In the first part, I talk about epic poetry and what in particular might make Moby-Dick an epic in a strict sense (for more on what an epic is, see this). In the second half, Ishmael’s “problem of the universe,” which I take to be the question of whether or not God exists.

As far as the reading group is concerned, we will start tomorrow. We’ll read one chapter every other day. So we’ll discuss the Etymology tomorrow, the Extracts on Tuesday, chapter one on Thursday, chapter two on Saturday, so on and so forth.

I’ll put up a page each week for you to post your observations. I won’t offer lectures on each chapter, but will point out a couple things and then reply to comments.

As Nathaniel Philbrick says in Why Read Moby-Dick?: “Most of all, however, I am interested in getting you—yes, you—to read, whether it be for the first time or the twelfth time, Moby-Dick.”

I’ll put up the page for the opening chapters later today.

And there are still a few spots left for our in person 3 day seminar on Moby-Dick in Pittsfield, MA (July 30th - August 1st)

Melville alludes in very direct ways to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in chapters 42 and 52 of Moby-Dick. In an effort to better understand Melville and to understand poetry more broadly, I asked Stephen Pimentel and Byronic Heroine if they would help me understand this mysterious, beautiful, and terrifying poem.

The outcome was pretty extraordinary, if I can say so without being too self-aggrandizing. I say this because I learned more from this conversation than just about any of the other ones that I have recorded. I went in with a poor grasp of the poem—despite a lot of effort to do otherwise—and came out having a much stronger sense of the stakes and different threads and questions that unite the poem.

Each of us offered 10 - 15 minute prepared presentations at the start. I offered something like the moral interpretation or what the soul of the listener in the frame is like, Byronic brought to light an extraordinary number of Homeric connections and the difference between the Homeric and Christian worlds, and Stephen offered a provocative interpretation showing how unsettling the poem is. After that, we followed up the questions raised by each interpretation to try to move closer to finding the real nerve of the argument of the poem.

Enjoy!

Other work on trying to understand Melville:

Why Scholars Should Never “Correct” Great Thinkers (this is one of my favorites)

Reading Fast and Reading Slow

The Virgin Visits

Why You Should Love Cetology

Moby-Dick: Tragedy, Philosophy, and Encyclopedism (with Byronic and Alejandro)

The first half of our conversation covered the problems in K-12 education today, focusing on the incentive structures for students, teachers, and administrators. The schools are not there to help your kids become educated and free; they are more like patronage jobs programs. In the second half of the conversation, we discuss classical education and homeschooling, and the challenges that these alternatives face.

Here are some of her essays that I got the most out of in preparing for the conversation:

Your Kids Aren’t Learning Anything. At All.

School Trains Your Kids to be Unsuccessful

The Branson

The Cell Shapes the Prisoner

Check out her latest essay, hot off the presses: A Library to Build Great Americans, Ages 3 - 99

As you peruse that list, you might consider listening to some of MCC’s lectures on some of those books in our Introduction to Literature course.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might enjoy:

* Our conversation with Brian Kemple on the problems of the university and alternative forms of higher education.

* MCC’s summative statement on our mission and vision

* Here you can find links to his scholarly monographs as well as—and I was surprised at how interested I am in this book—a book on grammar.

* Follow Brian on X and follow his institute there as well.

* See his academic journal Reality and a new issue should be coming out soon.

* Here is the Substack article of his that we briefly touched on.

In this lecture, I walk through Leo Strauss’s unpublished lecture on Plato’s Euthyphro, as a prelude to offering a careful, line-by-line interpretation of the dialogue which will soon follow.

One might object to paying such close attention to an unpublished writing, but Strauss considered including a refurbished version of the lecture, in a proposed, but then rescinded collection that would have been entitled Jerusalem and Athens; it would have included his famous essay by that title, then his essay on Genesis to make a case for the Biblical perspective and then the essay on the Euthyphro would have been meant to make the case for the philosophical perspective. In Strauss’s view, these are the only two sources from which a serious human being can take guidance, and these two sources admit of no synthesis.

