Delve into the intricacies of Boethius's 'The Consolation of Philosophy' and discover its powerful insights on human suffering and meaning. Explore the enduring relevance of introspection in today's turbulent society, and how personal struggles can lead to profound philosophical reflections. Hear a heartwarming story of resilience through a chance encounter that weaves together poetry and personal connections. Ultimately, navigate the quest for individual meaning amidst chaos, highlighting the innate freedom we all possess.

In this intimate question and answer session, conducted in March 2024 with the students enrolled in Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities, the world-renowned psychiatrist, philosopher, and literary scholar Iain McGilchrist explores topics that animate the collective intellectual life of Ralston’s student body.  Answering questions that range from the metaphysical heights of theology, liturgy, and religious life to the tangible depths of scientific inquiry and medical progress, Dr McGhilchrist challenges his interlocutors to think deeper about the relationship between mind and matter, science and religion, and, ultimately, humanity and the divine.  Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things Albert Einstein Aristotle Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Meister Eckhart John Donne George Herbert Thomas Traherne Rumi Henry Moore Blaise Pascal St. Augustine William Shakespeare, King Lear; The Merchant of Venice; Hamlet; The Tempest Metrodorus of Lampsacus  Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling G.W.F. Hegel Alwyn Lishman St. Francis of Assisi  Plotinus Thomas Edison St. Gregory of Nyssa Carl Jung Glenn Gould  

In this enlightening discussion, psychiatrist and author Iain McGilchrist delves into the power of imagination in shaping our perception of reality. He examines how Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Keats resisted simplistic views tied to the left hemisphere of the brain. McGilchrist emphasizes the significance of viewing existence as a dynamic interplay between the finite and infinite. He also explores the implications of AI on human values and the importance of nurturing creativity in a technology-driven world.

In his second Sophia Lecture, Dr Iain McGilchrist gives a bracing, counterintuitive account of the fundamental categories of our experience of the world. McGilchrist shows how fundamental binaries—such as stasis and motion, simplicity and complexity, order and randomness, and even straight lines and curves—do not occur in nature in ways that conform to our assumptions about an inert, independent, and predictable universe. Drawing from disciplines as disparate as physics, mathematics, biology and art, McGilchrist shows that asymmetry is not simply a principle of vitality, harmony, and beauty. McGilchrist argues that asymmetry is primary, a reality that is prior to symmetry and which forms the basis of the very symmetries in nature and the arts to which it gives rise. The dynamism which results from the drive to balance and to resist balance is at the root of the vigor of natural systems, the beauty that they embody, and which the arts then reflect. With examples ranging from the elegance of the golden ratio to the structure of the human brain, McGilchrist’s lecture offers a fresh perspective on the nature of patterns in complex systems and human creations. His work invites us to search for wholeness, harmony, and connection from a set of starting points which are as surprising as they are fruitful; as always, he challenges us to see our world in new—and newly unified—ways. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Johann Sebastian Bach John Donne - “Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth’s imagin’d corners” Gerard Manley Hopkins - “Carrion Comfort” Werner Heisenberg - Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations with Einstein, Planck, Dirac, Bohr, and Other Physicists of Our Time Alexander Pope - “The Rape of the Lock” Iain McGilchrist - The Master and his Emissary Pierre Curie Chien-Shiung Wu Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder Aesop Heraclitus Democritus Leonardo da Vinci Louis Pasteur Rong Li & Bruce Bowerman - “Symmetry breaking in biology” Arthur Koestler Aristotle Oliver Sacks Thomas Holstein Tim Crow Onur Güntürkün Jane Clark & Daniel Simons (Christopher Chabris) - Gorillas in Our Midst Jonathan Rowson Alastair McIntosh Richard Dawkins Nikolaj Nikolaenko Luciano Laurana Giorgio Martini - Ideal City Raphael - The School of Athens Andrea Palladio William Blake - “The Tyger” Theodosius II Christ Pantocrator Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel John P. McGovern William Osler William Alwyn Lishman William Shakespeare - King Lear John Cleese Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sir Roger Scruton

Iain McGilchrist, a neuroscientist and psychologist, delves into the fascinating balance between division and union. He explores how wholeness transcends reductionism, highlighting the brain’s hemispheres as partners in understanding. McGilchrist draws analogies from music and nature, emphasizing that true comprehension arises from recognizing interconnectedness. He champions the idea that resistance and limitations can spark creativity, while also discussing the philosophical implications of time and existence, ultimately arguing for a synthesis of opposites to drive innovation.

A conversation between Dr Iain McGilchrist, neuropsychiatrist, philosopher, and literary critic, and Dr Stephen Blackwood, President of Ralston College, on the occasion of Dr McGilchrist’s March 2024 visit to Savannah to deliver Ralston College’s annual Sophia Lectures. Dr McGilchrist discusses his experience spending time with Ralston College students, his reasons for accepting the College’s invitation to deliver the Sophia lectures, and the necessity of leisure for deep thought. Applications for Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities program are now open.  Apply now.    

