Rule of the Competent
by Mark BauerleinJames Hankins joins the podcast to discuss his new book Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena. Continue Reading »
In Defense of the Philosopher King
by Esmé PartridgeThe idea of a monarch who engages with other faiths is not as novel as it may seem, and yet when it comes to King Charles III, soon to be crowned in Westminster Abbey, this is often overlooked. Continue Reading »
The Honor Deficit
by James HankinsThe decline of meritocratic standards in American universities, and the rise of identity-based admissions, is leading to an honor deficit that might well spell the end of elite education. Continue Reading »
Who Invented the Individual?
by George WeigelBy desacralizing state power, Christianity helped make possible the idea of the limited state, which was not an immaculate conception sprung from the mind of John Locke. Continue Reading »
St. Basil’s Guide to Cultural Appropriation
by James HankinsThe right pagan philosophers, above all the moral philosophers, can teach us how to escape from the prison of the body’s passions. Continue Reading »
How to Be on the Right Side of History
by James HankinsMaybe, just maybe, in the future of America there lies not some woke utopia but a Renaissance of the Western tradition. Continue Reading »
Virtue vs. Virtue-Signaling
by James HankinsBeing elite now means holding a particular set of ideas, not a set of virtues. Virtue is signaled, not acquired. Continue Reading »
The Rise of the Middle Ages
by Richard RexJohan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, as it was once known, is a hundred years old and has just been awarded the accolade of a magnificent centenary edition in a superb, fresh English translation. This lavishly illustrated volume marvelously enhances the reader’s encounter with a . . . . Continue Reading »
The Music of the Spheres
by Nathaniel PetersLate one night, a young scholar at Cambridge named Michael Ward reads “The Planets,” a minor poem by C.S. Lewis. In it he encounters a curious phrase about the influence of Jupiter: winter passed / And guilt forgiv’n. This, he notices, is exactly what happens in one of Lewis’s most . . . . Continue Reading »
Teaching Christian Humanism
by Virgil NemoianuOnce we’ve denounced the balderdash that all too often passes for teaching in contemporary American colleges, there still remains the question of what we ought to teach instead. Indignation is an insufficient alternative to the brutal secularization of the college curriculum. But some conservative . . . . Continue Reading »
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