New Humanists

Send us a textMilton and Shakespeare? Or Homer and Virgil? Why should our students study Greeks and Romans when we have English-language poets, philosophers, and historians worthy to be placed on the same level as the ancients? Maybe because the “ancients” aren’t really so ancient after all… So argues Thomas Arnold in his defense of the classical curriculum he instituted at Rugby School. Jonathan and Ryan use Arnold’s “Use of the Classics” essay, his defense of classical education, to distinguish between two things that are nowadays often conflated: a “classical” curriculum and a “Great Books” curriculum.Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnOLytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199555017Helen Andrews’s Boomers: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780593086759Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays: https://amzn.to/3vEZNYQNew 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

Send us a textThe intellectual life can’t just be reading all day. Eventually, you have to sit down and do the work. According to A.G. Sertillanges, the intellectual vocation finds its fulfillment in creation. Jonathan and Ryan wrap up their reading of Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life as they walk through the final three chapters.There was a software problem with recording this week. Apologies for the occasionally scratchy audio quality.A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462New Humanists episode on Seneca and reading: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-read-too-much-episode-xix/id1570296135?i=1000554117391Nicolás Gómez Dávila’s Aphorism #2,223: http://don-colacho.blogspot.com/2010/11/2223.htmlJonathan Roberts’s Review of Kirk MacGregor’s Luis de Molina: https://web.archive.org/web/20210804195625/http://calvinistinternational.com/2016/04/01/luis-de-molina-catholic-theologian-kirk-macgregor/Carl Trueman’s Lectures on the Reformation: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4sbg6ng23C61k2K5J-A9Prw8cy6rAXnMJonathan Schaffer’s On What Grounds What: http://www.jonathanschaffer.org/grounds.pdfNew 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

Send us a textJonathan and Ryan continue their discussion of A.G. Sertillanges’s marvelous The Intellectual Life. In chapters 4 -6, Sertillanges touches on, among other things, sleep, the pursuit of wisdom in everyday life, and breadth of study in service of depth. A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462Editorial Note: The mention of the “dies academicus” refers, not to our episode on Eric Voegelin (as we mistakenly said), but to our episode on Pope Benedict XVI: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/benedict-in-regensburg-faith-reason-and-the/id1570296135?i=1000542008795New 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

Send us a textThe French Thomist A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., is most famous for The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. The book is a moving and handy meditation inspired by Thomas Aquinas’ Letter to Brother John about what it will take to devote your life to contemplation. This is the first episode in a three-part series on The Intellectual Life in which Jonathan and Ryan examine their own lives to see how Sertillanges can help them out.A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462The Ad Fontes Podcast, episode feat. Ryan: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-youre-talking-my-ancient-language/id1557560666?i=1000559442987Robert Cardinal Sarah’s The Power of Silence: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781621641919Plato’s Symposium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674991842New 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

Send us a textWho is at the helm of the ship of state? Is the United States doomed to go the way of the Titanic? In the essay “Academic Leadership,” Paul Elmer More expounds on the crucial role that humanistic study plays in cultivating a natural aristocracy that guides and protects the body politic. More, along with Irving Babbitt, was a luminary of the New Humanism movement and an essayist, prolific letter-writer, editor, and Christian Platonist.Paul Elmer More’s Academic Leadership (free): https://jkalb.freeshell.org/more/leaders.htmlRichard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Book Named the Governor: https://amzn.to/3977IWORené Girard’s A Theater of Envy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781587318603New 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

