Spelunking With Plato

In this conversation with Michael Boler, we learn about how we might follow the Greeks in undertaking an integrated and embodied approach to liberal education.  How is liberal education an agon, a struggle, and a "return to the real"?  Why did the Greeks emphasize individual physical training (as opposed to team sports)?  Why do philosophy students smoke so much?  Why is a good teacher so important? How did we become "cacti in a sea of dopamine?" These and other questions animate our conversation.

In this conversation with Michael Boler, we learn about his intellectual journey as a “late bloomer,” the dynamics and pitfalls of a great books approach to education, and the joys and challenges of teaching students in our own age.  Along the way we consider the virtues of intellectual humility, wonder, and the importance of the perennial questions.  And in an age in which higher education has become captive to values foreign to it, we consider why an apparently inefficient approach to learning might have the most permanent consequences.

In this rich conversation,  Elizabeth Corey introduces us to the thought of Michael Oakeshott and what we can learn from him about being human and the practice of liberal education.  Oakeshott’s unique voice is needed more than ever and touches not only the life of liberal learning but on almost every sphere of human flourishing.

In this wide ranging conversation with Elizabeth Corey, we take up the fundamental question that has animated this podcast series: What is liberal learning? Along the way we consider the challenges faced by those who would liberally educate students today (including our brightest students), the higher purposes of liberal education, and consider liberal education's future.  We also reflect on how liberal education can inform our approach to work, how the life of the academic and liberal education might become illiberal (while looking liberal from the outside), and the conditions—particularly the habits of reading and mind—that are necessary for liberal education to take place.

In this conversation we take up Shakespeare’s nearly infinite capacity to educate liberally all who encounter his works in deep and sustained ways. We also consider how Shakespeare liberally educates us in ways that complement how Dante teaches us. With particular attention to As You Like It, we examine how play—the play of supposition and the play of analogy—can be transferred to the classroom by the best teachers.  Along the way, we consider the contributions to this topic made by Pieper, Huizinga, Gadamer, Sister Miriam Joseph, and Altman.

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In this conversation with Rachel Fulton Brown, we begin with Mary, the Seat of Wisdom, as a medieval symbol of liberal learning at the University of Paris, and all that she can teach those who desire to become wise.  From there we consider how a Marian thread unites things as disparate as iambic pentameter, rose windows, and the highest—albeit unexpected—gifts of contemplative grace. Along the way the works of St. Augustine, John of Garland, Richard of Saint-Laurent, Tolkien, and Josef Pieper illuminate our path.

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In this conversation with Rachel Fulton Brown, we undertake a wide-ranging conversation about history and liberal learning, ranging from Herodotus, Augustine, and Martianus Capella to McLuhan and MacIntyre with many stops in between. Among the questions we consider: How does the Christian approach to liberal learning—and history within it—stand both at odds and in parallel with the ancient understanding? How is history always opposed to abstraction? And what are the frames that can guide (or derail) the writing of professional history and our personal histories?

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In this conversation with Margarita Mooney, we consider what can we learn from the Benedictine tradition—as communicated by Newman—as we seek to cultivate a university that is animated by liberal learning. What kind of ethos should emerge within a university from a liberal education that (1) integrates the full range of disciplines--including metaphysics and theology--(2) that seeks to form the full person (understood to have both a created nature and transcendent telos), and that (3) understands that for liberal learning to reach its highest aims it must be integrated within a liturgical and spiritual tradition? Within this discussion we also consider the difference that beauty, as a constitutive element of our education and our lives, can make as seek a fully human existence.  And on a note that is more important than it might seem at first, why should wee have good food and drink at faculty and academic gatherings?

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What is liberal education? And what is it not? In this conversation Margarita Mooney Suarez introduces her vision of liberal learning by considering the nature of the person whom we educate, the means of liberal learning, and the challenges that liberal learning faces today. Along the way, we consider what role imitation, play, humor, and imagination fulfill in liberal education and what we might continue to learn from Maritain, Newman, Huizinga, and St. Benedict. And how do all of these elements and sources enable us to (1) educate the integrated human person who possesses both a transcendent dimension and telos, (2) attain an integrated vision of all things, and (3) enter into the dance that transports us between focused forms of knowing—through the disciplines—and the contemplative vision of the whole?