Furthermore, a recent volume came that published Strauss’s 1948 notebook on Plato’s Euthyphro, which includes a Stephanus page by Stephanus page commentary on the dialogue. I note a few of the significant differences in interpretation between the two. I also profited from reading Wayne Ambler’s essay on Strauss, and from reading Svetozar Minkov’s and Hannes Kerber’s reflections included in the Strauss notebook volume.

Also, if you can’t get enough Strauss and Euthyphro content, a conference dedicated to the same matters I discussed above took place a couple of years ago.

Other MCC posts on Strauss:

Kojeve vs. Strauss on the Universal and Homogeneous State

Leo Strauss on Relativism (with Phocaean)

Mrs. MCC and I read and discussed the first half of Part Three, “What is Religious.” Mrs. MCC did a lot of digging into some of the peripheral figures that Nietzsche calls our attention to in this dense and difficult section as well as showing how this part of the book anticipates much of what is to come in the book.

Previous Discussions:

Aphorisms 1 - 9

Aphorisms 10 - 17

Aphorisms 18 - 23

Aphorisms 24 - 29

Aphorisms 30 -35

Aphorisms 36 - 44

I think this is the best conversation in the series so far, and a great jumping point if you haven’t listened to the previous sessions.

Previous Discussions:

Aphorisms 1 - 9

Aphorisms 10 - 17

Aphorisms 18 - 23

Aphorisms 24 - 29

Aphorisms 30 -35

Last time we heard Aeneas tell the tale of the destruction of Troy and the deaths of both Priam and Aeneas’ wife Creusa—events that Homer did not get to in the Iliad. Today we will read and discuss Aeneas’ “odyssey”.

* Thrace and Crete: The Two False Starts

To begin with, Aeneas does not know that he needs to be headed to Italy. Thus we get two false starts. In the first of these, the Trojans land in Thrace and Aeneas immediately turns to building walls. He does this later as well. He yearns for protection from the dangers of the world. Perhaps this is the one way in which Aeneas is not entirely trusting of a good outcome for his fate; that is to say, walls represent a reliance on one’s own arms so to speak. It is understandable that Aeneas wants to do this, but fate or the will of the gods means everything, and this is perhaps something that Aeneas does not entirely trust in even though he is exceedingly pious. The walls at Troy may very well have been strong enough to keep out the Greeks if neither side received divine support, but they ultimately weren’t enough to save the Trojans because of Zeus’ will or because of fate. So, again, it is very understandable that Aeneas wants walls first and before anything else, but perhaps this is representative of him having not thought things through all the way or wanting to take matters into his own hands since he has already seen Troy burn.

The Trojans leave Thrace because plants bleed the blood of a Trojan, Polydorus, who tells them to move on from this polluted place. One interesting thing to note, is that Aeneas relates the treachery of the Thracians in killing Polydorus and taking his gold once they sensed that the Greeks would win and he says that in doing so, they “broke all human laws” (in the Fagles rendering). It seems more like they broke one law, but Aeneas is a very moral man. Following the law is important to him, and it would appear that he wishes to live in a world where human law means something real, instead of something like naked or raw force or nature being that which is actually real, though it is often covered over by convention.

After consulting with the priestess at Delos, Aeneas consults with his captains, especially his father, Anchises, who thinks he knows the ancestral location that the priestess has in mind, and so they set out for Crete. It turns out that there are abandoned buildings in Crete, so it looks ready made for them to inhabit–like a divine gift. Again, Aeneas’ first task is to start building walls; many men get married; and then Aeneas turns to drafting laws. If all goes well, the walls will keep out the nasty people who break human laws and the Trojans will happily submit to the wise laws of their founder. However, this is not to be either as a plague strikes the Trojans. Fate acts quickly and forcefully. Why was this the best way to tell the Trojans to move on? Why not the gentler way of before? One of my unanswered questions from this section is: why don’t the gods make it clearer to Aeneas earlier, where he needed to go? Why permit the false starts? Is there something that they learn from these experiences? Are they supposed to learn that fate, while iron, is inscrutable without constantly checking with the gods?

However this may be, they are told by the household gods who were contacted by Apollo that they need to go to Italy. Interestingly, Anchises relates that he didn’t listen to Cassandra when she pointed this very thing out, but she wasn’t believed. Her prophecies were measured by the expectations of unassisted human reason, which found the prophecy to be unlikely. In terms of my question above, it seems important to pay attention to when Aeneas and the Trojans rely on reason and when they rely on revelation and why. This is an especially interesting question because Virgil outlined the injustice and cruelty of the gods in the opening lines.

