Spelunking With Plato

How much can and should Christians engage with non-Christian literature as part of a larger journey of intellectual formation? How can we fruitfully study pagan poets, historians, philosophers, and rhetoricians? And what role can music play in liberal learning?

In this conversation, Prof. Squires leads us through a discussion of these questions and considers the strengths and weaknesses of great books programs (both Catholic and non-Catholic) and anti-intellectual strains within the Christian tradition. On two occasions, he even turns the table and interviews the interviewer.

Links of Potential Interest:

Stuart Squires, The Pelagian Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls

Dr. Squires’ podcast “Catholicism and Culture”

St. Basil, “Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature”

Josef Pieper, What Does “Academic” Mean?: Two Essays on the Chances of the University Today

Pope Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html

Tertullian, “The Prescription Against Heretics”

Jared Ortiz, “All Things Hold Together: A Great Books Education and the Catholic Tradition”

R. R. Reno, “Critical Thinking and the Culture of Skepticism”

What is the role of divine grace in liberal learning? And how should education relate to sources that of learning that may seem counter to the spirit of faith?

In this conversation, Prof. Stuart Squires invites us into a consideration of two areas closely related to liberal learning.  First, if liberal learning seeks to bring students out of Plato's cave, what is the role of grace and worship or cultus in that journey?  Second, we take up Tertullian and consider the sources, limits, and purposes of liberal education (in dialogue with John Paul II's Fides et ratio, John Henry Newman, and St. Augustine.

Links of Potential Interest:

Prof. Stuart Squires, The Pelagian Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls

Dr. Squires' podcast, "Catholicism and Culture"

Josef Pieper, What Does “Academic” Mean?: Two Essays on the Chances of the University Today

Pope Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio

Tertullian, “The Prescription Against Heretics”

St. Basil, “Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature”

Jared Ortiz, “All Things Hold Together: A Great Books Education and the Catholic Tradition”

R. R. Reno, “Critical Thinking and the Culture of Skepticism”

How would Galileo and his work be received today? Most people think they know what happened to Galileo but often get the details mixed up. Yet even when the details are clear, how does Galileo’s life, work, and controversy still shape the culture of the university and the form of liberal learning? (Hint: Is there a secret cold war between the “trivium-ists” and the “quadrivium-ists.” And how would discoveries comparable to Galileo's be received today? In this conversation we take up the Galileo affair, seek to clarify its details, and discuss its reverberations through the contemporary academy.

Links of Potential Interest:

Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" from the Republic (Book VII)

Boethius, De Institutione Arithmetica (on the Quadrivium)

Sister Miriam Joseph, C.S.C.  The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Reprinted by Paul Dry Books.

Maurice A. Finocchiaro. The Essential Galileo. (Masterful use of mostly primary documents from the early 1600’s)

Marshall McLuhan, The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time. (McLuhan's 1942 doctoral dissertation.) Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-067-3.

What did James Madison mean by “cool” (in reference to politics) and why is our political discourse so “hot” today?  Prof. Wolfe takes up the substance of Federalist 10, the so-called "liberalism wars," and the nature of America’s founding. Along the way, he offers commentary on Leo Strauss, Alasdair MacIntyre, Natural Law, integralism, and classical liberalism. And at the end he offers his own diagnosis on America’s future.

Links of Potential Interest:

Christopher James Wolfe, “Reilly and the Republic in 2020: Why Isn’t It “Cool” Anymore?,” Catholic Social Science Review: Volume 26.

Federalist 10

John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition

Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed

Robert Reilly, America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding

Andrew Sullivan, "Democracies End When They are Too Democratic," New York Magazine, 2016 (Here Sullivan applies Plato's political analysis to the American political landscape.)

Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History

Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals.

What is Integralism?  (In Three Sentences)

Adrian Vermeule, "Beyond Originalism," The Atlantic

Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture

Is the discipline of physics the “Queen of the Sciences”? In this conversation with polymath and professor Jim Clarage, we discuss the ways in which the discipline of physics takes up all seven of the classical liberal arts. Along the way we consider other disciplines—music, mathematics, and theology—that also may fulfill this role and why Newman’s “circle of the sciences” remains relevant today. With cameos by Darwin, Einstein, and Galileo, we sketch the place of advanced scientific thought within liberal learning and the humility that may be required for its study.

Links of Potential Interest from Prof. Clarage:

The Book of Nature (author: God! Go out and stare at moon phases for month, shoot a garden hose in the sun, watch a morning spider engineering a web)

Stratford Caldecott. Beauty for Truth’s Sake. (Quadrivium in education as way to enchantment)

Maurice A. Finocchiaro. The Essential Galileo. (masterful use of mostly primary documents from the early 1600’s)

Werner Heisenberg. Physics and Philosophy.

Any Physics textbook.

John Stillwell. Any of the historical (but rigorous) texts by mathematician John Stillwell “translating” the great development of mathematics since Euclid (e.g, I’m reading his The Real Numbers now.)

Advanced: Charles DeKoninck, Le Cosmos. (The Cosmos, in McInerny’s Works of Charles DeKoninck )

What is political theory and how does its study fit into liberal education? Does a change in music prefigure a change in political regimes? These and other questions are taken up in this conversation with Prof. Chris Wolfe. In hindsight, who would have thought that both Plato and “The Plastic People of the Universe would come up in the same podcast?

