“The archer that shoots over, misses as much as he that falls short, and ’tis equally troublesome to my sight to look up at a great light, and to look down into a dark abyss.” Michel de Montaigne
The Great Conversation: Temperance Read More »
A vacuum is defined precisely by not being anything, unless sheer empty space is a thing. But if it is, what is it? How do you define it?
The Great Conversation: Space Read More »
Though it has been available in European languages for only a couple of centuries, the Bhagavad Gita has had a tremendous influence on the world’s culture.
The Bhagavad Gītā: A Book Profile Read More »
The natural can be opposed to the artificial, the immoral, the moral, the civilized, the supernatural, the unnatural—and all of these have further ramified senses, including some that combine with each other.
The Great Conversation: Nature Read More »
Images of mutual and contrasting courtesies between the God and angels, angels and man, Adam and Eve, are some of his most persistent; even the damned angels cannot function without a parody of heavenly order.
Milton: An Author Profile Read More »
“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
The Great Conversation: History Read More »
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.
Cicero: An Author Profile Read More »
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.
The Great Conversation: Eternity Read More »
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.
Lucretius: An Author Profile Read More »
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: Astronomy Read More »