The second part of a conversation between the renowned literary scholar and psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist and Ralston College president Dr Stephen Blackwood about Dr McGilchrist’s remarkable educational trajectory. In this episode, Dr Iain McGilchrist explains how he left his successful career as a literary scholar to pursue training as a psychiatrist and how his combined study of literature, philosophy, and neuroscience informed his later academic work, including his books The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale University Press, 2009) and The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (Perspectiva, 2021). List of people referenced in this episode: Ted Hughes William Wordsworth Samuel Johnson John Boswell Laurence Sterne William Shakespeare Oliver Sacks John Cutting Louis Sass Jan Zwicky Robert Bringhurst Erwin Schrödinger Martin Heidegger Max Planck Niels Bohr Michael Levin

In a captivating discussion, Iain McGilchrist, a renowned polymath and author, shares his enlightening journey from Winchester College to All Souls. He reflects on the importance of freedom, friendship, and high expectations in education. McGilchrist highlights how formative experiences can nurture intellectual curiosity and critiques the current utilitarian focus in education. The conversation dives into the vibrant academic life at Oxford and the unique challenges faced by students today, advocating for a balanced and holistic approach to learning.

Ralston College presents a talk by Christopher Snook, Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, on the influence of Dante’s Purgatorio on two of T.S. Eliot’s most important works: The Waste Land and Four Quartets. Mr Snook attends, in particular, to how Eliot’s treatment of fragments represents at once both a departure from and a return to medieval understandings of the whole. This medieval understanding is evidenced in the “manifold articulation” of particulars within the architecture of the Gothic cathedral, the literary shape of the Divine Comedy, and the logical structure of the Summa Theologicae. Mr Snook’s lecture was given in the final term of the 2023-24 year of Ralston College’s MA in Humanities program, which focused on the concept of the Whole.    Applications are now open for the upcoming year of the MA in the Humanities program, which will focus on the theme of Fellowship. Apply now.    Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode:    Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”  T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot Dante, The Divine Comedy  T. S. Eliot, The Family Reunion Ezra Pound William Shakespeare, Macbeth John Donne, “No Man is an Island”  Charles Baudelaire, “À une passante” William Shakespeare, The Tempest  George Herbert  Nicene Creed  Augustine, Confessions  Charles Williams Filippo Tommaso Marinetti  Franz Kafka, “Before the Law” (from The Trial)  Freidrich Schlegel  Pascal, Pensées  Michel de Montaigne  Plato, Republic   

Ralston College presents a talk by Christopher Snook, Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, on T.S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece The Waste Land. The lecture explores the personal, historical, and literary contexts of Eliot’s poem. Through an engagement with the Western tradition that is simultaneously rich and fragmented, The Waste Land confronts cultural and personal crises that have atrophied both memory and desire. Snook finds in Eliot’s work a mournful modernism that serves as a serious and searching rejoinder to the more frivolous and enervated responses present in some modernist schools, most notably Dadaism. This lecture was delivered on April 15th, 2024 at Ralston College’s Savannah campus, during the final term of the second year of the MA in the Humanities Program. Applications are now open for next year’s MA program. Full scholarships are available. https://www.ralston.ac/apply Mentioned in this episdoe:  T. S. Eliot “The Waste Land”The DialKathleen RaineVirgil, AeneidEliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”Eliot, “Tradition and Individual Talent”Eliot, The Family Reunion Henri BergsonBertrand Russell Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s RoomLeonard WoolfEzra PoundJames Joyce, Ulysses Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Oswald Spengler, Decline and Fall of the West Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past Claude McCay, Harlem Shadows August Strindberg Neo-impressionism Cubism Dadaism Surrealism Futurism Taxi Driver (film) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, War, the World’s Only Hygiene Hugo Ball, Dada Manifesto “That Shakespearian Rag” William Shakespeare, Hamlet World War I Henry James F. H. Varley Punic Wars Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy The Tempest Modernism Collage Pablo Picasso Georges BraqueMarcel Duchamp, Nude Descending Staircase; Fountain Montage F. H. BradleyHegel, Phenomenology of Spirit Plato The Matter of Britain Jessie Weston James Frazer Richard Wagner, Parsifal Augustine, Confessions Charles Dickens, Hard Times Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Eliot, “The Hollow Men” Tower of Babel Petronius, The Satyricon Michelangelo, frescoes of Sistine Chapel Virgil, Eclogues Ovid, Metamorphoses Franz Kafka Chaucer, Canterbury Tales Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women; A Game at Chess Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Charles Baudelaire, “Au Lecteur” Fredrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals