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Leontius was passing by the corpses of executed Athenians and tried not to look. But eventually, giving in, he ran over and leaned in to stare. "Have your fill!" he shouted at his own eyes. Socrates tells this story in Book IV of Plato's Republic, in part to illustrate his theory of the tripartite soul: the desiring, the rational, and the spirited faculty. It is this "spiritedness," the θυμός (transliterated thymos or thumos), that seems so close to desire but also seems to oppose desire. Ian Dagg joins Ryan and Jonathan to discuss Leontius and the rest of Book IV, including the parts of the soul as they relate to the parts of the city, the impiety of Socrates, and the proper eye color for a statue.

Plato's Republic (trans. Allan Bloom): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080

Ian Dagg's Regime and Education: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9783031373824

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Patrick Downey, professor of philosophy at St. Mary's College of California, returns to New Humanists to discuss Book Three of Plato's Republic. Why does Socrates permit lies in his city? And why does he kick Homer out? Downey gives answers to these questions, as well as raising others about Plato's attempt to transcend comedy and tragedy in the form of dialogic philosophical drama. We also discuss the ideal location in which to conduct philosophical inquiry (California, obviously), good and bad music, and how to keep your kids young and innocent at heart.

Previous New Humanists episode with Patrick Downey: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ren%C3%A9-girard-myth-and-the-bible-feat-dr-patrick-downey/id1570296135?i=1000543650312

Plato's Republic (trans. Allan Bloom): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080

John Steinbeck's East of Eden: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140186390

Patrick Downey's Serious Comedy: https://amzn.to/4ypQhGK

Patrick Downey's Desperately Wicked: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780830828944

Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:

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New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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Glaucon restarts the conversation about justice at the beginning of Book Two of Plato's Republic with this stipulation: Socrates must prove that justice is good in itself, not just good for the reputation it buys. Socrates says - perhaps to the reader's surprise, and even doubt - that he can show justice is the best possible thing to have.

Pavlos Papadopoulos, professor at Wyoming Catholic College, returns to the podcast to walk through Book Two of Plato's Republic including Glaucon's restatement of Thrasymachus' case for injustice, Socrates' vegan city of pigs, Glaucon's lust for relishes, the "crucifixion" of the perfectly just man, the guardian class, and the strange and easily overlooked details of the tale of the Ring of Gyges. 

New Humanists episode on Republic Book One: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-not-to-define-justice-feat-colin-redemer-episode-cxv/id1570296135?i=1000775037863

Plato's Republic (trans. Allan Bloom): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080

Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War (Landmark): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780684827902

Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War (Hobbes): https://amzn.to/4vesx75

Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146

Aristophanes' Clouds: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780856682100

Aristotle's Politics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226921846

Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780141395098

Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges' The Ancient City: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

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New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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When you first pick up the world's most famous work of philosophy, Plato's Republic, you might be surprised to find that it starts with Socrates describing a day trip he took with his friend Glaucon to check out a festival happening just outside Athens. Where are the syllogisms? Where is the metaphysics? It does not seem very grand, at least at first.

Colin Redemer joins the podcast to kick off part 1 of a 10-episode series on Plato's Republic, to give some suggestions for how to read Plato, and to walk through the various definitions of justice we encounter in Book 1 of The Republic. In Book 1, we encounter a large cast engaged in discussion with Socrates about this very question. Is justice returning to others what you owe them? Benefitting friends and harming enemies? The advantage of the stronger? 

H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Plato's Republic (trans. Allan Bloom): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080

Davenant Press's Reforming Classical Education: https://davenantinstitute.org/davenant-press/reforming-classical-education/

Austin Hoffman's review of Reforming Classical Education: https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/02/awkward-family-dinner-a-review-of-reforming-classical-education/

Colin Redemer's response to Austin Hoffman: https://adfontesjournal.com/web-exclusives/revisiting-platonic-education-the-ever-sharable-feast/

James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780679744726

Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:

Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/

Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribe

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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Charlotte Mason argues that all education is ultimately self-education. Unless a student makes the choice to assimilate knowledge into himself, he will not learn anything. If this is so, what role is there for a teacher? Can a student actually be educated into virtue or wisdom?

In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read and discuss the opening chapters of Charlotte Mason's book A Philosophy of Education.

Charlotte Mason's A Philosophy of Education: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781922348050

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060935467

Ambleside Online: https://www.amblesideonline.org/

Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781402782831

John Senior's The Thousand Good Books: https://seascs.net/documents/2017/10/John%20Senior%20The%20Thousand%20Good%20Books%20List.pdf

Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:

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New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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Properly understood, politics is an expression of culture. But the politician would like to use culture for political ends. In doing so, he boils his people's culture down to the merely aestheticized: food, traditional dance, music, dialect or accent. But this is culture as mere costume, not as a vital force that incarnates the total, religious experience of a people's life. 

