Plato and the Pursuit of Justice
“Those who do not make justice the central concern for Plato are not talking about Plato at all.”
Paul Krause
Review: “Crassus: The First Tycoon” by Peter Stothard
“Now, Peter Stothard has given us the final decades of the republic through the eyes of Crassus—Rome’s wealthiest man and former consul who famously embarked on a vainglorious and ultimately failed conquest of Parthia that culminated in his embarrassing death.”
Review: “Uncommon Wrath” by Josiah Osgood
“[Josiah] Osgood’s book is a welcome and exciting read about the rivalry between Caesar and Cato; Cato, in the process, finally receives some much-deserved due in the story of the republic’s final decades.”
Review: Waller Newell’s “Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger”
“Beginning with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, proceeding through the luminaries of German Idealism and Romanticism—climaxing with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel—then marching beyond Hegel to Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger, Newell gives a reading of philosophy gone wrong. Horribly wrong
Review: Bowen Blair’s “A Force for Nature”
“Nancy Russell was one of those great heroines whose quest to save the Columbia Gorge in Oregon serves as an inspirational tale that embodies the best of American grit and determination.”
Review: James I. Porter’s “Homer: The Very Idea”
“But the price of that fame and quasi-divine status took its toll. ‘Immortality had its costs,’ Porter writes, ‘and Homer paid for it dearly.’”
As the Leaves Begin to Change
“In that waltz, you find me now/Singing, dancing, with the moon”
Review: Philip Freeman’s “Hannibal”
“Freeman’s book, as the author acknowledges, is written as something of a eulogy to this great man of antiquity, who has captured imaginations for two millennia.”
Review: Eden Collinsworth’s “What the Ermine Saw”
“Almost all the key events of modern Europe were seen through the eyes of this painting, which Collinsworth vividly brings to life in her writing.”
Review: Barry Strauss’s “The War That Made the Roman Empire”
“Barry Strauss, America’s foremost popular classicist, brings the story of Actium to life in ways that rival and surpass Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra…”
Why We’ll Always Be Talking about George Orwell
“It is a shame, though, that whenever Orwell reappears it is almost always in the context of his dystopian political novel.”
Review: “Saving Yellowstone” by Megan Kate Nelson
“Much like the United States itself, the story of Yellowstone is one of tragedy and hope, defiance and cut-throat ambition, beauty and terror, charity and callousness.”
The Irresistible Passion of Peter Paul Rubens
“Rubens is my favorite artist, in part, because his paintings capture the totality of the human condition in its fleshy, pathological, and metaphysical realities.”
Review: Bruce Clark’s “Athens: City of Wisdom”
“Athens: City of Wisdom is a tour through over 3,000 years of the history of a city that has such imaginative sway and spiritual power over the hearts and minds of so many people around the world today.”
Fifty Years of “The Godfather”
It has been 50 years since The Godfather was widely released in the United States on March 24, 1972.
Review: Roosevelt Montás’s “Rescuing Socrates”
“In this rousing story, [Roosevelt] Montás concentrates on four particular ‘great authors’ that embody and encapsulate the human condition who shaped him: Saint Augustine, Plato, Sigmund Freud, and Mohandas Gandhi.”
Dante’s Divine Valentine
“Love is the central theme of Dante’s Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy. It is from love that new life begins. It is in love that life is sustained and made pleasant.”
Review: Arnold Weinstein’s “The Lives of Literature”
“His culminating chapter is a love letter from his heart of his life spent in literature, his life as it matured for himself, and he has given himself and his favorite books to us to discover afresh and anew.”
In Reply to “Jesus Mythicism Is About to Go Mainstream”
“As a former graduate student in religious studies and writer of the classics, it is deeply regrettable that the scholarship of the academy does not reach further and that century-old myths no longer of any substantial prominence in academic study still hold public sway.”
Remembering Sir Roger Scruton, Two Years On
“At the time, I would not have guessed my encounters with Roger through YouTube and a handful of books would lead me to studying with him just prior to his death.”
The Real Heroism of Odysseus
“Odysseus has before him the fantastical dream of every man: immortality and sex. He ultimately gives that up for mortality with his family.”
Is Ovid Still Worth Reading?
“Such politicized readings of the last 50 years miss the profundity of Ovid’s inclusion of the story in his grander poetic agenda of love being the constant star in the midst of a world of violence and transformation.”
“Heroism” and the “World Soul” at Jena
“The flattering portrait Hegel wrote of Napoleon to his friend has subsequently spiraled into mythic legend. Why did Hegel have this seemingly lofty view of Napoleon?”
Flyover Blues: The Enduring Relevance of F. Scott Fitzgerald
“One hundred years after Fitzgerald’s great novels, we are living in the same world as Nick Carraway, Amory Blaine, and Jay Gatsby.”
Review: Louis Menand’s “The Free World”
“In many ways, the book also reads as a eulogy to a liberal, liberalizing, and internationalist America.”
Sir Roger Scruton’s Wagner
“Scruton loved Wagner. The two were a match made in heaven, or hell, depending on your perspective and appreciation of irony.”
Virgil’s War and Peace
“Two millennia later, we are still warring over the meaning of Virgil’s Aeneid.”
