Free Republic

In his famous 1950 Hillel House lectures, “Jerusalem and Athens,” Leo Strauss laid a vision of what he saw as a fundamental (but complimentary) tension between Jerusalem and Athens or between Scripture and philosophy. While Christian theologians might disagree with Strauss’s approach, and scholars and laymen alike might argue for a more inclusive vision of the sources of Western civilization, Strauss is at least right no note that Western civilization as we know it would be inconceivable without Greek philosophy and the Bible. Indeed, in the contemporary attempt to cancel, modify, and, in some cases, abolish Western civilization, the classics,...

Dood Jaussaud may have been born decades too late. Instead of being a tech junkie and up on the latest trends, the 22-year-old Thermopolis police officer lives vicariously in the past – at least as far as what he drives is concerned. Three years ago, Jaussaud began working on a classic 1957 Chevy Bel Air he bought in Columbus, Montana. Then earlier this year, Jaussaud was tipped off about a guy who might have some parts for his Chevy. “I got ahold of this guy, and he goes, ‘I don’t know anything about cars, and I don’t really have parts,...

Amid ongoing controversy over whether education in the classics should be eliminated or reformed to exclude works deemed too Western or white, a black professor affirmed that the classics are for everyone. University of Virginia sociology Professor Angel Parham said the study of Greco-Roman culture still has “much to teach us.” The classics should be “elevated and broadened,” not repudiated, she wrote in a May 20 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. “The study of Greek and Latin literature and history has a proven record of lifting the performance of students, especially the disadvantaged.” “…It is ironic that critics deem...

In 2019, the Society for Classical Studies, a non-profit North American scholarly organization devoted to all aspects of Greek and Roman civilization, held a rather memorable conference in San Diego. Titled “The Future of Classics,” panelists were asked for their opinions on “the diminution of our future role” in society. One of the panelists, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an associate professor of classics at Princeton who researches and teaches the Roman Republic and early Empire, wasted no time in making his point, calling for all Classics to die “as swiftly as possible.” Peralta, a black academic, criticized Classics for their failure...

With all of the cancel culture and history re-writing that's gone on, a longing has started to develop among some conservatives and conservative websites lately for classic works. Examples may include the Iliad, anything by Aristotle or Plato, Moby Dick, Shakespeare, Cicero, Hobbes' Leviathan, Machiavelli, and many others. The thing that I can't understand, is why aren't the Founders included in the category of the classics?

The classics are classics for a reason and offer valuable, time-worn lessons about humanity itself.We were excited to see the sign at the Lansing Mall: Barnes and Noble Booksellers. My roommate and I, on our spring break excursions, were shopping in another city when we spotted the national bookselling chain. We envisioned a long hour of perusing the great books — from Cicero to Tolstoy, Shakespeare to Dickens, Plato to Faulkner. My roommate joked she never made it out of a bookstore without purchasing at least one volume.After walking through a maze of board games, Harry Potter paraphernalia, and $10...

“Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato and Cicero. Long after Douglass’s encounters with these ancient thinkers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be similarly galvanized by his reading in the classics as a young seminarian — he mentions Socrates three times in his 1963 “Letter From...

The turn language is taking in politics calls to mind that controlling language to control thought was a prime goal of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’Back in the 1990s, an adjunct English professor at Bakersfield College used to start first-day freshman composition by writing the F-word on the whiteboard in big capital letters. She’d then turn around and explain the word’s etymology, point out that its moral connotation was entirely a construct, and tell the students in no uncertain terms that any scandal they felt was due to their parochial ignorance. She would disabuse them of this...

Birds of a feather flock together. When the cat's away, the mice will play. We all know and love these common, American proverbs. Sometimes ironic, often silly and amusing, these sayings test our brains—and our wit. And it's not just in English. Playing with language in literature, conversation, and art has been a hallmark of different cultures for centuries. With this in mind, over 450 years ago, Dutch master Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted his incredible Netherlandish Proverbs. Also known as The Dutch Proverbs, this oil on wood painting is a detailed masterpiece that visually represents over 100 Dutch proverbs....

“It’s a tragedy that this anti-intellectual movement of canceling the classics is gaining traction among educators and the mainstream publishing industry. Erasing the history of great works only limits the ability of children to become literate.” It is really a crime, and—0ne way or another—it must be purged from education.