* Strophades, Actian, and Buthrotum

Aeneas and his men see apparently unguarded cattle but then have to confront a fleet of Harpies. After some combat, the Harpy Celaeno speaks: “take what I say to heart and stamp it in your minds” and goes on to mention generally bad news: there will come a day they gnaw on platters. As an aside, I’m curious if there is anything significant in the word order, namely, are our hearts or our minds more determinative in how we come to a decision or hold onto a conviction? The harpy lists the heart first…

Actian features games and a trophy is mounted with the spoils of the first Greek that Aeneas killed in book 2 when he was disguised with Greek gear.In Buthrotum, we see Hector’s wife Andromache. Now to be clear, the reader experiences the compressed narration as a couple of days, but the ground we have covered so far must actually be years, for we learn that Andromache was forced to be the bride of Achilles’ aggressive son Pyrrhus; she has born him a son and been passed on to another man. Pyrrhus by the way, was killed at his father’s altar by Orestes, just as he killed Priam at an altar. Is this a way in which Virgil is suggesting that those who live a might makes right kind of life will indeed be dealt poetic justice in this life? Or, is this what Aeneas thinks?

However that might be, Buthrotum is a miniature Troy. Andromache spends her days longing for Hector. There is something kind of eerie or sad in seeing this city. It is like Disneyland but worse. It is a return to tradition, and an attempt to recreate the past, except that it can never house the things from the past that they really want: the people. We cannot return; the only way out is through.Helenus, the prophet king of this mini-Troy offers an extremely detailed account of what Aeneas will face and what he needs to do to be successful. Suffice it to say, the Trojans cannot take the quickest route if they want to be successful. I’m reminded of a line from Xenophon’s Memorabilia:

“Hesiod too says somewhere, ‘It is easy to choose badness even in abundance; the road is smooth, and it lies very near. But immortal gods have placed sweat before virtue. The to it is long and steep and rough at first. But if one ever arrives at the peak, then the going is easy, although it was hard’” (2.1).

The Trojans will have to sweat and suffer, but the founders of Rome will make it to the peak.

However this may be, Andromache gives gifts to Iulus / Ascanius and speaks directly to him as he reminds her of her dearly departed son Astyanax–reminding us in turn of Hector’s last conversation with Andromache in the Iliad where she implores him not to fight beyond the walls.

* The Sea Journey

Anchises is now increasingly calling the shots. Just as old impotent Priam ruled over the Trojans, now impotent Anchises is functionally in charge. Is it the case that especially pious societies are more vulnerable to being ruled by the old? That priestly power can be wielded by the infirm?

By taking the longer route, Aeneas is able to pass by Charybdis in such a way as to lose no men, outdoing Odysseus. So too do they avoid losing men to Polyphemus the Cyclops. Odysseus’ carelessness toward his men is further highlighted by his having left this man Achmaenides behind, who now begs for asylum aboard a Trojan vessel. The discussion with Achmaenides is a very curious episode that parallels the perfidious Sinon who helped make the plausible the fiction that the Trojan horse was a gift to Athena. In both cases, Sinon and Achmaenides claim to have been wronged by the Greeks. Strikingly, no suspicion is aroused in the Trojans! Now, it would appear that they were correct in taking him at his word, but prudence would seem to dictate the necessity of taking a little bit more caution when confronting Greeks. Perhaps Virgil means to point to the Trojan / Roman magnanimity. That even after being wronged in the maximum way possible way, they can still be gracious with the defeated or with the weak.Anchises passes away at the end of the book. This is a big blow to Aeneas, but one wonders if this in some sense a good thing. Troy went down under the command of Priam; the founder of a new people should be younger; he should have fire burning brightly in his soul that grows more powerful when faced by the winds of fortune; not a flickering light that could be blown out by a child.

1) Lines 1 – 305 To take the horse or not to take the horse? Sinon’s deception and the sea-serpents.

