A Republic If You Can Keep It: Religion, Civil Society, & America’s Founding

By |2023-04-16T17:46:30-05:00April 16th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Civil Society, Morality, Religion, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Though civil libertarians rightly point out the dangers of an unchecked government, they blissfully ignore the dangers of an unchecked, unrestrained populace. It is thus worthwhile to return to the founders and examine what role they desired religion and morality to play in their new Republic. The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin departed from [...]

The Goods of Friendship

By |2022-12-30T15:11:59-06:00December 30th, 2022|Categories: Aristotle, Friendship, Great Books, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

In “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle offers students a refreshing alternative to the instrumentality of modern life: the pursuit of goodness. Goodness inspires honor, and mutual honor is the stuff of friendships of virtue. These are the friendships which yield the greatest happiness. Recently, I had the great pleasure afforded by technology in our chaotic, pandemic times [...]

Pull Down Thy Vanity

By |2022-12-17T17:06:00-06:00December 17th, 2022|Categories: Advent, Character, Christian Living, Christianity, Conservatism, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Virtue, Wyoming Catholic College|

This Advent season does not center on our achievement; it is not the time of puffing ourselves up, but of waiting for God to reveal, as only God can, the new thing under the sun that breaks the great cycle of vanity. The greatest things are born from humility. There is something essentially comic about [...]

“The Hobbit” and Virtue

By |2023-08-18T18:04:02-05:00November 13th, 2022|Categories: Books, Christianity, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

There is a supernatural dimension to the unfolding of events in Middle-earth, in which Tolkien shows the mystical balance that exists between the promptings of grace or of demonic temptation and the response of the will to such promptings and temptations. This mystical relationship plays itself out in the form of transcendent Providence, which is [...]

Honoring Veterans, Envisioning Peace

By |2022-11-10T18:53:38-06:00November 10th, 2022|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Christopher B. Nelson, History, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, Veterans Day, Virtue, War|

On Veterans Day, we honor our surviving warriors. We rightly give thanks to those who have sacrificed their personal peace for the survival of the nation. And we rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the pledge “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” War endures. The oldest [...]

The Paradox of Courage

By |2022-11-01T14:49:54-05:00November 1st, 2022|Categories: Character, Education, Glenn Arbery, Great Books, History, Humanities, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

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, yet who stood up to Catiline and saved [...]

Can Socrates Change Your Life?

By |2022-10-02T20:18:09-05:00October 2nd, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Featured, Philosophy, Plato, Politics, Socrates, Timeless Essays, Truth, Virtue|

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 [...]

What Is This Thing Called Virtue?

By |2022-10-02T14:03:00-05:00October 2nd, 2022|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Conservatism, Featured, Timeless Essays, Virtue|Tags: |

Today, conceptions of virtue are at open war, with Christian virtue being termed “bigoted” on account of its failure to abandon the family, the unborn, and our duty to serve our God, in the face of an alternate vision of virtue as autonomous action circumscribed by an all-encompassing toleration that equates indifference with caring. Believe [...]

What Happened to Excellence?

By |2023-08-02T08:20:20-05:00September 18th, 2022|Categories: Character, Culture, Eric Voegelin, Essential, Featured, George A. Panichas, Great Books, Irving Babbitt, Modernity, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Excellence predicates aspiration and transcendence, a quest for a higher qual­ity of attainment and, in effect, going beyond the moment. Excellence, which can be defined as the state of excelling and of surpassing merit, is now increasingly one of the lost words of the English language. And increasingly the special qualities that this word de­notes [...]

Humility, Prudence, and Other Lost Virtues

By |2022-09-12T17:33:09-05:00September 12th, 2022|Categories: Democracy, Virtue|

Democracy requires compromise, and compromise requires the two virtues lacking most in American society–prudence and humility. What hope is there, then, now that technology and social media have only deepened the virtue deficit? In October 2012, during a televised presidential debate President Barack Obama earned laughs and pleased pundits when he mocked his opponent, Governor [...]

Teaching Virtue With Books

By |2022-08-23T14:50:13-05:00August 23rd, 2022|Categories: Books, Literature, Virtue|

Many parents, ministers, camp councillors, and even school teachers are trying to teach virtue to the young, simply by means of lists and definitions. And surely definitions are useful... eventually. But the primary means by which kids grow in virtue are their models and heroes, seen as whole characters. In my mid-twenties, I had an [...]

Virtue: Can It Be Taught?

By |2024-01-14T20:14:30-06:00August 14th, 2022|Categories: Liberal Learning, RAK, Russell Kirk, Timeless Essays, Virtue|Tags: |

Are there men and women in America today possessed of virtue sufficient to withstand and repel the forces of disorder? Or have we, as a people, grown too fond of creature-comforts and a fancied security to venture our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in any cause at all? “The superior man thinks always [...]

The Virtue of Recollection in Plato’s “Meno”

By |2022-08-07T08:52:39-05:00August 6th, 2022|Categories: Meno, Peter Kalkavage, Philosophy, Plato, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

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 distinguished place in the St. John’s curriculum. As the first Platonic dialogue that our freshmen read, it is the gateway to [...]

Can Virtue Be Taught?

By |2022-08-15T14:02:58-05:00July 31st, 2022|Categories: Culture, John Creech, Liberal Learning, Virtue|

That which makes education liberal is not the acquisition of virtue, for that would subordinate such education to some extrinsic good, and the essential characteristic of an education that makes it liberal is precisely its intrinsic good, the fact that its value does not depend on some good outside itself. I wish to offer some [...]

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