The Great Conversation: History
“Such is the unity of all history that anyone who endeavors to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web.” — Sir Frederick Pollock
Cicero: A Tongue of Gold
Cicero’s formulation of ethics was a major influence on minds as diverse as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Locke, Voltaire, and Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps we would do wisely to return to a fountain that has watered so many so well.
The Great Conversation: Eternity
During quarantine, ideas like eternity and time dilation can go from “abstract speculation” to “oh, I could have told you that.” Eternity can therefore be a very useful point of entry into the great conversation, in which it has (appropriately) been a perennial topic.
Lucretius: Heir of the Void
Although his philosophy was never held by more than a small fraction of the Roman people, his work had a major impact on the poets that succeeded him and remained popular for centuries, and went on to influence many eminent scholars.
The Great Conversation: Astronomy
The paradoxes in how gravity, light, and atomic nuclear forces operate have prompted subtle theories about not only nature, but reality as such—bending science back towards its parent discipline of philosophy.
The Great Conversation: Virtue and Vice
“All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.” — Alexander Woollcott
Aesop: Wisdom From Below
Like Tennessee Williams’ Tom Wingfield, Aesop gives us “truth cleverly disguised as fiction,” conveying wisdom imaginatively and indirectly.
CLT Welcomes Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson
A big CLT welcome to Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson, Associate Professor of Creative Writing at John Brown University and the winner of the Hiett Prize!
The Great Conversation: Prophecy
The secrets of the past, the present, the future, and the transcendental all appeal to the insatiable human mind. The prophet claims to access them.
The Great Conversation: Mathematics
God himself is regularly described and depicted in art as the supreme geometer, creating all things in number, weight, and measure.