At a time when a child should be exposed to wonder, awe, play, and fairy stories, the STEM brigade tells us we should instead prepare children for careers in engineering and the sciences. My mother-in-law, a wonderful grandmother and award-winning artist to boot, is fond of buying my nine-year-old daughter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) [...]
Do you believe in a higher power, something that transcends the “human organism”? If this question is trivialized or ignored, we enter the very sound and soul of despair. Anthropology is the scientific study of human beings. Philosophy, literally translated, is the love of wisdom. Philosophical anthropology, then, is the scientific study of humans for [...]
The world needs works of literature with a moral message that will inspire readers to virtue and bring people closer to God. But today's literature reflects only a debased wasteland. Let there be no Noble Prize for literature until writers can present a moral order that will return to the long-forgotten quest for the good, [...]
How can the use of reason lead to so much wrong-headedness? The answer is that wrong-headedness is always connected to wrong-heartedness. It is pride, the absence of love, which poisons the intellectual faculties, thereby preventing reason from serving its purpose of pursuing objective truth. There is a world of difference between wisdom and cleverness. In [...]
If Socrates reveals anything about the moral life, it is how uncertain and unstable it is without grounding in knowledge of the Good; and yet he confesses that such grounding is beyond his reach, beyond the reach of human reason itself to attain. In this way Socrates reveals the genuine problem of moral relativity that [...]
Our kids don’t need arguments, they need a childhood. They need to have their healthy imaginations nourished and their innate prejudices in favor of truth, beauty, and goodness affirmed. It’s hard to be a kid these days. Your blue-haired teachers appear on Libs of Tik-Tok videos bragging about selling you into sex slavery, and people [...]
Is the presumptuous mapping of all material reality a boon to humankind, or will it prove a curse? Might an acknowledgment of mystery as a steady and enduring feature of our condition be key to our mental and moral health, and our sense of our own freedom? This essay was co-authored with Donald A. Yerxa.* [...]
It would be possible to read Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis" as a pro-life narrative that invites us to see the dignity of the human person beneath the ugly surface. But such a reading would violate the true spirit of the work which, as the author confesses, is animated by narcissistic self-pity and is an outpouring of [...]
Beauty is not found in power, military glory, or victory. As great as these things are, love is a surer guide. Considering this point, we would also do well to contemplate what causes us to love most, love best? When we do, isn’t it the love that someone has for us? 1. Aesthetics Leads Aesthetics [...]
Following the Way of Goodness and living in the Life that is true Beauty is absolutely essential. The deepest contemplation of great truths and even the Truth Himself is ultimately worth nothing if it does not issue in action and love. Congratulations, Trinity class of 2022! You are finishing something extraordinary. And when I say [...]
A true, life-giving education is an education that recognizes and embraces a world filled with goodness, truth, and beauty. It is also an education that requires virtue from those who undertake it. Editor's Note: The following is an abridged version of the commencement address that Joseph Pearce gave to the graduating class of 2018 at [...]
Sherrard Billings, one of the three founders of Groton School—and the American Mr. Chips—did his part to develop good and wise habits among the “Grotties.” Through his own life of suffering, he taught them to how to live, pursue the truth, love the good, and pass on wisdom. The Groton School The New [...]
Is Technocracy our God in the modern world? Today, the unthinkable becomes doable, and the doable is unquestioned. Apart from the decision to manufacture the atomic bombs, what about the decision to actually use them on Japan? The struggle to understand why anyone would want to use power to create nothing began for me with [...]
Why is it that those who like both G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis almost invariably prefer one to the other? This question is best answered with a sweeping generalization: There are two types of people in the world—hikers and walkers. Readers who are hikers prefer Lewis; readers who are walkers prefer Chesterton. There are two [...]