Virtue

Homer’s Epic of the Family

This is the ultimate message of Homer’s two epics: Where family is found, life is found; where family is found, true beauty is found; where family is found, piety is found; where family is dissolved, only death and destruction follows...

Meeting a Lost Soul in the Skies

On airplanes my druthers is to mind my own business. I don’t want to be rude, but I much prefer reading to chatting. And that’s precisely what I did for almost the entirety of a recent flight. Nothing out of the ordinary

Where There Are No Children, There Are No Grown-Ups

It is a truism that children need adults to help them grow up. It is, however, less known but equally true that adults need children to help them grow into the fullness of maturity. Whereas children need...

The Last Infinity

Is it worth it to try to do great things in business or politics or art or education—or even the Church? Recently, when I was reflecting on honor and fame as praiseworthy ambitions for...

Can Morality & Religion Lead to Happiness?

The problem with the notion that one should do good because doing good leads to happiness is that, well, what if it doesn’t? Throughout human history, the greatest thinkers and theologians have each proposed a state of...

Baptizing Ambition

Those who truly seek to bring about the good also have to be ambitious for power, just not for their personal satisfaction, but for the greater good; they need to “baptize” their strong personal drive and accept power when it comes so that they can root out...

How Would Our Ancestors View the 21st Century?

What is the worst thing about living in the rubble of a civilization? It is not that you shed a tear for the noble churches and courts and town halls you once knew, as you recall years filled with religious services, parades and block parties. It is...

Can Mick Jagger Be a Worthy Role Model?

The purpose of growing old is to grow up. The purpose of life is to grow in wisdom and virtue (the two are synonymous, though the latter word is banned from all polite discourse in our rancid and rotten culture). If one grows old without growing in...

“The Abolition of Man” at Age Seventy-Five

In the modern world, C.S. Lewis argues in The Abolition of Man, we have trained the head and encouraged the heart, while neglecting the soul, the most important part of the person. As Lewis so scathingly puts it, we are producing men without chests...

The Art of Beautification: The Graces of Ordinary Life

The beautification of life, the highest “household art” of making people happy and places pretty, also encompasses the adornment of the soul. Because life is more than work, economics, and money, the life of the heart and spirit need constant replenishment...

Music of the Republic

Music pervades our lives and always has. It has taken you outside of yourselves and taken you deep within. It has been associated with things divine... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Christopher Nelson as he explores the...

The Rarity of the God-Fearing Man

Forgetting that there exists such a state as salutary dread, modern man has become spiritually foolhardy. The God-fearing man is rare... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Russell Kirk as he explores the moral strength and influence that result from fearing God. —W. Winston...

Andrew Jackson and Republican Virtue

One of the greatest causes of concern in American society by the 1820s was the perceived loss of virtue necessary to undergird a republic. All republicans knew that America would not last forever. They did, however, hope that by example, norms, education, and sacrifice, the American people...

Virtue vs. Virtuosity in Education

God is the Best. We can only get better by becoming more like the Best, knowing that we can never be the Best. This is the way of virtue which transcends relative trivialities such as virtuosity... What is the...