Virtue

Benjamin Franklin on “The Morals of Chess”

"The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions"...

The Blessings of Capitalism

Capitalism offers us outstanding new ways to be good. As a civilization, we should concentrate on taking advantage of these remarkable opportunities rather than entertaining idle suggestions, born of intellectual confusion if not sloth and envy, that the great boon of capitalistic plenty is undesirable or an...

What Makes Life Worth Living?

It would be far too easy to see this life as merely a vale of tears—a time of trial we must experience and through which we must suffer with such virtue as we can muster, so as to reach a higher reward in the next life. What...

The Revitalized College: A Model

The peculiar conditions of our time and our society demand now, more than ever before, a reinvigoration of truly liberal learning. This hour is favorable to the restoration or establishment of a college with principle... A few years...

An Imaginative Conservative’s “Man of the House”

The theme of C.R. Wiley's "Man of the House" is that the Great Progressive Fallacy—the individual is the moral center of the culture, and that the state is the individual’s protector—serves only the forces of destruction... Man of the House: A Handbook for Building...

The Real Diogenes

Diogenes believed that the plaudits, power, honor, and gain that people spent their lives seeking were “mere fancy and illusion.” But did Diogenes truly practice what he preached?... Diogenes is one of my heroes. When I think...

Where Are the Nation’s Captains?

In our confusing and chaotic times, we do not need technocrats, economists, and politicians to craft their complex programs to solve our problems. We need captains who selflessly dedicate themselves to defending the common good... Traveling...

Snow Angels, Goodness, and Intelligence

As a professor who values intelligence, I tend to like most those students who talk to me about books and ideas. Yet recently when a student, unasked, quietly shoveled the snow from my sidewalk, he taught me a lesson about a profound depth of goodness that I...

Is Civility Possible in America Today?

The country appears to be radically divided. We even hear talk of a new kind of civil war. Civic unity depends on an agreed vision of what man is and what the world is. When this agreement is lacking, nothing can really hold that society together...

Cardinal Virtues in “12 Angry Men”

12 Angry Men is a film connected to the Western moral imagination, speaking to us on a primal, even a classical level, with themes that are as old as the Bible and Greek tragedy. The characters of the twelve jurors are archetypes representing the virtues and vices of...

Wonder and Wickedness: The Anatomy of Good and Evil

The way of humility leads, via the rolling road of wonder, to the heaven-haven of the reward. The way of pride leads, via the thorny path of prejudice, to a hell of one’s own devising... “For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many...

Christian Liars: The Most Dangerous of Them All?

Christians who live so that they are never contaminated are useless, and they are liars, because we are all contaminated more seriously than we can imagine if we have ever seen a human soul as it was meant to be...

The Virtue of Recollection in Plato’s “Meno”

To question is not merely to know that one lacks knowledge but to love knowledge passionately, to pursue it and never give up... “…by indirections find directions out…” ~Hamlet, 2.1 The Meno holds a...

The Unbounded Eros of “Tristan and Isolde”

Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde should prompt us to search for an antidote to the lovers’ death wish—to pursue a love that preserves rather than destroys, celebrates rather than abolishes individuality, and seeks life rather than death... “They who were two and divided now became one and...