In “The Kekulé Problem”, Cormac McCarthy asks why the unconscious communicates with ambiguous images rather than in plain language. Why, when Kekulé was perplexed by the chemical structure of benzene, did the image of an ouroboros come to mind rather than the word “ring”? The answer is straightforward. The unconscious speaks in images because it […]
Category Archives: philosophy
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Jun
Jun
The Renaissance polymath Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa defined occult qualities as those whose “causes lie hid, and man’s intellect cannot in any way reach and find them out.”1 Though his Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic was condemned by Catholic and Protestant authorities, it remained influential in esoteric circles. The Scientific Revolution dealt the greater […]
11
Jun
Jun
Several weeks ago, I spent a bit of free time learning Italian online in preparation for traveling to Rome for a Memoria College seminar. In fact, I’ve been spending more and more free time online—more than I’d like to admit, if I’m honest with myself. I heard about a free language-learning website, and the animations […]
25
May
May
The term “intellect” is often associated with a narrow sector of human life: the academic. It may even be associated with empty erudition in contrast to the solid realism of common sense. Boethius defined a person as an individual substance of a rational nature. Does that strike you as an impoverished way to think of […]
In Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe, Jeffrey Hart says of the Socratics that they “sought to know ‘actuality,’ which ultimately had to include everything, and do so independently of religion, myth, and received tradition.”1 While the search for knowledge and understanding of science and philosophy is admirable, the attempt to do so independently of religion […]
Every year, when I teach Plato’s Republic, something subtle happens to the students. At first, the students are confident. They are articulate, well-read, informed. They have opinions about justice, politics, freedom, identity. They have listened to podcasts, read articles, absorbed arguments. Their minds are not empty. And yet, somewhere around Book VII, the atmosphere shifts. […]
The difference between atheism and theism is fundamentally a difference between mythic and scientific thinking. That is to say, it is a difference between those who insist that reality is what is revealed by rational procedures, and those who retreat from the demands of critical thinking to the cover provided by imaginative storytelling. Which camp […]
The following is an edited excerpt from Dr. Louis Markos’ article “Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in Plato’s Myths,” in the 2025 issue of Meliora, the academic journal of Memoria College. Apart from the order, balance, and harmony that unite Truth to Goodness and Goodness to Beauty, there would be no center around which to organize […]
The following is an edited excerpt from James Hankins’ article “The Christian Humanism of the Renaissance and the Revival of Classical Latin,” in the 2025 issue of Meliora, the academic journal of Memoria College. In my teaching and writing over many years about Renaissance humanism, I’ve discovered that the word “humanism” can be an obstacle […]
In the Republic, Socrates proposes to his interlocutors that in order to understand the principle of justice in the soul, they should look for the principle of justice in a city. If they grasp the principle of justice in the city, then that principle can be understood in the soul. My proposal is to reverse […]
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