What We’re Reading
Kate Cooper, Queens of a Fallen World. Kate Cooper, one of the best classicists currently living (and former student of the eminent Peter Brown), has just published…
Vermeer’s “Woman Holding a Balance”: Allegory of Judgment
Johannes Vermeer’s two foremost allegories—that of the Catholic Faith and that of the Art of Painting—help us understand the painter’s “Woman Holding a Balance” (hereafter, WHB), inviting…
The English Department
In 1969, in the Fall semester, darkly painted leaves, broken from their stems by a season dying and grasping, danced across winding university walkways. The English department,…
39th International Meeting of the Eric Voegelin Society at APSA
39th International Meeting of THE ERIC VOEGELIN SOCIETY American Political Science Association Meeting August 31-September 3, 2023 Los Angeles, CA Friends, Thank you for your submissions…
The Tyranny of Localism?
According to a recent survey, those who are happy value community involvement.[1] A mere 12% of Americans now claim to be very happy, the lowest reported number…
The Return of the King: Arthurian Legends and History
“It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides.” Much of the recent revival in humanist education (both K-12 as well…
Will the Real James Cameron Please Stand Up?
I’m old enough to remember when James Cameron’s Avatar was a surprisingly controversial topic of discussion. My Evangelical Tea-Party supporting family regarded the film with relative disdain, ignoring it…
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Magical “Scheherazade”
Warning: do not attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery while listening to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade for the first time. Said composition is known to have caused feelings of extreme uplift,…
Art and Pluralism
Our pluralistic societies celebrate the arts in their open-ended diversity. We celebrate the manifold forms of expression making up the wealth of a world that has domesticated…
The Life and Thought of Alasdair MacIntyre
“[S]tories and theses about rule-following and rule-breaking, about achieving and failing to achieve goods, have to be understood together or not at all.” If Alasdair MacIntyre is…
Now What’s the Matter?
Now what’s the matter? I thought, in the still-dark kitchen with my water glass hearing a recurring noise like a creak in my seventy-year-old house. But after…
Beyond John Locke: Reality and Experience
John Locke argued that there is a difference between how the world is and how we perceive it to be. This idea has come to dominate Western…
The Drama of Western Music
When thinking or writing about Western classical music, we are so often concerned with touting its brilliance and greatness that we seldom place it in context with…
Returning on a Summer Day
It’s June again and the tide’s rising as a pod of silvered monodon flash like a remnant on the Atlantic. Pen in hand, I contemplate the photo…