Aeneas tells the Carthaginians about Troy’s final hours. In his prefatory remarks, Aeneas speaks of it as a tragedy in which he plays a leading role; to play a role in a tragedy (a play) is to speak lines written by someone else, which is to say, the description emphasizes the fated character of Aeneas’ life. However this may be, Aeneas embarks on his story, and in this way, takes on the role of Virgil, just as Odysseus took on the role of Homer in books 9 – 12 of the Odyssey.

The Greeks have sailed away—though not too far away—and have left behind a massive wooden horse as a gift for Pallas Athena (not for the Trojans as is sometimes popularly assumed). The first Trojan to speak, Thymoetes, wants to take in the horse. The second, Capys, suspects a trap and even goes as far as to accurately describe precisely what the Greeks have in mind to do: hide men in the horse. He suggests that they destroy it. Laocoon, a priest of Neptune (mentioned in Book Three of the Iliad), lends his voice to those in opposition to taking the horse: “Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, especially bearing gifts.” He throws a spear into the horse and it makes “echoing groans” which must mean that it is hollow and thus may contain enemy combatants. (an interesting Virgilian omission from the Homeric account presented by Odysseus is Helen testing the resolve of the men inside by calling out to them as if their wives were calling)

Before further deliberation can take place, a young Greek named Sinon comes into view, ready with a treacherous story. Sinon establishes his trustworthiness as a speaker by emphasizing that the Greeks, and especially Ulysses, are his bitter enemy. His kinsman who opposed going to Troy was killed by Ulysses. Sinon wants revenge against the Greeks. Because of this, he says that if the Trojans were to kill him, they would be benefitting the Greeks, not themselves. Sinon further establishes his credibility by saying that Ulysses viciously tried to sacrifice him, to bring about a safe voyage home; however, he managed to get away at the last moment. This part of the speech also points to the Greeks being serious enough about leaving that they would sacrifice one of their own. Throughout his speech, he characterizes Ulysses as functionally in charge of the Greeks—not Agamemnon.

Priam frees Sinon who explains that the massive horse is to appease Pallas, who is angry at Ulysses for stealing her image out of a Trojan temple. Finally, Sinon relies on the pious character of the Trojans, telling them that the horse is sacred, and any violation of it would lead to disaster. And, this last statement is miraculously and spectacularly confirmed when serpents emerge and kill Laocoon and his children for Laocoon’s audacity to test the horse. Virgil seems to present Fate as heavy-handed or immediately effectual. There is no leaving it up to chance whether or not the Trojans would be convinced by Sinon’s words; there isn’t a subtle goddess taking away the wits of the Trojans, but an overwhelming apparently divine intervention which admits of no ambiguity. Usually omens admit of ambiguity…think of Penelope’s dream. It had a kind of clear-ish meaning where one could plausibly read it as Odysseus coming home to kill the suitors, but a closer look reveals that Penelope might at least have mixed feelings (she is sad to see geese killed in the dream, etc).Should the Trojans have admitted the horse? Even if they granted that the horse ought not to be disturbed in light of the serpents, wouldn’t prudence dictate that they send a vessel of some kind to investigate Tenedos? It would appear that their hopes for the cessation of the war and fear of the gods combined to blot out such prudential considerations from their minds.

2) Lines 305 – 727 The Greeks brutally destroy Troy, taking no prisoners.

It is incredible how effective Virgil’s presentation of the Greeks is at making me morally despise them. I was about to start this section with a sentence like, “That b*****d Sinon opens the womb of the horse…” We are meant to see the Greeks as vicious, rapacious, predatory, and willing to lie about the gravest matters. Virgil really pushes us to see things from the Trojan point of reference; I don’t think in my reading of Homer that I ever felt this same kind of morally charged affect.

