New Humanists
66 episodes - English - Latest episode: 11 days ago - ★★★★★ - 28 ratingsJoin the hosts of New Humanists and founders of the Ancient Language Institute, Jonathan Roberts and Ryan Hammill, on their quest to discover what a renewed humanism looks like for the modern world. The Ancient Language Institute is an online language school and think tank, dedicated to changing the way ancient languages are taught.
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Episodes
Christine de Pizan | Episode LXVI
April 15, 2024 17:00 - 38 minutes - 26.4 MBThe poet of Joan of Arc, and a notable example of a female writer in the premodern period, Christine de Pizan took a turn at the popular humanist genre of the mirror to princes in her book "The Book of the Body Politics." Jonathan and Ryan take a look at her characterization of virtue, corporal punishment, and what it takes to educate a Caesar. Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO Christine de Pizan's The Book of the Body Politic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/97...
Your Children Are Weak | Episode LXV
April 01, 2024 17:00 - 47 minutes - 32.9 MBIn his essay "On Educating Children," a follow-up to his denunciation of pedantry, Michel de Montaigne warns that "natural affection makes parents too soft" and incapable of properly disciplining their children, or even of letting their children take the risks and encounter the dangers they ought to. Book-learning, in Montaigne's essay, takes a backseat to the development of real virtue; erudition is ornament, not foundation. Michel de Montaigne's Complete Essays: https://bookshop.org/a/256...
The Art of Language Teaching, feat. Tim Griffith | Episode LXIV
March 15, 2024 17:00 - 1 hour - 50.9 MBWhen Tim Griffith was coaching soccer and reading ancient Roman rhetorical theory, he realized he had stumbled across a pedagogical goldmine. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan talk with Tim about raising kids as native Latin speakers, the roles that comprehensible input vs. grammar instruction play in the language classroom, prescriptive versus descriptive grammar, and Roman rhetoric. The product of years of experience and study, Tim’s approach to teaching Latin has borne fruit in his stude...
Republican Education, feat. Clifford Humphrey | Episode LXIII
March 01, 2024 18:00 - 1 hour - 46.7 MBWe threw off the monarchy... now what? Having established a republic on American soil, the Founding Fathers were faced with the question of how to educate a new generation of people who would protect American liberty. The most underrated of the Founding Fathers, Dr. Benjamin Rush, devoted considerable time and attention to this question. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan are joined by Clifford Humphrey to discuss Rush's "Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic." Clifford H...
Mediocrity Versus Glory in the Renaissance | Episode LXII
February 15, 2024 18:00 - 48 minutes - 33.1 MBLeonardo Bruni was the titan of Renaissance historians and a prolific humanist. In a long letter to an aristocratic Italian woman, Battista Malatesta, he lays out his philosophy of humanistic education, which is meant to help the student achieve glory. But laziness or ineptitude, he says, threatens the student always, and will drag her down to crawl alongside other mediocrities. Bruni insists on deep reading of the greatest orators, poets, and historians, alongside biblical and theological s...
Does Education Improve the Soul? | Episode LXI
February 02, 2024 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40.1 MBMichel de Montaigne was a native Latin speaker in modern Europe and yet a great innovator in French letters; among other things, he invited the genre known as the essay. His elegant, searching essays are intended to expose the reality of his own soul - and that of his readers. In "On Schoolmasters' Learning," this most studios of men wonders aloud whether education is actually good for you. After all, look at all the people obsessed with books and yet completely useless for anything producti...
Pope Humanist | Episode LX
January 15, 2024 21:00 - 46 minutes - 31.8 MBAeneas Silvius was an accomplished Renaissance humanist, author of erotic literature, and influential aide to emperors and popes (and an antipope). Then, he became a pope himself. As Pope Pius II, he then added memoirist, urban planner, and antiquarian to his list of accomplishments. He contributed to the popular Renaissance "mirror of princes" genre in a letter to a young boy-king in Central Europe, where he makes the case for reading pagan poetry as a Christian. Richard M. Gamble's The Gr...
Prince Erasmus | Episode LIX
January 01, 2024 18:00 - 49 minutes - 34.1 MBJonathan and Ryan turn to a set of selections from the Prince of Humanists himself, Desiderius Erasmus. In Liber Antibarbarorum, Erasmus pillories the precious Christians who refuse to read pagan authors on account of their own squeamish consciences. In Education of a Christian Prince, and On the Education of Children, Erasmus gives principled arguments for humanistic education and practical advice for those responsible for carrying it out. Roland Bainton's Erasmus of Christendom: https://a...
