Why read old and difficult texts
... See moreThe aspect of Scott Buchanan’s life to which this memoir relates began, for me at least, with a college lecture he gave in October of 1944.
The lecture was a flight of high speculative fancy in which he tried to imagine the features of a Republic of Learning joined with a political republic.
If man is a political animal, his virtues compromised and
The writings of Plato and Aristotle are haunted by a figure who seeks wisdom of the highest things and who thereby gains practical wisdom, knowledge of how to govern. The first philosopher, Thales, fell into a well while looking at the stars, possessed by knowledge Aristotle called “wondrous, difficult and divine—but useless.” Yet Socrates fought... See more
Zena Hitz • The Lamp Magazine | The Practical Wisdom of Eva Brann
At the Morningside conference she presented the criterion for a great book she had learned from her classics professor at Brooklyn College, Alice Kober. “You know a great book,” Kober had said, “when the hair stands up on the back of your neck.”
Zena Hitz • The Lamp Magazine | The Practical Wisdom of Eva Brann
We were to read Thomas Hobbes in the first seminar I attended. Strauss began without further ado to say that we would read only the first two parts of the Leviathan, that this was "disgraceful" but that we would have our hands full doing justice to even that much. After that, he turned unceremoniously to some introductory remarks.
The first
... See moreWhat every man is born an heir to is an inheritance of human achievement; an inheritance of feelings, emotions, images, visions, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, understandings, intellectual and practical enterprises, languages, relationships, organizations, religions, canons and maxims of conduct, procedures, rituals, skills, works of art, books, musical
I don’t remember everything I read. But I do believe memory is an obligation, as St. Augustine encourages us, for the imagination is composed of the things we remember—books, art, liturgy, life experiences.
Reading up to 2024
Almost nothing I have written in the last few years has given rise to more correspondence than a throwaway column about reading, in which I alluded to what I call the “hundred pages strategy.” This is exactly what it sounds like: every day, come rain or shine, on religious and secular holidays, when I travel and when I am exceptionally busy, I read... See more
Matthew Walther • The Lamp Magazine | The One Hundred Pages Strategy
pages or minutes? one is good as another I expect
Might be handy for my reading of the Old Testament in 2025