It is often said—and correctly, I think—to “follow the money” if you want to discover motive. But “useful for states” is another telling maxim worthy of our consideration. In Book III of The City of God, St. Augustine notes that Varro, a very learned heathen, all but admits that these stories (about men like Aeneas, […]
Life & Culture
It’s Later Than You Think: A Collection of Thoughts on Numbering Our Days
It is reported that it was the ancient Athenian lawgiver, Solon, who divided the human life cycle into ten stages of seven years each:1 0-7 – A boy at first is the man; unripe; then he casts his teeth; milk-teeth befitting the child he sheds his 7th year; 7-14 – Then to his seven […]
Hard Hearts and Soft Heads
The democratic impulses of the Enlightenment that began in the seventeenth century to topple kings and later aristocrats brought with its newly-found economic and political powers certain concerns: can the masses, the many, the demos, the hoi polloi, justly and effectively govern themselves? If the masses become king, what shall the minority do? The answer […]
Aristotle On Happiness
Happiness, of which Aristotle writes in his Nicomachean Ethics, is more than a pleasant feeling or sense of personal contentment, but the ultimate good toward which everyone should direct his life. The modern English usage of happiness tends to carry a slightly less robust meaning than the Greek word from which it is derived. The Concise Oxford English […]
The Most Enormous and Complex Bugbear Facing Society Today
I recently published an article over at The Consortium Blog that offers a simple solution to one of the most enormous and complex bugbears facing society today. The hobgoblin I have in mind is not one of your typical most-wanted public enemies that dominate conversations in the public square. In one particular way, it is a […]
A Brief Thought About Gyges’ Ring and the Internet
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates and his interlocutors are in pursuit of a good definition and understanding of justice. In Book Two, Glaucon suggests there is no man so virtuous that he could resist the temptation of doing injustice to whomever he pleased if he could do so without fearing detection. Glaucon says, Even those who […]
The Difficult Task of Defining Christian Humanism
Defining Christian humanism is a potentially arduous task for at least three reasons. First, there is the misgivings of Christians and conservatives who, when first encountering the word humanist, tend to meet it with consternation and disapproval because it is associated with atheistic and materialistic views of the world and, just as often, a strong […]
Not Its Own Cause
This post is partially inspired by the photo I’m posting here. The photo was taken at the SLC airport and is part of Delta’s “shared humanity” marketing campaign. This particular ad is striking because it speaks to the normalization of that which is unnatural and abnormal, something that in literature is symbolized by using the […]
The Arms Best Adapted to Old Age
For the philosopher himself could not find old age easy to bear in the depths of poverty, nor the fool feel it anything but a burden though he were a millionaire. You may be sure…that the arms best adapted to old age are culture and the active exercise of the virtues. For if they have […]
Less Slick and More Real
Seth Godin knows that “When you get an email from a faceless corporation speaking in the second person, someone is hiding.” He suggests, “it’s slick but it’s not real.” I love that line—it’s slick but it’s not real—because entrepreneurship and free enterprise are hallmarks of a free people and a flourishing society. But when capitalism […]