Virtue

Was Aristotle the Father of Radical Individualism?

A recent essay proposes Aristotle to have “opened a path” to today’s radical individualism and relativism. In order to evaluate this thesis, we must turn to the Great Tradition of the “perennial philosophy” and ask what the great philosophers taught about virtue, justice, friendship, and...

A Requiem for Manners

Christian chivalry harmonized human relations. Without it, society could only be held together by brute force and cold reason. Gone would be the warmth of considerate human relations, corrupted would be the morals of men, and all would be reduced to slaves... Today’s offering in our...

The Ancients on the Use and Abuse of Alcohol

Modern philosophy, empirical science, and our social sciences stand mute before moral questions and the human spirit. Let us, therefore, turn to the Ancients for their understanding of alcohol's effects upon the soul... “What’s this chemical ferment called life all about? I shall be impelled to strong...

How Aristotle Got Virtue Wrong

Aristotle’s reasoning about virtue, with its emphasis on man’s relationship to his own soul and man’s ability to perfect his own virtue, opened a path to relativism and radical individualism... All philosophical inquiry is united by two foundational elements....

Melville and Hawthorne on Good, Evil, & Human Nature

Fiction often clarifies our thinking about moral quandaries, distilling muddy waters into clear ones and dissecting our common human experience. The stories of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne do just this. In the scope of American literature,...

In Defense of Those Who Protect Us

Yes, we must hold our police and our military accountable, but we must also respect the difficulty and danger of their jobs and stop willfully blinding ourselves to the unpleasant realities around us... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to...

The Humility of Mary

From the Annunciation to the Presentation, from the Wedding at Cana to the upper room in Acts 1 and 2, the Mother of God's life is undergirded and infused with humility... About a year before being received into...

End-of-the-Year Awards Ceremony: A Formative Practice

By ending the year with an awards ceremony, the school shows that education is more than knowledge transfer; education involves forming the human person to have the capacities to value what should be valued... Grades are in,...

The “Me Too” Movement: What Would Plato Say?

Sexual misconduct is usually characterized as some kind of “power grab,” typically carried out by ruthless men seeking to prey upon the vulnerability of a woman. Yet Plato suggests that disordered sexual desire is a problem of the democratic soul...

What Is Honor?

To do the honorable thing is to submit the whole of one's being to the belief that there is underlying all human life and interaction, and indeed all of existence, a universal sense of right and wrong... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our...

The Paradox of Courage

What does courage actually look like? Why is it that many who can face mortal dangers in battle lack the other virtues? How do you account for a man like Cicero, whose voice trembled at the beginning of every speech and who never distinguished himself in battle,...

The Dark Side of Normal

Sin is the most normal thing of all throughout the ages of human experience. It is far more normal than virtue. There are always far more sinners than there are saints... “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult;...

Applying the Principle of Subsidiarity to the Debt Crisis

Until individuals, families, institutions, and government are restored to their proper roles, America will continue crashing through the debt ceiling... It is official: The national debt has now exceeded $21 trillion. The tragic news comes just six months...

Unbought Grace

The qualities that I would love most of all to see in all our students could not be better described than by Edmund Burke’s account of the chivalric demeanor: "that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself,...