An interesting line that is related to this comes at 487 when Aeneas kills a few Greeks and dons part of their gear in order to deceive the Greeks: “Call it cunning or courage: who would ask in war?” If one were to apply this dictum equally to the Greeks…well, then it doesn’t make as much sense to moralize about how they approach the war. After all, Troy is an imperial city! (in the Iliad, we learn that the Greeks overcame 23 of their cities, and many foreigners come to assist the Trojans.) Strikingly, Aeneas is punished for doing this, as some Trojans wind up throwing spears at him. It almost like Aeneas is in this strange world where he is punished for being slightly immoral, while the Greeks are able to light the Trojan altars on fire without consequence. At any rate, a war ravaged ghost of Hector appears to Aeneas in a dream and tells him to escape Troy. The battle cannot be won, but a new city can be founded. Hector is exceedingly clear; again, there is no room for misinterpretation. Nevertheless, Aeneas doesn’t act on Hector’s advice. Instead, he thinks to himself: “what a noble thing it is to die in arms.” His initial plan, then, is to kill as many Greeks as he can before he falls.As an aside, it is remarkable that Aeneas’ piety never falters. Even as he says, “The gods who shored our empire up have left us, all have deserted their altars and their shrines” (440 – 441) he is also dead set on making sure that the hearth gods are well attended to (892 – 893).

The most disturbing episode in this section is when Achilles’ son Pyrrhus / Neoptolemus kills Priam’s fleeing son, Polites, right in front of him. Priam says that Achilles was much more honorable than his son. Pyrrhus replies that Priam can have the pleasure himself of reporting that message to Achilles in the underworld. Before this, Hecuba had tried to get Priam to go to the altar—presumably with the hope that the Greeks would respect the altar and not wish to pollute it. That hope makes it all the more impious or outrageous when Pyrrhus “drags the old man straight to the altar” and buries his sword deep in his flank. Subsequently the head is severed from the body. And this, after Priam impotently threw a spear at him. So we see the strong do what he wills and the weak suffer what he must. We’ll have to bear these scenes in mind when we see how the Trojans deal with subsequent enemies.

3) Lines 728 – 998 Venus steers Aeneas toward his family; all but Creusa escape

I found Venus’ speech to Aeneas to be perhaps the most striking part of the reading. Aeneas briefly considers punishing Helen for her role in the destruction of Troy. Venus turns her son’s attention to his family, whom Venus claims she has protected. She also tells Aeneas where all of the blame lies:Think: it’s not that beauty, Helen, you should hate.

Not even Paris, the man that you should blame, no,

It’s the gods, the ruthless gods who are tearing down

The wealth of Troy, her toppling towers.This is a kind of inversion of what Zeus says in Book One of the Odyssey, where he says that mortals often blame their misery on the gods rather than on their own foolishness. Here it is the gods alone who bear the blame. I wonder if Aeneas does not fully accept this; otherwise, he wouldn’t include such morally charged descriptions of the Greeks throughout his tale to the Carthaginians; and chronologically, he tells this tale after Venus tells him this.

(For an example of someone who really sees the world as fated to the maximum extent, see Melville’s Ishmael. He announces in the first chapter that the Fates are the stage managers of the world. In the final chapter, when Ahab finally tries to accomplish his aim of killing of the White Whale, Ishmael is one of the rowers on Ahab’s small vessel. Ishmael does not talk about his fear of death, or his concern when Ahab dies, or even of his clothes getting wet or the way the sea feels as he falls into the ocean. He seems to think that: what will be, will be. He is there as an observer of the slice of the cosmos which was given to him to perceive.)

We get another call back to Homer when Venus removes the mist from Aeneas’ eyes so that he can see that it is the gods who are destroying Troy and literally uprooting it from the earth. Athena had removed the mist from Diomedes’ eyes in Books Five and Six of the Iliad so that he could perceive who the gods were on the battlefield. The general or fundamental situation of human beings as such is that we do not see the world as it is or that we have mist before our eyes. It is a question whether we need a divine miracle to remove the mist or whether we can do this on our own. Virgil and Homer at the very least make us aware of the mist. Finally, Venus tells Aeneas the same thing that Hector did: run! Aeneas does the first part of what Venus has in mind in going straight to Anchises. However, his father has no interest at all in leaving. He feels that, as an old man, he has already been a burden on the city for many years. He feels, not unreasonably, that this is the right time and way for him to die. Aeneas, for his part, holds it to be so shameful not to take his father with him that he returns to his original plan: dying with a sword in his hand. In this way, his father comes to light as more important to him than either Hector or Venus. Aeneas’ wife cries out in anguish and another omen emerges: flame that does not burn emerges round the crown of their son Iulus’ / Ascanius’ head. They try to put it out before realizing that it might be a positive pointer toward his future rule over a people. Anchises demands more divine proof and says to Jove, “if our devotion has earned it, grant us another omen. Father, seal this first clear sign” (859 – 861). Jove sends thunder and a shooting star. Now that Hector, Venus, the flames, and the thunderous star have all appeared, Aeneas finally accepts that his lot is not to die with a sword in his hand in Troy. He carries his father on his back while holding his son’s hand with Creusa right behind them…she doesn’t make it. After assuring that his father, son, and the household gods are safe, he runs back into the city in search of her, only to discover her ghost, who tells him of the good things he will accomplish. Aeneas tries to hug her just as Odysseus tried to hug his mother in the underworld. Manly tears gush down his cheeks.

