggle with today. Well-written stories like Austen’s bring to life the human drama that is played out in every age, in every heart. I’ve been reading Jane [...]

Advent and Melancholy

By |2023-12-02T20:54:45-06:00December 2nd, 2023|Categories: Advent, Catholicism, Christianity, Christmas, Glenn Arbery, Great Books, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

Nothing breaks through melancholy like a baby. During Advent, we wait for that moment of absolute newness that we need within but cannot muster, that moment when the whole of the divine nature, the whole meaning of universes beyond number, lies helpless before us. On Monday of this week, students met with me in the new [...]

A Mystical Metaphysical: An Introduction to Thomas Traherne

By |2023-11-18T21:55:23-06:00November 18th, 2023|Categories: Dwight Longenecker, Liberal Learning, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

In a world beset by violence, doubt, despair, cynicism and sin to turn to the works of poet Thomas Traherne is to breathe a gust of fresh Spring air. My little sister followed me to England, fell in love with the country, fell in love with an Englishman, and fell in love with the English [...]

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 [...]

Oracle of the Humanities: Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard

By |2023-11-13T20:13:35-06:00November 13th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Democracy, Education, History, Humanities, Literature, Michael J. Connolly, Senior Contributors|

Charles Eliot Norton is unknown today outside historians of literature or education, but between Fort Sumter and Teddy Roosevelt he dominated Anglo-American literature and Harvard lecture halls. Beginning with optimism, in the years following Appomattox his perspective darkened into fears that American democracy encouraged selfishness, corruption, and the hatred of excellence. In the 1890s, Harvard [...]

A World in Need of Re-Enchantment: A New Leader at Wyoming Catholic College

By |2023-11-11T08:26:35-06:00November 10th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Education, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Wyoming Catholic College|

We live in a world in need of re-enchantment; but re-enchanting love is rekindled in the hearts of people one at a time. To reclaim that sense of loving delight in God and the world, we need to give our students a break from the busyness and distraction that surrounds daily life, let them digitally [...]

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