In a world where it is becoming increasingly unwise to entrust the education of our children to teachers who promote trendy, “relevant” curricula, the question arises “What, then, should we teach them?” British philosopher and public intellectual St Roger Scruton argues eloquently that the supposedly “irrelevant” traditional curriculum of … [Read more...] about The Virtue of Irrelevance: An Essay on Education
Philosophy Matters
Dostoevsky or Nietzsche? God-Man or Man-God?
“What is man?” This question shapes all of Dostoevsky’s thought and writing. And perhaps his most important insight is that humanity today is faced with a great choice: between the God-man (Christ) and the Man-God (most visible in Nietzsche’s Übermensch or Overman). Sadly, key figures of Western culture have been increasingly pursuing the second … [Read more...] about Dostoevsky or Nietzsche? God-Man or Man-God?
The Diabolist: Remembering a Youthful Encounter with Evil1
In this recollection of his youth, the noted English writer G. K. Chesterton reflects on the terrifying and lingering impact of an encounter with evil in the person of one of his companions. The narrative is made unusually powerful by the skill with which Chesterton reveals the invisible concealed within the visible, the supernatural cloaked within the natural and mundane, deep … [Read more...] about The Diabolist: Remembering a Youthful Encounter with Evil1
Our Society Needs Stoic Values More Than Ever: A Response to the New APA Guidelines
The Early Fathers of the Church drew upon the philosophy of Stoicism, not only by appropriating certain elements of its philosophical lexicon, but also in shaping the Church’s articulation of moral virtues. Questioning from a secular perspective recent criticisms of “traditional masculinity” for its “stoic” restraint of the passions, this essay effectually defends the moral … [Read more...] about Our Society Needs Stoic Values More Than Ever: A Response to the New APA Guidelines
The Abolition of Man
At a time when radical changes in human nature are being enthusiastically proposed and even demanded in many quarters, envisioning designs to reconfigure humanity in often aberrant ways that are unprecedented in any society, it is wise to listen to an earlier voice. This essay is an abridged edition of a lecture presented by C. S. Lewis on February 26, 1943 at the University of … [Read more...] about The Abolition of Man