Previous Discussions:

Aphorisms 1 - 9

Aphorisms 10 - 17

Aphorisms 18 - 23

Aphorisms 24 - 29

William will also be publishing the audio over on his substack which you should already have subscribed to. He will post his own separate essay, so make sure to check that out each week! I’ve already seen a draft of his first essay and it is outstanding.

Here is a written version of my interpretive remarks for those who prefer it over the audio:

1) Lines 1 – 41 Proem

The opening lines of an epic poem are important. The opening lines of the Iliad tell us that the poem is about the wrath of Achilles. The opening lines of the Odyssey tell us that the poem is about a man of many ways—Odysseus. The Aeneid is said to be about arms and a man—Aeneas. Could these opening words be a pointer back to Homer?—namely, the arms as Dryden has it, and wars as Fagles has it, point back to the Iliad and the man points back to Odysseus? In some sense, Aeneas goes on an odyssey, experiencing Scylla and Charybdis and the Cyclops, and he will fight in wars, thus matching the deeds of Odysseus and Achilles, but he will also go one step further: he will found, arguably, the greatest people ever to rule on the earth. Perhaps this is Virgil’s declaration that he intends to overcome the Homeric tradition?

Another way in which Virgil perhaps claims to be outdoing Homer is that he says that he is doing the singing. It is not until the 9th line that Virgil calls on the Muse; he asks her to give the causes of Juno’s anger. That she is angry is manifest; the cause of her anger is more difficult, in Virgil’s view, to uncover. Moreover, Virgil calls Juno “cruel” and we might wonder if this is a criticism of her insofar as Aeneas is described as a just and pious man. There is a lack of correspondence between the kind of treatment that Aeneas merits and the kind of treatment that he receives. Virgil seems puzzled as to how or why a divine being would be so angry. What has to be true of a god in order for it to be angry?

The angry Juno finds herself in an embarrassing situation, because she is a partial cause of her misery insofar as in the Iliad, Zeus described her as so hateful toward the Trojans that she would eat their flesh raw should the occasion present itself. Insofar as she played a role in destroying Troy, she sowed the seeds for the eventual destruction of Carthage.

In her book, Vergil’s Empire, Eve Adler argues that the core themes of the book are: Carthage, anger, and Rome. “The Aeneid proposes to present and decide the contesting claims of the two types of city to be the well-founded city—the city that has the key to rule of anger in the souls and city of men; the city therefore, that has the rightful claim to be king of the nations” (6). So we see Aeneas land at Carthage, be tempted to stay at Carthage, and go on to found Rome. We will have to see what kind of regime Carthage is, or the kind of temptation that it and Dido represent.

2) Lines 42 – 199 Juno uses the Aeolians to produce a storm; Aeneas and 7 ships get to shore; food is procured.

Juno asks the Aeolians (the friendly wind people from the Odyssey) to produce catastrophic weather conditions for Aeneas and his men. Aeneas’s reaction is interesting. He doesn’t beg for his mother, Venus, to come save him. He just laments that he would have preferred to die on the battlefield. There is something more humiliating about dying in this way for a man who is a true warrior (one could recall Achilles nearly drowning or Odysseus swimming at sea for days). Neptune brings this episode to an end and he brutally chastises the wind for meddling in his watery domain. In this way, Virgil highlights in a sense that it is difficult to fully separate the wind from the water. They cannot help but overlap, and so clashes between the divine authorities that oversee them cannot help but emerge.

Aeneas’s remaining men get to shore and Aeneas immediately scouts the terrain and secures meat for his men. One gets the sense that he cares far for his men than Odysseus did for his. I wonder if Odysseus principally sees Ithaca and his men as an occasion for his attempt to make sure that he wins undying fame.