All Education Is Religious | Episode LVIII
December 15, 2023 18:00 - 1 hour - 45.2 MB"As only the Catholic and communist know, all education must be ultimately religious education." So argues T.S. Eliot in his essay "Modern Education and the Classics," in which he contrasts three different camps in the world of education: the radical, the liberal, and the orthodox. Eliot seems to say that the only hope for continued erudition in the Greek and Roman classics is a rebirth of Christendom. Jonathan and Ryan discuss Eliot's provocative thesis, along with the lessons he offers to ...
Compassion Versus Classical Antiquity | Episode LVII
December 01, 2023 18:00 - 1 hour - 48.7 MBIn The Greek State, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that the Greek polis existed in order to hold the many in slavery so that the Olympian few could give birth to the beautiful Helen known as Greek culture, and that the Greek state had to be periodically renewed by war so that it could continue to create geniuses. This, he says, is the esoteric meaning behind Plato's Republic. Jonathan and Ryan take a look at this "preface to an unwritten book" and examine the ethical, metaphysical, and historica...
Nietzsche, Homer, and Cruelty | Episode LVI
November 15, 2023 18:00 - 1 hour - 52.3 MBWhy was it that the Greeks, the most humane of all peoples, also possessed such a tigerish lust for blood? Why did the Greeks so delight in Homer's depiction of cruelty and death in the Iliad? That is the question animating Friedrich Nietzsche's preface to an unwritten book, "Homer's Contest." Nietzsche turns to the dark Hellenic past, the "womb of Homer" for an explanation, and finds it in Strife, the double-souled goddess lauded by Hesiod. Friedrich Nietzsche's Homer's Contest: http://w...
The Mirror for Princes | Episode LV
September 15, 2023 17:00 - 1 hour - 49.9 MBThomas Elyot wrote "The Boke named the Governour," the first book about education written in the English language, an outstanding example in the crowded field of Renaissance-era mirrors for princes. The mirrors for princes were works designed to instruct and train future kings, nobles, and leading men. Machiavelli and Erasmus wrote famous mirrors for princes, but what does the English tradition of this genre have to show us? Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO ...
Martin Luther for Public Schools (or, Don't Be an Ostrich) | Episode LIV
September 01, 2023 17:00 - 59 minutes - 41.2 MB"Simple necessity has forced men, even among the heathen, to maintain pedagogues and schoomasters if their nation was to be brought to a high standard." In his address "To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany," Martin Luther exhorts Germany's civic leaders to establish public schools for the education of all German children. Foremost among his priorities in his proposed educational program is instruction in ancient languages, something that, according to Luther, Satan wants to suppress. W...
Only the Weak Desire a Quiet Life | Episode LIII
August 15, 2023 17:00 - 1 hour - 45.8 MBUlrich Zwingli was one of the towering figures of the Reformation, a committed humanist, and a warrior who ultimately fell in battle. He despised the idea that Christianity could render men passive, and in a short treatise from 1523 to a young nobleman, he sketches the outlines of his ideal education for the creature called man: "We are set between the hammer and the anvil, half beast and half angel." Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO Davenant Institute Ad Fo...
Return of the Old Gods in Germany | Episode LII
August 01, 2023 17:00 - 1 hour - 52.2 MBIn the opening lecture of his course on Homer, the Professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg, Phillip Melanchthon, first invokes the aid of the gods and declares that to Homer belongs "the highest and noblest place." Further, Melanchthon proclaims that Homer "alone snatches away the palm of victory from all poets that any age has brought forth, and he leaves them all far behind." Jonathan and Ryan take a look at Melanchthon's encomium for Homer and defense against the many varieties...
The Warm and Capacious Calvin | Episode LI
July 15, 2023 17:00 - 50 minutes - 34.5 MBA stern prophet of the new and harsh doctrine of predestination. A bloodthirsty tyrant burning people at the stake. A narrowminded dour Puritan. The magnitude of the popularity of these Calvinist stereotypes is matched by their massive distance from the truth of the man. In his affection for the pagan authors, Calvin reveals a deeply humanistic soul, attuned to truth no matter which rock he might find it under. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan examine a particularly illustrative passage fr...