Send us a textWas Socrates a Christian? Did Plato meet Jeremiah? Are pagan myths based on garbled versions of the Hebrew prophets? Welcome to Justin Martyr’s First Apology, a plea to the Roman Emperor to stop killing Christians, a philosophical defense of Christianity, and a master class in biblical exegesis. ALI Latin & Greek Fellow Calvin Goligher returns to New Humanists to discuss the poetry, philosophy, and revelation in Justin Martyr with Jonathan and Ryan.Justin Martyr’s First Apology (free in English): https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htmDennis Minns and Paul Parvis’s Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies (critical edition): https://amzn.to/3GJOMtpJustin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0128.htmPliny-Trajan correspondence on Christians: https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.htmlPlato’s Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080Yoram Hazony’s The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521176675Matthew W. Bates’s The Birth of the Trinity: https://amzn.to/3taSZ3UCicero’s De Officiis: https://amzn.to/3x9TGwTAmbrose’s De Officiis: https://amzn.to/3Nc3j3CRobert Louis Wilken’s The Christians as the Romans Saw Them: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300098396New 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

Send us a textWhere is Geatland? Beowulf has been taken as a founding poem for England, yet England never appears in the poem. Linguist Colin Gorrie joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss this heroic and tragic Old English masterpiece, the history of scholarship surrounding the poem, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s titanic contribution to modern understanding of it.Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780393320978Dick Ringler’s translation of Beowulf: https://amzn.to/3sv1yWQJ.R.R. Tolkien’s translation and commentary on Beowulf: https://amzn.to/3w81O09Colin Gorrie’s Why the Grammar-Translation Method Does Not Work (And What Does): https://ancientlanguage.com/why-grammar-translation-method-does-not-work/J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Monsters and the Critics: https://amzn.to/3FE4rdoTom Shippey’s Lecture 1 of 3 on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf: https://youtu.be/FPBt05KUfzgNorton Critical Edition of Beowulf: https://amzn.to/3McPv8yVirgil’s Aeneid: https://amzn.to/3FMLAN9Colin Gorrie’s website: https://www.colingorrie.com/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

Send us a textMaking humanistic education democratic and freely available was its downfall, at least in the eyes of Albert Jay Nock, as he discusses in The Theory of Education in the United States. Taking a cue as well from Plato’s Republic, Jonathan and Ryan address the apparent tension between the excellence of the tradition and the equalitarian, democratic mores of American life. Should everyone be educated? Can they be?Richard Gamble’s Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568Albert Jay Nock’s The Theory of Education in the United States: https://amzn.to/38v94tRAlbert Jay Nock’s Memoirs of a Superfluous Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781610160353Plato’s Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080Dorothy Sayers’s The Lost Tools of Learning: https://www.pccs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/LostToolsOfLearning-DorothySayers.pdfNew 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

Send us a text“The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force,” wrote Simone Weil. And yet, she said that Homer’s poem is “the purest and loveliest of mirrors.” How can a poem that revels in the visceral description of death and that chronicles the destruction of a great city be so pure and lovely? Jonathan and Ryan take a look into this epic mirror and into Weil’s justly famous essay on it.Simone Weil’s The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (free English translation): http://biblio3.url.edu.gt/SinParedes/08/Weil-Poem-LM.pdfSimone Weil’s The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (bilingual French-English critical edition): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780820463612Homer’s Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780374529055Aeschylus' Oresteia: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140443332Sophocles' Theban Plays: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156027649Ovid’s Metamorphoses: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156001267Virgil’s Aeneid: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780553210415New 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

Send us a textThe Lost Tools of Learning, a 1947 lecture delivered at Oxford by Dorothy Sayers, was largely ignored at the time and in England until decades later in the United States, when it became a foundation text of the Classical Christian Education movement. Despite being the lecture that launched 1,000 classical schools, Dorothy Sayers appears to undermine the classical tradition and repeatedly side with educational progressives. Jonathan and Ryan dig into the lecture, its impact on the CCE movement, and some pedagogical alternatives.Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568Dorothy Sayers’s Lost Tools of Learning: https://www.pccs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/LostToolsOfLearning-DorothySayers.pdfDorothy Sayers’s translation of Dante’s Inferno: https://amzn.to/36yr31CJonathan Roberts’s Classical Schools Are Not Really Classical: https://ancientlanguage.com/classical-schools-not-classical/C. Stephen Jaeger’s The Envy of Angels: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780812217452J.R.R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories”: https://coolcalvary.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/on-fairy-stories1.pdfC.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944New 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