Links of Potential Interest:

Plato’s Republic

Aristotle’s Politics

Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture

Christopher James Wolfe, “Reilly and the Republic in 2020: Why Isn’t It 'Cool' Anymore?,” Catholic Social Science Review: Volume 26.

Charles De Koninck, "On the Primacy of the Common Good: Against the Personalists and The Principle of the New Order,"  The Aquinas Review: Vol. 4 (1997).

Osborne, "MacIntyre, Thomism and the Contemporary Common Good." Analyse & Kritik 30/2008 (c Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart) p. 75–90.

The Plastic People of the Universe

In this conversation, Prof. Andrew Hayes accomplishes two tasks. First, he introduces us to the sources that have animated his leadership of the renewal of a university's core curriculum—including St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Basil the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Newman, Josef Pieper, and Alasdair Macintyre. Second, he gives a detailed account of the principal elements and purposes that give form to the unfolding of this renewal. Here he touches upon the importance of establishing a community of Core Fellows, the cultivation of wonder in our students, the perennial questions that will animate and give unity to the students' experience of the core, the core’s common texts, and the fundamental unity of knowledge. Finally, he offers insightful observations about liberal education understood as an unfolding conversation, the role of faculty members as custodians of tradition, how we should define “liberal education,”  and how should distinguish introductory courses that typically constitute general education at most institutions from “cognate” courses that should constitute a core properly ordered to liberal learning.

Details about UST's renewal of its Core, including goals, courses, and course sequences

Lecture by Dr. Andrew Hayes: "A Theology of Wonder: An Introduction to the Poetry of Ephrem the Syrian"

Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture (with an introduction by T.S. Eliot)

Alasdair Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Saint John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University and Rise and Progress of Universities

In this episode, Dr. Andrew Hayes, a theologian who also serves as the Dean of the Division of Liberal Studies, introduces us to the principles and process guiding the university’s renewal of its core curriculum. He takes up the nature of the human person, the role of wonder in liberal learning, and the purpose of a core oriented to human flourishing in this life and the next. Affirming that there is “truth to be known” and a “life of the mind” to be lived—all unfolding from conception to the beatific vision—Prof. Hayes compares the renewal of the core to the history of monastic renewals that have been undertaken during the life of the Church. By returning to the original charism “we are recommitting to the principles and sources of liberal learning” and opening ourselves to the joyful unpredictability of a community devoted to Wisdom. Prof. Hayes clarifies how the university, guided by three fundamental goals, will renew the core in order to create a common experience for students that will be coherent, ordered to a common purpose, and pass on a common patrimony across generations.

Details about UST's renewal of its Core, including goals, courses, and course sequences

Lecture by Dr. Andrew Hayes: "A Theology of Wonder: An Introduction to the Poetry of Ephrem the Syrian"

Josef Pieper, What Does 'Academic' Mean?

Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In this conversation, Chris Evans, the VPAA of the University of Saint Thomas, introduces us to the world and thought of Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096--1141). Focusing on the “map” of study proposed in his "Didascalicon," we discover the integration of the theoretical and practical disciplines with mechanical skills, and the weaving together of the seven liberal arts both with ethical and political formation, and the acquisition of the necessary skills for life (which at the time including hunting and armor making).  Complementing this in Hugh’s vision is a devotion to prayer, the liturgy, and the sacraments. And all of these—studies in the classroom and formation outside of the classroom—are oriented to Wisdom, the second person of the Trinity.

Hugh of St. Victor’s soteriological orientation of education would also become the normative vision for Catholic education to this day: Catholic education ultimately aims at human salvation, “the restoration of the likeness of God in humanity.”

In the second half of the conversation, we take up the question, “Why the Core?,” the role of theology in liberal learning, and how we can form faculty and administrators for the unique mission of Catholic liberal education.

Links of Potential Interest:

The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts

Josef Pieper, What Does "Academic" Mean?

"UST Renews Core Curriculum"

St. Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences

Pope Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio

Pope Benedict, "Address to Catholic Educators"

“I don’t know what nursing or business will look like in five hundred years, but I know that we will still be reading Plato and Aristotle.” In this conversation, Chris Evans introduces listeners to the history of the esteemed Core of the University of St. Thomas and the Basilian charism of forming the whole person. He considers how the rise of professional majors and other cultural dynamics have challenged the breadth, depth, coherence, and sense of purpose of the Core. He considers the difference between having the Core as an “integral part” of the university's course of studies and making it an “integrating” part of a university education, a luminous center of gravity that brings clarity to all of the university’s activities (within and beyond the classroom) and gives them order and a telos. And throughout the conversation he gives many details (with their rationale) of the renewal of the Core. These and other questions and topics animate this wide-ranging conversation about how the renewed Core and its culture promise to become a models for liberal learning within a comprehensive university in the twenty-first century.

Links of Potential Interest:

Josef Pieper, What Does "Academic" Mean?

"UST Renews Core Curriculum"

The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts

St. Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences

Pope Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio

Pope Benedict,  "Address to Catholic Educators"