How to Educate the Queen | Episode L
July 01, 2023 17:00 - 58 minutes - 40.5 MBHow do you prepare a royal princess for the throne? In this episode, we look at the writings of two giants of Reformation humanism: Johannes Sturm and Roger Ascham, and in particular, their correspondence about Ascham's work training the future Queen Elizabeth I in Latin and Greek. Ascham himself variously tutored and served as Latin secretary to Lady Jane Grey, the woman who ordered her execution (Queen Mary), and the woman who replaced Queen Mary (Queen Elizabeth). If you think speaking de...
Bread and Circuses for Rome | No Republic Was Ever Greater
June 15, 2023 17:00 - 47 minutes - 32.7 MBKing Tarquinius secures his hold on power by expanding the Senate, but encounters a roadblock to strengthening the military in the person of a famous augur. Tarquinius is ruthless, productive, and the first great Roman promoter of "bread and circuses" (among other things, according to Livy, Tarquinius builds the Circus Maximus). Despite his political saavy, however, he comes to a violent, borderline slapstick end. Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh Machiavelli's Discourses on ...
Enter the Tarquins | No Republic Was Ever Greater
June 01, 2023 17:00 - 1 hour - 46.7 MBStrange omens, plague, occult religious rites. King Tullus Hostilius' reign collapses in something like supernatural madness. The great Ancus Marcius takes over, but is finally deceived by a rich, mysterious newcomer to Rome: Lucius Tarquinius Priscus. Join Jonathan and Ryan as they outline how the first of the Tarquins takes the throne after first disinheriting his own nephew, and then effectively disinheriting the sons of Ancus Marcius, whom Lucius was bound to protect. Livy's Ab Urbe Con...
Democracy Dies with Lysander, feat. Alex Petkas | Episode XLVII
May 15, 2023 17:00 - 1 hour - 56.6 MBLysander is a troubling figure. As a child, he was a charity case who excelled his more affluent peers; he never cared for wealth, and yet overlooked the rapaciousness of his friends, allowing money and luxury into Sparta, corrupting it. He liberated the Greek world from the yoke of Athenian imperialism, but then installed oligarchic juntas to rule with an iron fist. He conquered Athens itself, but campaigned at a war council to spare the city from destruction. But once inside the city, he t...
Education that Makes Aquinas Look Modern, feat. John Peterson | Episode XLVI
May 01, 2023 17:00 - 1 hour - 77.1 MBIn his wise and humane Didascalicon, the teacher, canon regular, and mystical theologian Hugh of St. Victor lays out his advice and instructions for teachers and students engaged in liberal study. The heir of centuries of thought in Christendom on the liberal arts, Hugh and his contemporaries were on the precipice of a revolution--the western rediscovery of Aristotle and the subsequent revolution of theology and philosophy, championed above all by Thomas Aquinas. University of Dallas profess...
The Danger of Plato | Episode XLV
April 15, 2023 17:00 - 49 minutes - 34.4 MBDoes Plato, and philosophy more generally, belong in schools? In a lecture, professor and Davenant Institute VP Colin Redemer suggests that Plato is too dangerous to be allowed into classical schools. Jonathan and Ryan take a look at this lecture and at the response it received, focusing on esoteric writing, reason versus revelation, and the Platonic-Christian-American synthesis. The Davenant Institute's Reforming Classical Education: https://davenantinstitute.org/reforming-classical-educat...
Can Humanism Replace Christianity? | Episode XLIV
April 01, 2023 17:00 - 52 minutes - 36.4 MBIrving Babbitt was the architect of New Humanism. He was also T.S. Eliot's mentor at Harvard. But in 1928, the newly Anglican Eliot's essay criticizing his old mentor's humanistic project was published, which provoked a terse, and sharp, rebuke from Babbitt. What is the relationship between traditional religion and humanistic learning? Can humanism provide society with the standards needed for democratic life? In this episode, we take a look at Babbitt's and Eliot's writings on the subject. ...
Wars of Ancient Religion | No Republic Was Ever Greater
March 15, 2023 17:00 - 57 minutes - 39.4 MBThe duel between the Horatii brothers and the Curiatii brothers seemed to settle the Roman-Alban dispute and give Rome authority over Alba. But wily Mettius Fufetius has a trick or two up his sleeve. Meanwhile, the one surviving Horatius brother strikes down his sister in cold blood, an incident Jacques-Louis David drew but never ended up painting. The civilized three-on-three duel now threatens to give way to an all-out war of extermination between Rome and Alba. This is the sixth episode o...