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In this conversation Prof. Mirela Oliva takes up the big question of how we can come to know the meaning of life. She suggests that there are three questions bound up in one: (1) the cosmic question, “What is the meaning ‘of it all’?”; the ethical question, “What can I do to make my life meaningful?”; and the aesthetic question, “What is the story of my life?” (And who “writes” this story?)

She also takes up related questions such as “Is the meaning of life outside of me?” “Is the purpose of my life given to me, or do I create my own?” And finally, we discuss the question, “Is there a Catholic philosophy?” and what Plato might teach us about a philosophy that requires the exclusion of the Divine.

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If Plato's Cave had Wi-Fi and Netflix, would we leave it?

In this conversation with Prof. Mirela Oliva, we consider what it is that a philosopher "does" and the famous Allegory of Plato's Cave. Are we all trapped in this Cave? Under what conditions might we be willing to stay?

We also consider: How can the search for knowledge and wisdom lead to a better life? And what role does humility play in our search? How is knowledge of reality—philosophy broadly understood—the basis of every other enquiry and form of professional knowledge? That is, how is it that we cannot know the part (i.e., our particular discipline or profession) without knowing the whole (i.e., a broad philosophical vision)? And finally, what does it mean to approach a discipline philosophically?  (The last question is of critical importance for all who aspire to be liberally educated.)

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How can the study of history, understood as a branch of liberal learning, become a liberating education? Prof. Francesca Guerri offers an initial answer by giving us an account of her own intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage and the role of the study of history in that pilgrimage.

Then, opening the discussion to more universal connections, Dr. Guerri takes up the themes of friendship, the nature of the human person, and the role that community and companionship play in teaching and the intellectual life of the university.  She also considers how history relates to the sister disciplines of liberal learning and how historical study can be a point of entry for students into a larger vision of reality that is coherent, intelligent, and ultimately teleological.  History, approached as a discipline within the Catholic intellectual tradition offers meaning and vision that can liberate us and for which we are ultimately responsible as caretakers.

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What is one of the chief motivations for the study of history? Prof. Francesca Guerri suggests that it is “a passion for humanity.” But this is not a passion for abstractions. It is rather a passion for particular people, at particular times, in particular places, ordered to a particular end.

In this conversation, Dr. Guerri introduces us to Matilda of Tuscany and her role in the investiture controversy as well as her own studies of Renaissance mercantile life and the larger (Benedictine) vison of work as potentially sacred.

Dr. Guerri also takes up the question of the nature of liberal learning by considering a statement that Dante gives to Ulysses in the Inferno: “Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” Is this an accurate description of liberal learning and its aims? What does it mean that Ulysses uses this statement to exhort his men to transgress divine bounds, leading ultimately to their death and his own damnation? (Are there dangers lurking with liberal education that is unmoored from a divine and regulative vision?)

Along the way, Dr. Guerri also considers the virtues—including patience and studiositas—that should animate the life of the historian and the discipline’s relationship to the other liberal arts, especially rhetoric as it is understood in of the works of Cicero, St. Augustine, and Dante.

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How much can and should Christians engage with non-Christian literature as part of a larger journey of intellectual formation? How can we fruitfully study pagan poets, historians, philosophers, and rhetoricians? And what role can music play in liberal learning?

In this conversation, Prof. Squires leads us through a discussion of these questions and considers the strengths and weaknesses of great books programs (both Catholic and non-Catholic) and anti-intellectual strains within the Christian tradition. On two occasions, he even turns the table and interviews the interviewer.

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What is the role of divine grace in liberal learning? And how should education relate to sources that of learning that may seem counter to the spirit of faith?

In this conversation, Prof. Stuart Squires invites us into a consideration of two areas closely related to liberal learning.  First, if liberal learning seeks to bring students out of Plato's cave, what is the role of grace and worship or cultus in that journey?  Second, we take up Tertullian and consider the sources, limits, and purposes of liberal education (in dialogue with John Paul II's Fides et ratio, John Henry Newman, and St. Augustine.

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How would Galileo and his work be received today? Most people think they know what happened to Galileo but often get the details mixed up. Yet even when the details are clear, how does Galileo’s life, work, and controversy still shape the culture of the university and the form of liberal learning? (Hint: Is there a secret cold war between the “trivium-ists” and the “quadrivium-ists.” And how would discoveries comparable to Galileo's be received today? In this conversation we take up the Galileo affair, seek to clarify its details, and discuss its reverberations through the contemporary academy.