Venus goes to Jove wondering if the destructive storm is a sign that he has changed his mind about the fate of Aeneas. Jove says that he resolve is firm and goes into detail about the future of the Romans and how Aeneas will found the city that ultimately, not only overcomes the Greeks, but in the end, brings about perpetual peace: “The terrible Gates of War with their welded iron bars will stand bolted shut…”. Eventually, according to Jove, the world will be in harmony because one people will rule over all nations. The polytheistic character of man will give itself over to one rule. Does that mean that gods will also be able to sort out their differences? Will they be able to merge their wills into a single will?

3) Lines 200 – 507 The Trojans try to figure out what to do next; Aeneas and Achates go into the forest and meet Venus in disguise and learn about Dido / Carthage.

Strikingly, Aeneas is able to see through Venus’s disguise in the forest. Venus is willing to alter her perfect appearance, but she is not willing to make herself uglier than a goddess or at least goddess adjacent human being. At any rate, Venus tells Aeneas that he should turn to Carthage for help. She also informs Aeneas that, miraculously, the ships destroyed by Juno’s Aeolian storm have all been restored. Rather than being deeply moved by this account, Aeneas is hurt that his mother does not stay longer or give him a hug: “Why can’t we clasp hands, embrace each other, exchange some words, speak out, and tell the truth?” Aeneas is emphatically not Odysseus. He is simple and decent; he is not polytropic.

4) Lines 508 – 908 Aeneas and Achates go to Carthage while in a cloud; they see scenes from the Trojan war; their comrades who they believed were lost in the storm arrive.

In Carthage, there is a giant temple devoted to Juno. There are large paintings, perhaps not unlike frescoes, on the exterior walls of the temple that depict the Trojan War.

These are the images:

- of Achilles being savage to both Agamemnon and Menelaus and Priam at the same time.

- Fighters circling Troy

- Greeks being routed by young Trojan men

- Trojans being routed by Achilles in his chariot

- The night raid from book 10 of the Iliad

- Troilus being killed by Achilles – this is especially interesting because this does not happen in Homer’ Iliad.

- Trojan women moving toward Athena’s temple (Athena

- Hector being chased three times around the walls of Troy and Achilles trying to sell Hector’s body for gold – this is interesting because I think it would be especially hard to depict running around the walls 3 times unless the painter relies on the viewer knowing the allusion; and furthermore, at least in the poems that have come down to us, Achilles certainly does not try to sell Hector’s corpse. He certainly tries to repeatedly humiliate the corpse by dragging it around with his chariot. But in Book Nine he turns down a shining ransom from Agamemnon, so it doesn’t seem like Homer depicts Achilles as greedy for gold. Virgil depicts Achilles as he worse than he is.

(I don’t know what kind of access Virgil had to Homer’s texts. If he has what we have, he could be pointing to the idea that there are always distortions when stories cross bodies of water, etc. Alternatively, if he has texts which are no longer extant, he might be pointing to them. He also might wish to make the Greeks appear worse than they were in order to enhance Rome’s glory)

- Finally, Aeneas sees himself in addition to Amazonian women

Eve Adler points out that when Aeneas first sees Carthage, he sees people picking building sites, drafting laws, electing judges, a senate, working on a harbor…but the temple or signs of concern for the gods seem utterly absent (lns 510 – 520). Later, when he sees the temple of Juno, the pictures do not contain the gods and though the temple is ostensibly for Juno, it would be hard to know this from the images.

Aeneas is covered by divine clouds in Carthage similar to that which concealed Odysseus while he visited the Phaeacians in the Odyssey. He witnesses his restored men come and appeal to Dido, the Carthaginian queen. He is able to hear their unvarnished opinion of him, since they believe that he very may well be dead, and that at the very least he isn’t present. “We once had a king, Aeneas…non more just, none more devoted to duty, none more brave in arms….if he is not laid low…[you] will not regret the first step you take to compete with him in kindness.” He gets to go to his own funeral!

Finally, Venus sends cupid to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas. She thinks that she needs to tip the scales in his favor because Carthage is a city that is devoted to worshipping Juno, the principle enemy of Aeneas.

