In this Forum interview, Professor of History Paul Rahe sat down with Sophia Mandt to discuss his interactions with renowned academics while an undergraduate, his criticisms of the modern higher education system, and more. In your youth, you had the opportunity to study under well known academics such as Allan Bloom and Donald Kagan. What are some of the most profound or significant things that … Continue reading An Open Forum with Dr. Rahe
How do you see music in conversation or in relationship with the liberal arts? Is music part of the liberal arts? I would say a very emphatic yes, because it’s one of the original seven. So if we’ve got the trivium and the quadrivium, the trivium are all of the arts of the word—grammar, logic and rhetoric—and they’re geared towards knowledge of the self, and … Continue reading An Interview with Dr. Daniel Kuehler
Dr. Charles N. Steele Eighty years ago this past August the Japanese Empire was finally defeated. It took over four and a half years of bloody fighting and the ferocious bombing of Japanese cities with incendiaries and atomic bombs to beat them into surrender. It is a great thing that the Japanese Empire was crushed. It was a remarkably brutal regime and it had the … Continue reading The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Dark, Terrible, Wonderful, Righteous Things
What are your thoughts on Jesus as a “Healer”? I guess it’s been on my mind, this facet of the Christian faith, this facet of a fundamental part of Jesus’s identity that the Gospels lay out. I’ve been trying to tell people about miracles more, and the truth is that I have a friend who was crippled, and I’ve seen her run. I saw before … Continue reading Jesus as Healer: An Interview with Dr. Kelly Franklin
By Dr. Charles N. Steele But before we start cheering, a few words on the topic. Modernity is a valuable philosophical framework—a mindset, if you like. It lies between the premodern and the postmodern. Yet what is modernity, exactly? It begins with epistemology. Modernity’s position on epistemology implies something for moral values and ultimately about metaphysics—the fundamental nature of the world. Modernity recognizes reason as … Continue reading Three Cheers for Modernity
by Dr. Eric Hutchinson Aeneas There once was a hero, Aeneas.Nearly everyone said he was pius.He left Dido aloneSo that he could found Rome:Fate’s decree; it was not spontaneous. Ulysses There once was a drifter, Ulysses.He thought the Phaeacians were sissies.They knew nothing of war;It was rather a bore.He would not stay to wed Nausikissies. Achilles You’ve heard of swift-footed Achilles?He gave all the Trojans … Continue reading An Epic Trio
by Dr. Eric Hutchinson Atreus There once was a man from Mycenae.His brother was such a big meanie.He fed him his kids,Put his life on the skids—Drama fit for a pulp magazine-y. Agamemnon There once was a king, Agamemnon.He knifed his own child; it was no fun.Sure, it altered the wind,But his wife thought he sinned,So she ruined his bath—“Welcome home, hon!” Orestes There once … Continue reading “House Pelopides”
by Dr. Charles Steele I’m an ultrarunner. “How do you run 50 miles? Why would you run 50 miles?” I will try to explain this, but you should understand at the outset that words really cannot explain. An ultramarathon, or ultra, is any footrace longer than the 26.2 mile marathon. My first ultra was Montana’s Le Grizz 50 mile Ultramarathon. It is aptly named. Its … Continue reading RFM!
A few days after I was asked to contribute an essay to the Forum, one of the editors asked if I could write about my experience of being back at Hillsdale as a professor. In trying to meet this request, it is tempting to title this piece “There and Back Again,” but I think the published title is more appropriate. Perhaps a good place to … Continue reading Doctor Tripepi in the Multiverse of Memory
I remember reading an essay by a fellow ex-seminarian critiquing our former institution and its late rector for alleged failures to provide adequate emotional support to young men, for its rigid notions of masculinity, and other such micro-aggression. Coming from a center-left place, his article only differed in details, but not in essence, from the right-wing critiques of seminaries as dens of sodomy yielding the … Continue reading Priesthood as Craft, Not Science
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