It’s noteworthy that five of the most libertarian films ever made were produced by Britain’s Ealing Studios in the brief period, 1949-1957. These were among the much-praised “Ealing Comedies” that have become a classic genre in their own right.

Classical education is education; everything else is a modification of the normal. Almost all American educational methods trace their origins to the splendid combination of Athens and Jerusalem. The result of Greek philosophy and Jewish revelation is the incarnation of education in Christendom: fully human and fully divine. There is nothing wrong with modifying a workable system, but good to know the nature of the system one is modifying. You cannot fix the operating system if you do not the language of the program. Here are the basic parameters of all real education. A classical education is Socratic: it begins...

Reason #9: HUMAN CONDITION When it comes to the human condition, we may think that Scripture is all we need. After all, Scripture does show us our true human condition in a way that the Greeks did not and could not: our relationship to God, that we are sinners, that we are a fallen race in need of redemption, that sin separates us from God, that God loves us and offers us grace and salvation. This is the good news that has been revealed by God in Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ and nowhere else. Indeed, the...

Reason #7: RELIGION Saint Augustine in his Confessions tells us that after many years of wandering in the desert of indecision, it was Cicero who led him to Christ. Cicero’s Hortensius set him on the path to Christian conversion by implanting in him a longing for the immortality of wisdom. The text of Hortensius did not make it to the modern world and thus is probably the most famous lost treatise in world literature. Wouldn’t we all love to read this work that St. Augustine praises so highly? Well, I have read a lot of Cicero and, like most writers,...

American government and political science will come alive when you read the Greeks and Romans, the same way that words come alive when you study Latin and Greek. There were many influences on the Founding Fathers, and certainly the modern philosophers—Locke and Hume—were important along with the tradition of English liberty. But separation of powers, mixed government, and checks and balances are the principles that first come to my mind when I think of the genius of the American political system; and where did these concepts come from? Plato in the Republic describes five types of government and says they...

REASON #5: NATURAL LAW What did the first Continental Congress mean when it appealed to “the immutable laws of nature,” or Thomas Jefferson when he referred to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God and the unalienable rights of man”? Natural law. The principle of natural law is embedded in Western civilization, the Declaration of Independence, and our whole history as a nation. The concept of natural law was first articulated by Aristotle in Rhetoric, where Aristotle notes that, aside from the “particular” laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a “common” law that is...

REASON 4: EDUCATION A classical education focuses on the study of the classical languages, Latin and Greek, and on the study of the classical civilization of Greece and Rome. But why is the word classical reserved only for the languages of the Greeks and Romans and only for their civilization? What really is so special about the Greeks and Romans and why should Christians study them? After all they were not Christians, they were pagans. Some have objected to the word pagan and misunderstood its meaning. Pagan is a word Christians coined in the later Roman Empire to refer to...

Reason #3: SCIENCE Because we live in the aftermath of what has been called the “scientific revolution,” we modern people consider ourselves quite superior to the ancients in regard to the study of the natural world. We are polished practitioners of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” We think ancient people were ignorant of the natural world and that we, with all our advanced scientitic knowledge, have little to learn from them. But one of the problems with having your nose so high in the air is that you can miss the thing right in front of you. Science, as...

REASON #2: VIRTUE In the last article, we learned that the Greeks established the first principles of architecture by studying nature. The proportions that are most pleasing to the human eye are those of nature’s greatest work of art—the human body. We learned that God gave man reason and the desire to know, but he did not leave us without guides. He gave us the Greeks, the world’s first systematic, abstract thinkers. And so we study and honor the Greeks because they teach us how to use reason to explore and understand our world, a world that is material and...

REASON #1: ARCHITECTURE Of all of the points that I will make, this is the easiest to understand because it is so visible: we see its evidence every day. The power and beauty of classical architecture is everywhere, from grand buildings like our Supreme Court to our humble everyday homes. The Greeks discovered the proportions that are most pleasing to the human eye which, they tell us, are based on nature’s greatest work of art: the human body. Scale, mass, proportion, and symmetry—the principles of classical architecture—were worked out by the Greeks in great detail and built upon in succeeding...