The Roman Will to Power | No Republic Was Ever Greater
March 01, 2023 18:00 - 53 minutes - 37 MBAfter the long peace of Numa's reign, Rome gets a new king, even more ferocious than Romulus: Tullus Hostilius. As soon as he comes to power, he begins looking for a way to start a war (while keeping a good conscience about it). This is the fifth episode of "No Republic Was Ever Greater," a podcast series examining the rise of the Roman Empire through the work of Livy and Machiavelli. Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj...
Lincoln with the Bard, feat. Ted J. Richards | Episode XLI
February 15, 2023 18:00 - 1 hour - 47 MBAbraham Lincoln spent less than 1 year of his life going to school. Nevertheless, he became a lawyer, a surveyor, and one of the greatest statesmen in American history. He also carried on correspondence with one of the country's leading Shakespearean actors about the relative merits of different plays and speeches in Shakespeare's dramatic oeuvre. In no speech is the self-educated Lincoln's close attention to the Bard more in evidence than in his political comeback speech, the Peoria Address...
Numa Numa Yeah | No Republic Was Ever Greater, Ep. 4
February 01, 2023 18:00 - 52 minutes - 36.2 MBWhen Romulus dies, the city of Rome is riven by ethnic conflict between Romans and Sabines, and class conflict between senators and plebeians. The city cannot agree on its next king; an interregnum ensues. The stalemate is eventually resolved in favor of Numa Pompilius, who is crowned king of Rome in a mysterious, mystical ceremony which almost seems like a human sacrifice. This is the fourth episode of "No Republic Was Ever Greater," a podcast series examining the rise of the Roman Empire t...
Milton Against the Trivium | Episode XXXIX
January 15, 2023 18:00 - 59 minutes - 41.2 MBJohn Milton's clarion call to educators to "repair the ruins of our first parents" has inspired countless teachers and parents in the classical education movement and beyond. But is Milton really the classical education ally he appears to be? In "On Education" he pays lip service to grammar, logic, and rhetoric - the three components of the Trivium - but he also disparages scholasticism, ignores metaphysics, and deplores medieval education. Join Jonathan and Ryan as they discuss Milton's edu...
Messing Up Your Kid's Education | Episode XXXVIII
January 01, 2023 18:00 - 54 minutes - 37.3 MBGiambattista Vico was a Renaissance Man after the Renaissance, but he was largely forgotten for centuries. As a professor of rhetoric, he often had the occasion to speak and write about the education of the young. We take a look at some of his orations on the topic, which are a mine of profound insight. Vico has some complaints that will sound very familiar, like, "Parents all just want their kids to become lawyers or doctors and get rich." Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://a...
Reflections on the Sexual Revolution in France | Episode XXXVII
December 15, 2022 18:00 - 52 minutes - 36 MBAfter reading Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, a member of the French National Assembly wrote to Burke, asking for more of his analysis on the revolution then underway. In reply, Burke wrote a long letter which included a sustained attack on the preeminent philosopher of the revolution: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This analysis identifies that at the heart of the uprising in France lies an attempt to totally transform education - and in particular, its role in forming norms around...
The Startup City | No Republic Was Ever Greater, Ep. 3
December 01, 2022 18:00 - 56 minutes - 38.9 MBWhat if you gathered a bunch of friends, went out to the desert of Arizona, and built the greatest city that the world had ever seen? That is what Romulus does, and what Livy chronicles (except it's not in Arizona). We explore the challenges a founder faces in a startup city, how to fill it with people, and how to unify the inhabitants into one, cohesive people. Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj William Golding's Lord...
How to Stage a Coup | No Republic Was Ever Greater, Ep. 2
November 15, 2022 18:00 - 1 hour - 49 MBThis is the second episode of our series about Livy's "Ab Urbe Condita," called "No Republic Was Ever Greater." The story of the founding of Rome continues with the story of twin brothers Romulus and Remus, as they escape certain death in a coup against their grandfather, grow up as shepherd bandits, and stage a counter-coup to return their grandfather to power. Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj Fustel de Coulanges's...
No Republic Was Ever Greater, Ep. 1
November 01, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 52.7 MBThis is the first episode of a new series on New Humanists, called "No Republic Was Ever Greater." We are walking through the masterpiece, "Ab Urbe Condita," by Ancient Roman historian Titus Livy and the great commentary on Livy, Renaissance philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourses. In this episode, we consider the lessons that founders and leaders can learn from Livy's account of the Trojan hero Aeneas. Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: ...