Review: Michael Shnayerson’s “Bugsy Siegel”
“It is a short and gripping panorama of life in 1920s-1940s America, that defining epoch of struggle and stardom, hardship and grandeur, fortune and bankruptcy—and Bugsy Siegel experienced it all.”
Review: Jan Swafford’s “Mozart: The Reign of Love”
“The problem is that this story of Mozart that we think we know is not true at all; thankfully, Jan Swafford is here to correct the problem.”
The Moral Philosophy of Plutarch
“While not all of his essays are explicitly moral in orientation, nearly all of Plutarch’s essays have moral instruction and guidance baked into them.”
Review: Nicholas McDowell’s “Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton”
“As McDowell suggests, it was the liberating and open environment of humanist education that moved Milton more than any theological or political zeal, and it seized Milton at an early age.”
Don’t Cancel the Classics—We Need Them More Than Ever
“Those who are adamant that love will trump hate, heal the world, and divinize us are not articulating anything new. The Greeks are still singing to us the songs of humanistic love as the spirit that will heal the world.”
An Enchanted Christmas with John Wesley
“Wesley’s hymns remind us of all that is good in the world and all that is true about the human condition.”
Review: Clint Margrave’s “Lying Bastard”
“Lying Bastard is a work of the zeitgeist. Disgruntled intellectuals. Returning war veterans just beginning their higher education. A school shooting. The fraud of academicians. Societal exploitation.”
America at the End of History
“The universal end-state society, Kojève argued, was the society in which any individual could attain what he desired with ease and without opposition…”
“Gone with the Wind” Isn’t Going Anywhere
“What is a classic? What is an epic? These two questions loom over any reader of Gone with the Wind (and great literature, more generally).”
Augustine of Hippo: Patron Saint of Political Criticism
“In a brilliant stroke of irony, Augustine’s reading of Roman history not only reveals the many falsities of the Roman imperial mythology but also points the way to Christ and the Heavenly Jerusalem.”
What “The Merchant of Venice” Has to Say about Justice
“Just as it was in Shakespeare’s time, the questions of justice, mercy, and society remain as relevant as ever before, and we have much to learn from the great bard of Anglodom.”
Herodotus and the Human Quest for Justice
“Herodotus, as we can begin to see, is a theorist of human action—and a theorist of justice. Justice, according to Herodotus, is the chief force of human action.”
Lessons from Antiquity for Our Current Pandemic
“Thucydides subsequently goes on to say, ‘In other respects also Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness.’”
Achilles, Priam, and the Redemptive Power of Forgiveness
“For all the battle scenes, violent sex, and rage that fills the poem, the most memorable scenes in the poem are moments of love—especially loving moments of embrace.”
The Human Impulse for Tyranny
“Reading Pericles’ Funeral Oration as a standalone speech—independent of the whole work to which it belongs—makes us prone to falling for the seduction of tyranny which Thucydides so subtly investigates and rebukes in his work.”
Augustine and the Politics of Love
“Compared to the other classical political philosophers, Augustine stands apart from not articulating a preferred political order or what the ideal order would be. And that is the point.”
Shakespeare, a Political Theorist Too
“That they are tragedies also reveals Shakespeare’s pessimistic outlook on politics. Politics is a tragic necessity. But it comes with a cost. Namely, the forsaking of love.”
Better Understanding Plato’s Republic
“Plato’s Republic is not, primarily, asking the question ‘what is justice?’ as much as it is asking what kind of city do we live in? Before we can address any political issue we must first know whether we are living under a regime of tyranny or liberty.”
Aristophanes: The First Poet Critic
In the words of German poet Henrich Heine: “There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes.”
Sophocles and the Necessity of Family
“Instead of the gods being our deliverance, the family is the instrument of salvation and the bulwark against tyranny in his surviving plays.”
Euripides: Oracle of Modernity
“Euripides’ gods are the gods of Hesiod given a new, cunning, and manipulative makeover. Furthermore, they are depicted as clear threats to the human social order.“
Why Aeschylus Still Matters Today
“But Aeschylus’ cosmos goes beyond Homer’s in presenting Reason, Persuasion, as an integral aspect of the cosmos that was otherwise absent in Homer.”
Burke’s Aesthetics Formed the Core of His Politics
“Those who deal in political aesthetics have long noted that Burke’s aesthetics is the core ground of his outlook.”
A Deep Dive into Ben Shapiro’s Book
“That ‘conservatives’ today celebrate the book speaks volumes of the leftward drift of conservatism and the confused state of existence conservatism is in.”
What Can Thucydides Teach Us About China’s Rise to Power?
“The problem with America as a maritime power in Asia is that, like the United Kingdom of yesteryear, the United States is not an Asian power.”
In Defense of Jordan Peterson’s Religious Beliefs
“However, [Peterson’s] general statements about God do, or would, find a home in Catholic and Orthodox theological dogma and tradition.”
Why Edmund Burke Would Oppose Originalism
“Burke’s place in the American conservative pantheon is peculiar if not paradoxical.”
What Can Machiavelli Teach Us About the Midterms?
“For it is through political conflict that greater representation is born, more interests come to the table, and the expansion and development of liberty and order comes about.”
Can Carl Schmitt Explain How We Got from the Cold War to Trump?
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States and the West lost their common foreign enemy. Would the sense of rivalry that characterized these tensions abroad then turn inwards, once no common enemy remained?