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What did James Madison mean by “cool” (in reference to politics) and why is our political discourse so “hot” today?  Prof. Wolfe takes up the substance of Federalist 10, the so-called "liberalism wars," and the nature of America’s founding. Along the way, he offers commentary on Leo Strauss, Alasdair MacIntyre, Natural Law, integralism, and classical liberalism. And at the end he offers his own diagnosis on America’s future.

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Is the discipline of physics the “Queen of the Sciences”? In this conversation with polymath and professor Jim Clarage, we discuss the ways in which the discipline of physics takes up all seven of the classical liberal arts. Along the way we consider other disciplines—music, mathematics, and theology—that also may fulfill this role and why Newman’s “circle of the sciences” remains relevant today. With cameos by Darwin, Einstein, and Galileo, we sketch the place of advanced scientific thought within liberal learning and the humility that may be required for its study.

Links of Potential Interest from Prof. Clarage:

The Book of Nature (author: God! Go out and stare at moon phases for month, shoot a garden hose in the sun, watch a morning spider engineering a web)

What is political theory and how does its study fit into liberal education? Does a change in music prefigure a change in political regimes? These and other questions are taken up in this conversation with Prof. Chris Wolfe. In hindsight, who would have thought that both Plato and “The Plastic People of the Universe would come up in the same podcast?

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In this conversation, Prof. Andrew Hayes accomplishes two tasks. First, he introduces us to the sources that have animated his leadership of the renewal of a university's core curriculum—including St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Basil the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Newman, Josef Pieper, and Alasdair Macintyre. Second, he gives a detailed account of the principal elements and purposes that give form to the unfolding of this renewal. Here he touches upon the importance of establishing a community of Core Fellows, the cultivation of wonder in our students, the perennial questions that will animate and give unity to the students' experience of the core, the core’s common texts, and the fundamental unity of knowledge. Finally, he offers insightful observations about liberal education understood as an unfolding conversation, the role of faculty members as custodians of tradition, how we should define “liberal education,”  and how should distinguish introductory courses that typically constitute general education at most institutions from “cognate” courses that should constitute a core properly ordered to liberal learning.

In this conversation, Chris Evans, the VPAA of the University of Saint Thomas, introduces us to the world and thought of Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096--1141). Focusing on the “map” of study proposed in his "Didascalicon," we discover the integration of the theoretical and practical disciplines with mechanical skills, and the weaving together of the seven liberal arts both with ethical and political formation, and the acquisition of the necessary skills for life (which at the time including hunting and armor making).  Complementing this in Hugh’s vision is a devotion to prayer, the liturgy, and the sacraments. And all of these—studies in the classroom and formation outside of the classroom—are oriented to Wisdom, the second person of the Trinity.

Hugh of St. Victor’s soteriological orientation of education would also become the normative vision for Catholic education to this day: Catholic education ultimately aims at human salvation, “the restoration of the likeness of God in humanity.”

In the second half of the conversation, we take up the question, “Why the Core?,” the role of theology in liberal learning, and how we can form faculty and administrators for the unique mission of Catholic liberal education.

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“I don’t know what nursing or business will look like in five hundred years, but I know that we will still be reading Plato and Aristotle.” In this conversation, Chris Evans introduces listeners to the history of the esteemed Core of the University of St. Thomas and the Basilian charism of forming the whole person. He considers how the rise of professional majors and other cultural dynamics have challenged the breadth, depth, coherence, and sense of purpose of the Core. He considers the difference between having the Core as an “integral part” of the university's course of studies and making it an “integrating” part of a university education, a luminous center of gravity that brings clarity to all of the university’s activities (within and beyond the classroom) and gives them order and a telos. And throughout the conversation he gives many details (with their rationale) of the renewal of the Core. These and other questions and topics animate this wide-ranging conversation about how the renewed Core and its culture promise to become a models for liberal learning within a comprehensive university in the twenty-first century.

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“What was life like before you read Dante?” For many of us, this is almost the same as asking, “What was life like before you began the journey of liberal education?” In this conversation with Prof. Dominic Aquila, we consider the Poet and his work, taking up the merits of various translations, various ways to read the poem, the scholarly tradition of commentary, and the potential fruitfulness of exile.  Prof. Aquila reflects on the Purgatorio and its liturgical-musical dimension—a work on which he has recently published—as well as Dante’s “three Advents.”

Links of Potential Interest:

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Where does history fit into the liberal learning? How can a historical sensibility be integrated into liberal education without relativizing and historicizing the truth claims made by other disciplines.  How do we prevent “Becoming” from overwhelming our access to “Being.” In this conversation with Prof. Dominic Aquila, we take up these questions and many more. (This discussion is preceded by Prof. Aquila’s thoughts on the place of liberal learning within the family.)