Was Virgil Divinely Inspired? | Episode XXXIII
October 15, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 45.8 MBThe late antique and medieval Church saw Virgil as a pagan herald of Christ, due to the seemign messianic prophecies in Eclogue IV. In a 1953 essay titled "Vergil and the Christian World," T.S. Eliot argues that the Christian sympathies in Virgil's poetry go even deeper than that single poem, and in fact suffuse the entire Virgilian corpus. T.S. Eliot's Vergil and the Christian World: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27538181 Vergil's Eclogue 4 (Latin): https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/vergil/e...
The First English Conversation, feat. Dr. Colin Gorrie | Episode XXXII
October 01, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 49.4 MBÆlfric's Colloquy is a dialogue between a teacher and his students, written both in Old English and Latin, designed to teach Latin to Anglo-Saxon schoolboys. It is also the earliest record of a (relatively) realistic English-language conversation. In celebration of the Ancient Language Institute's new Old English program, Dr. Colin Gorrie joins Jonathan and Ryan to walk through the Colloquy and to talk about language learning, education, and literacy in medieval England. Ælfric's Colloquy (...
Maybe the Liberal Arts Are Useful? | Episode XXXI
September 15, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 42 MBAre classical educators dooming their students to poverty? Even back in the early 1800s, that accusation was gaining steam. Edward Copleston was a titanic figure at Oxford's Oriel College in the early 19th century, and inspired John Henry Newman, among others. Facing attacks by utilitarian critics of Oxford, Copleston launched a defense of classical education in his “Reply to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review Against Oxford.” Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4l...
Newman on Knowledge for Its Own Sake, feat. Dr. Robert Jackson | Episode XXX
September 01, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 47.7 MBIs knowledge its own end? Or is it a means to something else? In Discourse Five of his The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman juxtaposes Cato and Cicero as opponents on this question, but Newman’s juxtaposition is not without its own difficulties. Jonathan’s old teacher, Dr. Robert Jackson of the Great Hearts Institute, joins the podcast to talk Newman, knowledge, and education. John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780268011505 Great Hearts Acade...
The Classical Definition of Classical Education | Episode XXIX
August 15, 2022 17:00 - 49 minutes - 33.8 MBMilton and Shakespeare? Or Homer and Virgil? Why should our students study Greeks and Romans when we have English-language poets, philosophers, and historians worthy to be placed on the same level as the ancients? Maybe because the “ancients” aren’t really so ancient after all… So argues Thomas Arnold in his defense of the classical curriculum he instituted at Rugby School. Jonathan and Ryan use Arnold’s “Use of the Classics” essay, his defense of classical education, to distinguish betwee...
Doing the (Intellectual) Work | Episode XXVIII
August 01, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 46.3 MBThe intellectual life can’t just be reading all day. Eventually, you have to sit down and do the work. According to A.G. Sertillanges, the intellectual vocation finds its fulfillment in creation. Jonathan and Ryan wrap up their reading of Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life as they walk through the final three chapters. There was a software problem with recording this week. Apologies for the occasionally scratchy audio quality. A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.o...
The Intellectual Life, Continued | Episode XXVII
July 15, 2022 17:00 - 48 minutes - 33.2 MBJonathan and Ryan continue their discussion of A.G. Sertillanges’s marvelous The Intellectual Life. In chapters 4 -6, Sertillanges touches on, among other things, sleep, the pursuit of wisdom in everyday life, and breadth of study in service of depth. A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462 Editorial Note: The mention of the “dies academicus” refers, not to our episode on Eric Voegelin (as we mistakenly said), but to our episode on Pope Benedi...
Me, an Intellectual | Episode XXVI
July 01, 2022 17:00 - 55 minutes - 38 MBThe French Thomist A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., is most famous for The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. The book is a moving and handy meditation inspired by Thomas Aquinas’ Letter to Brother John about what it will take to devote your life to contemplation. This is the first episode in a three-part series on The Intellectual Life in which Jonathan and Ryan examine their own lives to see how Sertillanges can help them out. A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bo...
Academic Leadership | Episode XXV
June 15, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 42.2 MBWho is at the helm of the ship of state? Is the United States doomed to go the way of the Titanic? In the essay “Academic Leadership,” Paul Elmer More expounds on the crucial role that humanistic study plays in cultivating a natural aristocracy that guides and protects the body politic. More, along with Irving Babbitt, was a luminary of the New Humanism movement and an essayist, prolific letter-writer, editor, and Christian Platonist. Paul Elmer More’s Academic Leadership (free): https://jk...
Justin Martyr’s First Apology, feat. Calvin Goligher | Episode XXIV
June 01, 2022 22:00 - 1 hour - 49.1 MBWas Socrates a Christian? Did Plato meet Jeremiah? Are pagan myths based on garbled versions of the Hebrew prophets? Welcome to Justin Martyr’s First Apology, a plea to the Roman Emperor to stop killing Christians, a philosophical defense of Christianity, and a master class in biblical exegesis. ALI Latin & Greek Fellow Calvin Goligher returns to New Humanists to discuss the poetry, philosophy, and revelation in Justin Martyr with Jonathan and Ryan. Justin Martyr’s First Apology (free in En...
Beowulf, feat. Colin Gorrie | Episode XXIII
May 16, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 54.4 MBWhere is Geatland? Beowulf has been taken as a founding poem for England, yet England never appears in the poem. Linguist Colin Gorrie joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss this heroic and tragic Old English masterpiece, the history of scholarship surrounding the poem, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s titanic contribution to modern understanding of it. Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780393320978 Dick Ringler’s translation of Beowulf: https://amzn.to/3sv1yWQ J.R.R. ...
Should Everyone Be Educated? | Episode 22
May 02, 2022 17:00 - 50 minutes - 34.7 MBMaking humanistic education democratic and freely available was its downfall, at least in the eyes of Albert Jay Nock, as he discusses in The Theory of Education in the United States. Taking a cue as well from Plato’s Republic, Jonathan and Ryan address the apparent tension between the excellence of the tradition and the equalitarian, democratic mores of American life. Should everyone be educated? Can they be? Richard Gamble’s Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568 Alb...
The Iliad, or the Poem of Force | Episode XXI
April 15, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 45.4 MB“The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force,” wrote Simone Weil. And yet, she said that Homer’s poem is “the purest and loveliest of mirrors.” How can a poem that revels in the visceral description of death and that chronicles the destruction of a great city be so pure and lovely? Jonathan and Ryan take a look into this epic mirror and into Weil’s justly famous essay on it. Simone Weil’s The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (free English translation): http://biblio3.url.ed...
The Trivium According to Dorothy Sayers | Episode XX
April 01, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 57.3 MBThe Lost Tools of Learning, a 1947 lecture delivered at Oxford by Dorothy Sayers, was largely ignored at the time and in England until decades later in the United States, when it became a foundation text of the Classical Christian Education movement. Despite being the lecture that launched 1,000 classical schools, Dorothy Sayers appears to undermine the classical tradition and repeatedly side with educational progressives. Jonathan and Ryan dig into the lecture, its impact on the CCE movemen...
Don’t Read Too Much | Episode XIX
March 15, 2022 17:00 - 1 hour - 42.7 MBIn one of his many letters to his nephew Lucilius, the famous Stoic philosopher, playwright, and statesman, Seneca, advises his nephew to avoid reading too much. Jonathan and Ryan take up the philosopher’s advice and consider what dangers there are, if any, in reading too much or too widely. Seneca’s Epistle 2 (free in English): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_2 Seneca’s Epistles 1-65 (English - Latin): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674990845 Marcus Aur...
Oakeshott Teaches Us How (and What) to Think, feat. Dale Stenberg | Episode XVIII
March 01, 2022 18:00 - 1 hour - 41.6 MBShould teachers teach their pupils what to think? Or how to think? The great English philosopher Michael Oakeshott says it’s not so simple. Students certainly must learn how to think, but can only do so by learning about things in particular - in other words, by learning what to think. Jonathan and Ryan are joined to discuss this excellent Oakeshott lecture on learning and education by Dale Stenberg. The Davenant Institute: https://davenantinstitute.org/ Pilgrim Faith Podcast: https://podc...
The Original New Humanist, featuring Dr. Eric Adler and Katherine Bradshaw | Episode XVII
February 15, 2022 18:00 - 1 hour - 53 MBLong before the New Humanists podcast was born, Irving Babbitt helped found the movement now known as New Humanism. University of Maryland Professor of Classics Dr. Eric Adler, along with his former student (and current ALI Fellow) Katherine Bradshaw, join the podcast to discuss the original New Humanist and what we might stand to gain from him in our debates about education, the humanities, and the canon. Irving Babbitt’s “What Is Humanism?”: http://www.nhinet.org/lac1.htm Irving Babbitt’...