New Humanists

This is the lecture that sparked worldwide outcry - for all the wrong reasons. In reality, the Regensburg Address is a sparkling meditation on theology, philosophy, and education. Pope Benedict XVI is able to compress profound reflections on the Bible and Greek philosophy into what is a short and accessible lecture. After castigating the media for their bad reporting on the address, Jonathan and Ryan take it apart to reveal its bea...

At the end of his academic career at Oxford University, J.R.R. Tolkien gave his “Valedictory Address,” an analysis of the decline of humane letters, the specious distinction between “lang” and “lit” that has grown up in the academy, and a stirring expression of hope in the future of philological study even amidst unfavorable conditions. Colin Chan Redemer, a professor at Saint Mary’s College of California and Vice President of the ...

Shakespeare’s Roman trilogy reaches a climax in The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, a love- and wine-drenched account of Octavius Caesar’s defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and his consolidation of power over the nascent Roman Empire. The play is punctuated by bountiful allusions to Virgil's Aeneid. But besides the haunting downfall of the play’s title characters, in the background of the action arises the specter of a new ...

The hothouse of prewar Vienna played host to an unprecedented concentration of genius which eventually gave birth to modernism. Present on the scene was a young Eric Voegelin. Late in his career Voegelin wrote an essay “On Classical Studies,” in which he explained what the discipline of Classics is, the difference between classical and modern accounts of reality, and how to keep the flame of classical wisdom alive in the modern aca...

ALI Fellow Katherine Bradshaw returns to New Humanists, in installment number two of our discussion of Shakespeare's Roman plays. This week, we talk about The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. What happened to the nascent republic of Coriolanus? Why does a dictator now rule Rome? And how does his murder give birth to a new regime?

Jan Blits's edition of Julius Caesar: https://amzn.to/3lune16

Blits's monograph, Rome and the Spirit...

Did Shakespeare actually know anything about Ancient Rome? Or was he just writing Classical Fan-Fiction? ALI Greek & Latin Fellow Katherine Bradshaw, a scholar of both Shakespeare and the Classical world, joins Jonathan and Ryan for a discussion of The Tragedy of Coriolanus, one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote: an examination of the Roman Republic in its infancy, and what happens when Roman pietas goes horribly awry.

Jan Bli...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is an unlikely candidate for “humanist,” especially because of his denunciation of humanism in his infamous Harvard Address. Does the great Russian dissident have something to teach aspiring humanists? Jonathan and Ryan take a look at two famous exhortations from Solzhenitsyn, “Live Not By Lies,” an essay from 1974, and “A World Split Apart,” the commencement address he delivered at Harvard in 1978 - as well ...

What is humane education? Are there techniques you can use to get students to appreciate the great books? Jonathan and Ryan discuss Donald Phillip Verene’s The Art of Humane Education, a powerful series of short letters about teaching, eloquence, the western canon, science and technology. And memes - don’t forget about the memes.

Donald Phillip Verene’s The Art of Humane Education: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780801440397

Jonathan ...

Jonathan and Ryan continue their discussion of Alan Jacobs’s book The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis. This book stars C.S. Lewis, Simone Weil, W.H. Auden, Jacques Maritain, and T.S. Eliot, and on this episode of New Humanists, your hosts continue to tease out the implications for our current transhumanist moment, hitting on technology, education, the family, and power. This is the second part of a two...

Jonathan and Ryan dive into Alan Jacobs’s book The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis. This book stars C.S. Lewis, Simone Weil, W.H. Auden, Jacques Maritain, and T.S. Eliot, and on this episode of New Humanists, your hosts tease out the implications for our current transhumanist moment, hitting on technology, education, the family, and power. This is the first part of a two-part look into the Jacobs book.

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This is the inaugural episode of New Humanists, the podcast of the Ancient Language Institute, found at ancientlanguage.com. ALI founders Jonathan Roberts and Ryan Hammill dive into what ALI is all about, how and why to learn Latin, what’s wrong with classical education, and ask the question, “Who are the new humanists?”

Jonathan’s essay on classical education: https://ancientlanguage.com/classical-schools-not-classical/

Plato’s Symp...