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In this conversation with Prof. Tom Harmon, a scholar of St. Augustine, we consider whether rhetoric should be considered the chief of the liberal arts (at least among the trivium), its status during Augustine’s time, and its relation to the other liberal arts.  In light of Augustine’s criticism of rhetoric—“telling lies to people who know you are lying, and who praise you for it”—we consider how Augustine might defend liberal learning in our own day. and how such learning remains essential to fields and disciplines we might not expect.  We also consider considering the links between the verbal arts of the trivium and the mathematical ones of the quadrivium, particularly the relation between poetry, arithmetic, and  metaphysics.

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Are the liberal arts necessary for the Christian? How did St. Augustine simultaneously embody and critique liberal learning? In this conversation, Prof. Tom Harmon, a scholar of St. Augustine, takes up the Bishop of Hippo’s vision of liberal education from a variety of perspectives. If Augustine were rewriting the “Allegory of the Cave,” how would his account be different? Along the way he also considers the difference between Cicero’s and Augustine’s vision of oratory, the role of the Platonists in Augustine’s conversion, and the temptation to pride that is an occupational hazard for Christian academics.

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A thought experiment: Imagine that both John Paul II and Thomas Aquinas are alive today. They have been commissioned to establish independent universities in different cities according to their respective visions of education. How would the universities differ? How would they be similar? Is it possible that they establish identical universities? In this conversation, Dr. John Hittinger takes up these questions while also offering insights that illuminate the role of culture, philosophical anthropology, freedom, and conscience in the well-ordered human life of learning. Hittinger also reflects on how he—as a life-long Thomist—has developed his own thinking as a result of his work on the thought of John Paul II.

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In this engaging conversation, Dr. Clint Brand introduces us to Scott Newstok’s book, How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, which serves as a door to a larger discussion of the nature of liberal learning and its inherent paradoxes. Dr. Brand considers with Newstok “a few touchstones derived from the Tudor play of mind and some habits of Renaissance education that apply very much to the challenges” we face in our current moment. He also explores the paradoxes that Newstok proposes to his readers: that play emerges through work, creativity through imitation, autonomy through tradition, innovation through constraints, and freedom through discipline. And Prof. Brand fittingly concludes the conversation with Wordsworth’s “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room.”

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In what ways is the classroom devoted to liberal learning also a sacramental place? In this conversation, Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. (herself a scholar of St. Albert’s sacramental theology), discusses parallels between the classical understanding of the sacraments and the experience of a classroom animated by liberal education. Along the way she also introduces us to texts by Josef Pieper, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Pope Saint John Paul II that can illuminate our path as we seek to leave the Cave.

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What was Albert the Great’s vision of higher learning? In this conversation, Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski outlines Albert’s vision with wit and insight, suggesting that he was not as dispassionate as his more famous pupil and had he been alive today, might have become a public intellectual who engaged contemporary controversies on social media. Not content to be an armchair scientist, he insisted on testing popular opinions of the day: Do ostriches don’t eat iron? Let’s find out. In addition to comparing St. Albert and St. Thomas, Sr. Albert Marie takes up the place of science in liberal education more generally, potential parallels between sacramental communion (for the laity) and education, the fearless nature of liberal enquiry, and analogues between religious and academic communities.

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In this conversation, Dr. John Hittinger explores the sources of John Paul II’s vision of education, taking up his historically rooted and deeply cultural, Thomistic Personalism as the foundation of that vision. Ranging over a wide variety of works—including music and poetry—Prof. Hittinger considers the relation between faith and reason, a relation in which the former acts as a “force multiplier” of the latter. He also considers the confidence that should mark Catholic higher education and the role of literature and the imagination in liberal learning.

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“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

In this lively conversation, Dr. Clint Brand takes up Newman’s understanding of the role of the imagination within liberal education. Dr. Brand draws upon the full scope of Newman’s writings, his own experiences as a scholar and teacher, and the insights of Dante and C.S. Lewis. Central to this conversation are several questions articulated by Dr. Brand: “If faith and reason are the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth, what can we say of the imagination? Where does the study of literature fit into the physiology of flight? What does a literary education bring to the school of aviation in a Catholic university?” And Prof. Brand concludes the conversation with a reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “ To R.B.”

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