When the Panic Becomes Policy, Wisdom Must Step In

By |2020-03-29T17:45:42-05:00March 29th, 2020|Categories: Coronavirus, Economics, Imagination, John Horvat, Josef Pieper, Moral Imagination, Philosophy, Politics, Wisdom|

When set in motion, panic does not care what is in the way of its mad flight. All must be sacrificed—economy, society, and even worship—in the name of irrational fear. Moreover, it proves difficult to stop. What is missing in our reaction to the coronavirus pandemic is wisdom. In the face of the coronavirus crisis [...]

Professors Must Teach the Truth

By |2021-04-22T18:10:52-05:00May 17th, 2019|Categories: Education, Great Books, Josef Pieper, Liberal Learning, Plato, Socrates, Truth|

Only fools would send their children to school to listen to some teacher’s opinions, unless, of course, those opinions also happen to be true. Discussing St. Thomas Aquinas’s love of teaching, Josef Pieper writes: Teaching does not consist in a man’s making public talks on the results of his meditations, even if he does so [...]

The Fisher-Price God: A Call to Childlike Play

By |2019-08-15T12:51:19-05:00October 20th, 2018|Categories: Christian Living, Happiness, Josef Pieper, Philosophy, Wisdom|

Play is a deeply spiritual activity because play is primarily about community. The joy present between two that are playing together is a shared joy. It is neither the possession of one nor the other… But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful task To prune these growing Plants, and [...]

Finding Refreshment in a World of Endless Work

By |2019-09-02T10:09:17-05:00October 3rd, 2018|Categories: Happiness, Information Age, Josef Pieper, Labor/Work|

It only took a moment. The smartphone was somewhere in the grass, forgotten. Our hands and jeans were covered in smears of purple and green sidewalk chalk. My two-year-old daughter and I were busy drawing roads and buildings on a square of pavement—here a library, there a post office, with our house around the corner. [...]

Josef Pieper on Academia & the Abuse of Language

By |2019-12-17T10:48:20-06:00July 31st, 2017|Categories: Civil Society, Conservatism, Culture, Josef Pieper, Language, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Modernity, Plato, St. John Henry Newman|

Education in the liberal arts is an ancient tradition that has slowly been eroded through our increasing attachment to approaching the world scientifically and pragmatically… The language of man reveals something significant about his nature and his relationship with the world. Language is so close to man’s nature that if it suffers a drastic change, [...]

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