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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/
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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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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:
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.
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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:
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.
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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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/
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What's the matter with meritocracy? Shouldn't college acceptances and jobs and awards be distributed on the basis of merit? The alternative, some sort of quota system, seems unjust and intolerable.
In his book, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, T.S. Eliot makes a case against meritocracy. This is the subject of Chapter Two: "The Class and the Elite." While admitting that every "honest man is vexed" to see people who have obtained positions "for which neither their character nor their intellect qualified them," Eliot argues that the doctrine of meritocracy is a radical position. Far from being a conservative or even moderate outlook, true meritocracy requires a total transformation of society, in which family and cultural life must be re-engineered by committees of elites.
Eliot distinguishes between the old concept of aristocracy and the new concept of elites, categories we tend to confuse. He argues for the necessity of an upper class to maintain manners and standards and taste, which he says is required for the perpetuation of great art and high culture.T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351
New Humanists episode on Chapter 1 of Notes Toward the Definition of Culture: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/18764670-defining-culture-episode-cvii
Paul Fussell's Class: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780671792251
David Hicks's Norms & Nobility: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781538195352
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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Pop culture. Cancel culture. Judeo-Christian culture. Everyone likes to talk about "culture," but what actually is it? One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, the poet and essayist T.S. Eliot, wrote a short book, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, attempting to answer exactly that question. Written in the latter days of World War Two, as the Allied nations began to realize that Germany's surrender was imminent and that it was up to them to rebuild European culture, Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture was part of a broader anxiety among European and American elites about what the postwar world would look like.
In Chapter One, Eliot proposes three necessary ingredients for the existence of high culture: the durability of social classes, regionalism, and the balance of unity and diversity in religion. He also gestures towards two possible definitions of culture: first, simply that which makes life living, and secondly, the incarnation of the religion of a people. Jonathan and Ryan discuss Chapter One, as well as related matters, such as California cuisine.
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
Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568
C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652920
Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199538744
H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149
Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Why I Am Now a Christian": https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674986916
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 the Loeb Classical Library was launched, the greatest language teacher of the age, W.H.D. Rouse, wrote an essay meant to promote the Loebs by extolling the magnificence of Greek literature and Latin literature. And boy did he. "Your mind cannot live without them. All the great intellectual impulses begin in Greece; the modern world only grows crops from the Greek seed." While Rouse admitted that his space was short, and so he had to "be dogmatic," this essay, "Machines or Mind?" is a worthy read, not least because of its response to the utilitarians who'd prefer we abandon the humanities and instead bend all of our time, effort, and resources to making more machines. One of Rouse's 21st century heirs, Senior Fellow of Classical Languages at New Saint Andrews College and founder of Picta Dicta, Timothy Griffith, joins the podcast to discuss the essay, Rouse's place in the tradition of humanist education, and whether the Aeneid can properly be called an epic.
W.H.D. Rouse's Machines or Mind?: https://antigonejournal.com/2024/11/machines-or-mind-loebs-rouse/
Picta Dicta: https://pictadicta.com/
W.H.D. Rouse's Latin on the Direct Method: https://scholalatina.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Rouse-Appleton-Latin-on-the-direct-method.pdf
C.S. Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780195003451
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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Liberal education is for the man of leisure: Either a gentleman engaged in politics, or a philosopher engaged in contemplation. What role, then, can liberal learning have in a mass democracy? In the lecture "Liberal Education and Responsibility," the political theorist Leo Strauss defends his statement that "Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal education is the necessary endavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society." Along the way, he also discusses religious education, the distinction between the gentleman and the philosopher, and the insufficiency of the great books movement. Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos rejoins the podcast for another dive into Strauss.
Leo Strauss's Liberal Education and Responsibility: https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnLiberalEducation/Strauss-LiberalEducationResponsibility/
NH episode on Leo Strauss's What Is Liberal Education?: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/18277048-big-bad-leo-strauss-feat-pavlos-papadopoulos-episode-ci
Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781451683202
Jonathan Swift's The Battle of the Books: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781507890530
Mark A. Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780802882042
Greg Lukianoff's and Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780735224919
Pete Hegseth's and David Goodwin's Battle for the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780063215054
Robert R. Reilly's The Closing of the Muslim Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781610170024
Allan Bloom's translation of The Republic of Plato: https://amzn.to/49ZMPIs
Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America (trans. Harvey Mansfield): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226805368
Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://amzn.to/4buKd7W
C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944
Josef Pieper's Leisure The Basis of Culture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781586172565
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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What do you think of laryngeals? How should we refer to the Anatolian languages? Where do you stand on Gimbutas and Renfrew? In this episode of New Humanists, Dr. Colin Gorrie helps guide us through the Indo-European family tree. We follow the various branches as they spread out across Europe and Asia: Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic, Italic, and more. This episode covers the second half of Laura Spinney's introduction to the field of Indo-European studies, Proto.
Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586
Colin Gorrie's YouTube interview with Laura Spinney: https://youtu.be/_nVIV-qaHHY
M.L. West's Indo-European Poetry and Myth: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199558919
Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226458120
Colin Gorrie's "Dead Language Society" Substack: https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/
Calvert Watkins' How to Kill a Dragon: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780195085952
Ekho, the ancient language audiobook app, is coming soon. Check here for more details: https://ancientlanguage.com/ekho
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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Supposedly, about half of the world population speaks languages that all come from one root language: Proto-Indo-European. How do we know, and where did "PIE" come from? Ukraine, Anatolia, or somewhere else? Did the Indo-Europeans spread out in a massive, peaceful migration of farmers? Or as small bands of shepherds, stealing livestock and killing anyone standing in the way? How do we even know what a prehistoric language sounded like if we don't have any record of their language? In this episode, Colin Gorrie joins us to discuss the opening chapters of Laura Spinney's Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, a fascinating and enjoyable survey of the current state of research into Proto-Indo-European, and a useful introduction to the fields of historical linguistics, archaeology, and paleogenetics, and how they relate to the question of Indo-European origins.
Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586
Colin Gorrie's YouTube interview with Laura Spinney: https://youtu.be/_nVIV-qaHHY
Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542
Erwin Rohde's Psyche: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780415225632
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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The classical education revival movement began in the 1980s as a DIY, grassroots attempt to recover the medieval liberal arts, most notably the Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. However, the classical ed movement also frequently drapes itself in the garb of Plato: leading students out of the cave, employing Socratic techniques in the classroom, and ensuring its students do not lead unexamined lives. But what if classical education, both in its love for the Trivium (and Quadrivium) as well as its institutional character, borrows more from the great enemy and rival of Socrates - sophistry? In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read H.I. Marrou's chapter from A History of Education in Antiquity on the sophists and the birth of classical education proper.
Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149
Plato's Symposium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521682985
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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What is liberal education? It's the prompt that has launched one thousand essays, and in a 1959 lecture at the University of Chicago, the (in)famous Leo Strauss gave his answer. Despite fleeing Nazi Germany and coming to the United States, Strauss wasn't afraid of criticizing the positivism, historicism, and relativism of the American academy. And as is evident in reading his lecture "What is Liberal Education?" neither was he afraid of calling into question the value and feasibility of modern democracy. Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss Strauss, his relation to the Great Books movement, and his views on the relation between liberal education and mass democratic society.
Leo Strauss's What Is Liberal Education? https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnLiberalEducation/Strauss-WhatIsLiberalEducation/
Josef Pieper's Leisure, The Basis of Culture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781586172565
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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In celebration of the 100th episode of New Humanists, we do an extended episode that is a retrospective, discussing the history of the Ancient Language Institute and the New Humanists podcast, has some updates on what we're up to at the moment, and a peek behind the curtain so listeners can find out what is upcoming at ALI and on the podcast. We also welcome both Colin Gorrie and Luke Ranieri to the show to discuss Ekho: The Ancient Language Streaming App.
Alan Jacobs’s The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651
Jacques Maritain's Education at the Crossroads: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781685953423
W.H. Auden's Vocation and Society: https://www1.swarthmore.edu/library/auden/documents/vs.pdf
C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944
Simone Weil's The Need for Roots: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780415271028
T.S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture: https://amzn.to/4p5ubVo
Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781402782831
Introduction to Latin Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/intermediate-latin-ii/
Introduction to Ancient Greek Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/ancient-greek-intro-poetry/
Introduction to Old English Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/intermediate-old-english-ii/
Colin Gorrie's Ōsweald Bera: An Introduction to Old English: https://ancientlanguage.com/vergil-press/osweald-bera/
Learn Old English at ALI: https://ancientlanguage.com/register-for-old-english/
Learn Old Norse (through Old English) with ALI: https://ancientlanguage.com/old-norse-through-old-english/
Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586
Colin Gorrie's interview of Laura Spinney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVIV-qaHHY
Luke Ranieri's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri
The Ranieri-Roberts Approach to Ancient Greek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vwb1wVzPec
Apuleius' The Golden Ass: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780253200365
Xenophon's An Ephesian Tale: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781514295557
Benjamin Kantor's The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780802878311
Lucian's Assembly of the Gods: https://amzn.to/4peTcxB
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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Socrates taught his students contempt for the gods, how to defraud creditors, and useless trivialities about flea-jumping. Or at least, that's how Socrates appears in the comedy Clouds. If you want to understand something of the Athenian hostility to the great philosopher which eventually reached its climax in sentencing Socrates to death, it helps to see how he was lampooned in front of Athenian audiences by his contemporary, the comedian playwright Aristophanes. But Clouds is more than just (dirty) jokes. It is a profane and self-critical attack on educational innovation, and a call to return to the old ways, the ways which produced heroic men like Aeschylus, who with his fellows turned the Persians back at Marathon and saved Greece. The new form of education, in Aristophanes' view, threatens to reduce Athens to a pathetic bunch of weak and impious nerds. But even in his mockery of the new, Aristophanes seems well aware of the inner weakness of the old ways and the reason for their defeat. So it shouldn't be too surprising that his conclusion simply seems to be: Burn it all down.
Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by Alan H. Sommerstein: https://amzn.to/4hEaykY
Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by Peter Meineck: https://amzn.to/4o7lr0R
Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by William James Hickie: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0241%3Acard%3D1
Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149
Hesiod's Works and Days: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674997202
Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146
Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080
Leo Strauss's "The Problem of Socrates" (in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226777153
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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In the 4th century AD, two Christian friends - Basil and Gregory - travelled from Cappadocia to Athens to go study Greek literature with Libanius, the leading rhetorician of the time. While there, these two young and wealthy Cappadocians befriended a fellow student named Julian, the nephew of the Emperor Constantine. There in Athens, the three young Christians mastered Greek philosophy and rhetoric at Libanius' feet. Later on, Basil went on to become the bishop of Caesarea, one of the architects of orthodoxy's victory over the Arian heresy, and was later named a "Doctor of the Church." His friend Gregory of Nazianzus rose to become one of the foremost preachers and theologians in church history. And their friend Julian became Emperor - and having repudiated the Christian faith, attempted to turn the newly Christian Roman Empire pagan again. Clearly, as the example of Julian the Apostate shows, pagan mythology and literature pose a danger to Christian faith. But can pagan learning serve Christian faith as well? Jonathan and Ryan are joined, once again, by the Rev. Calvin Goligher to discuss St. Basil of Caesarea's "Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature," in which he answers heartily in the affirmative, and explains how to use Greek poetry, philosophy, and history for the edification of young Christian students.
St. Basil's Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/basil_litterature01.htm
Frederick Morgan Padelford's Introduction to St. Basil and the Address to Young Men: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/basil_litterature00.htm
Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO
NH episode on Justin Martyr: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10722142-justin-martyr-s-first-apology-feat-calvin-goligher-episode-xxiv
NH episode on Athanasius: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/9827740-athanasius-on-the-incarnation-feat-calvin-goligher-episode-xv
Robert Louis Wilken's The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300105988
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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We tend to think of the Athenians as philosophers, architects, and mathematicians. But their highest devotion was rather to sports and to music. These priorities are evident from their system of education, in which young Greek men were trained to compete in the Olympics as well as to sing and dance in the chorus. They were jocks. Think of the tragic playwright Aeschylus, who despite his literary accomplishments was remembered in his epitaph merely as a warrior at the Battle of Marathon. A man's man. So when Socrates and the sophists came around, the defenders of old-style musical and athletic education scoffed at the sickly, ugly, and weak men that philosophical and rhetorical training produced: in other words, a bunch of nerds. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan discuss what the comic Athenian poet Aristophanes called ἡ ἀρχαία παιδεία, i.e. that old-time education of Athens.
Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149
NH episode on Homeric education: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17406673-how-to-raise-an-achilles-episode-xci
Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780684827902
Aristophanes' Clouds: https://amzn.to/46GYaeK
Cato's De agri cultura: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/A*.html
Pete Hegseth's and David Goodwin's Battle for the American Mind: https://amzn.to/4gHQEox
Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781617206047
New Humanists episode on Alcuin and Charlemagne: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/15992673-the-barren-contemplative-life-episode-lxxviii
Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146
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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Everyone knows "The Lost Tools of Learning." But did you know Dorothy Sayers delivered another, longer, and even more interesting lecture on education, all about learning Latin? Sayers recalls beginning Latin lessons with her father at the tender age of 6, but laments that after 20 years of study, she was left barely able to read a line of Latin - and not for lack of trying or talent. Sayers contrasts this with her success in learning French, and concludes that what she needed in Latin was a conversation partner and easier, intermediate texts, or in other words: spoken Latin and lots of comprehensible input. Sayers also relates a conversation with C.S. Lewis about what medieval Latin texts he'd give to an intermediate-level Latin student to read.
Dorothy Sayers's The Greatest Single Defect of My Own Latin Education: https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/greatest-single-defect-my-own-latin-education/
NH episode on Dorothy Sayers's The Lost Tools of Learning: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10347912-the-trivium-according-to-dorothy-sayers-episode-xx
Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: https://amzn.to/3hoLz7V
Mary Beard's What Does the Latin Actually Say? https://www.the-tls.com/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons-life/what-does-the-latin-actually-say
Hans Orberg's Latine Disco: https://amzn.to/3JWgKIl
J.R.R. Tolkien's Letter 43: http://web.archive.org/web/20160308065444/http:/glim.ru/personal/jrr_tolkien_42-45.html
C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062565396
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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