Similar to the way a shallow version of culture gets deployed for political ends, so education too gets used for "levelling the playing field," so that everyone has equality of opportunity to succeed. But true equality of opportunity is a fiction; it could exist only in a state of the most radical communism which not only levels all social and economic distinctions, but also attacks the family and goes to war against nature.

In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read the closing chapters of T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture: Chapter V - "A Note on Culture and Politics," and Chapter VI - "Notes on Education and Culture: and Conclusion."

T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351

Alan Jacobs's The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651

John Le Carré's Absolute Friends: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780316159395

John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143124757

John Le Carré's A Perfect Spy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143119760

Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Address: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html

Leon Trotsky's Literature and Revolution: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781931859165

Previous NH episode on selections from "Notes on Education and Culture": https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/9884564-t-s-eliot-s-praise-for-privilege-episode-xvi

Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:

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New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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Since the time of the Reformation, England has had an established Church alongside a rich variety of Protestant Dissenters as well as a group of Roman Catholic hold-outs. The country exemplifies the tense but productive diversity in "sect and cult" which T.S. Eliot describes in his book Notes Toward the Definition of Culture. A proper balance of unity and diversity in religion is one of the three necessary conditions, Eliot says, for a thriving culture. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan discuss how to distinguish the tangled categories of "religion" and of "culture," the salient differences between a Protestant and a Catholic country, and the homogenization of American religious life due to suburbanization.

Alan Jacobs's The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651

T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351

T.S. Eliot's Vergil and the Christian World: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27538181

The Ad Fontes podcast episode "Welcome to Hot Dog Church": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/welcome-to-hot-dog-church/id1557560666?i=1000621387100

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New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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T.S. Eliot argues that cultural vitality depends in part upon a balance of unity and diversity in a nation with respect to its various regions. But this raises all sorts of questions: What distinguishes a nation from a region? Isn't a nation just a region with guns? Would it be better or worse for high culture for a thriving region to get political independence? Jonathan and Ryan consider Eliot's argument for regionalism in light of Sparta, the French Revolution, American political history, the English colonization of India, and more.

T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351

Ross Douthat's interview of Ben Sasse: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/opinion/ben-sasse-death-pancreatic-cancer.html

The Anti-Federalist Papers: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780451528841

New Humanists episode "All Education Is Religious": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-education-is-religious-episode-lviii/id1570296135?i=1000638713097

Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:

Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/

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New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:

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Plato's Academy was not just a philosophic debating society. It was, in the words of the historian H.I Marrou, "a seminary that provided councillors and law-givers for republics and reigning sovereigns." The Academy was small, elite, and functioned like a fraternity whose members could take concerted political action. 

But creating a secret society of philosopher-politicians was probably not Plato's original goal. He was born into a reactionary clique of the Athenian aristocracy which had attempted to destroy democracy and refound the city on Spartan political forms. But the defeat of his cousin Critias and the rest of the Thirty Tyrants destroyed this political movement and gave a permanent ascendancy to democracy in Athens. With no place left in Athens for his politics, the execution of Socrates, and the subsequent failure of Plato's own efforts to turn tyrants in other cities into philosophers, he settled for the philosophic education of the young as a form of "politics in exile."

In doing so, Plato became one of the "masters of the classical tradition" alongside Isocrates, in the sense that both figures laid out the forms, content, and priorities education in the West would take in antiquity thenceforth. Plato's educational vision is on the one hand quite conservative, preserving the musical and gymnastic education for the young which the "old Athenian education" had centered upon, but also revolutionary in ultimately envisioning a complete transformation of society in order to be fully instantiated.

In this episode of New Humanists, Jonathan and Ryan discuss H.I. Marrou's chapter on Plato in the study "A History of Education in Antiquity."

H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080

Plato's Laws: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226671109

NH episode on Martin Luther's "To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany": https://www.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13419426

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/

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In his comedy Clouds, Aristophanes turns Socrates into the arch-sophist of Athens: financially voracious, obsessed with verbal trickery, and preoccupied with irrelevant investigations. In most of the dialogues written by his student Plato, however, Socrates is not an arch-sophist, but the archenemy of the sophists: unmotivated by money, able to disarm their semantic wordplay, and concerned above all with living a virtuous life. 

That is what makes the Euthydemus dialogue so fascinating. In this Platonic dialogue, Socrates meets his friend Crito, and in an enthusiastic fluster, he tells Crito that the two of them simply must go become the students of the two sophists who are visiting Athens. In order to convince his skeptical friend, Socrates recounts his conversation with them, and the sometimes bizarre demonstration of their supposed wisdom. 

Dr. David Talcott, Fellow of Philosophy and Graduate Dean at New Saint Andrews College, joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss the dialogue, and what it shows us about the role of education and philosophy in political life, and to draw some parallels with other Socratic dialogues.

Plato's Euthydemus: https://scaife.perseus.org/library/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0059.tlg021/

H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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