After some introductory remarks, Alejandro presented on the encyclopedic character of the book, I presented on its philosophical character, and Byronic presented on its tragic character, though ultimately each of us touched on all three themes. After that, we continued the discussion and then opened it up to other speakers.

I am grateful to Alejandro and Byronic for their thoughtfulness and thorough preparation!

Mrs. MCC and I begin Part Two of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, “The Free Spirit”!

Previous Discussions:

Aphorisms 1 - 9

Aphorisms 10 - 17

Aphorisms 18 - 23

We discussed aphorisms 18 - 23, on psychology as the queen of the sciences!

X sadly nuked the conversation on the preface; trying to see if it is possible to recover.

Previous discussions:

Aphorisms 1 - 9

Aphorisms 10 - 17

Our previous conversation on aphorisms 1 - 9 is here:

Will Tanner runs the American Tribune stack which you should subscribe to. A couple of articles / conversations over there that are relevant for today’s discussion:

Big Tuna is launching a new podcast with guests discussing the Bible which you should check out:

Also, he has an excellent article on McKinley:

If you enjoyed this conversation than you might also enjoy these:

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College! Today, I am joined again by my friend BigTuna. Today, we are going to discuss C.S Lewis; his essay “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State”, and his books, The Abolition of Man and The Screwtape Letters.

* Tuna has big news! He is a launching a podcast, Cast Your Nets, where he will: “invite various guests from around the internet to come discuss one of my favorite subjects, which has been the beating heart of Western Life for nearly two millennia: the Holy Bible. My guests will help to choose a topic from the God’s Word as narrow as a single verse, or as broad as a whole book— sometimes, we’ll zoom in on a key theme or character. I and my guests will discuss our favorite ideas, toughest interpretations, and greatest lessons from the good book; and try to grasp what it might have to say about the cultural & personal circumstances of today’s day & age.” Check it out!

* Here is Tuna’s helpful essay on Lewis, “CS Lewis: Modern Prophet and Secret Dissident”

* Our previous conversation on McKinley / when US decline began and my conversation on his podcast on American literature and the American character.

* Links to the main works discussed:

* “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State”

* The Abolition of Man

* The Screwtape Letters

* Previous Classical Conversation most related to this one (besides the one Tuna was a part of) Kruptos

Mrs. MCC and I read out loud aphorisms 1 - 9 from Part One of Beyond Good and Evil, “On the Prejudices of the Philosophers” and comment on each. We hope that this will be an ongoing series.

We had a previous conversation about the preface to BGE here. We tried to carry over the most important insight from that discussion into to the one you have here.

Other MCC Nietzsche materials:

Approaching Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (essay)

Nietzsche on the Future of Europe (audio)

Philosophy’s Task (audio / essay)

Enlightenment in the Nietzschean Style (essay)

Nietzsche on Socrates (essay)

Nietzsche’s “Problem of Socrates” Explained (essay)

Nietzsche and Aristocratic Christianity (audio conversation)

Phocaean and I have also discussed Nietzsche and Aristocratic Christianity

Finally, here is a classic essay on The Revolutionary Right from his substack.

An outline of what we discussed:

1. Summary of the Plot

2. Hawthorne’s New Moral Interpretation / What Types of Humans are Promoted

3. Homeric Allusions

4. Custom / Nature / Wildness

5. Ignorance of the Narrator / Mystery and Non-Mystery of the Human Soul

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College. Today I am lucky to be joined by my friend Big Tuna. He has a substack called the Crux of the Matter, where you can find his podcasts / essays on politics, the human condition, and Christian ethics. I joined him for a discussion on the Christian Ghetto podcast with our friend Kruptos to talk about two of the most dynamic strains on the Right today, namely, Christian and Vitalist, and how they might fit together or not. Lately, Big Tuna has been writing insightful things about president McKinley, who by his account, is one of our best, and a man that contemporary leaders ought to look to for inspiration. The article that serves as the initial touchpoint for the conversation: America’s Forgotten Statesman.

We discuss the incredibly understudied 25th president of the United States, William McKinley, the question of when American decline started in earnest, the effect of technology and capitalism on American habits (in the 1870’s), and the soundness of William Graham Sumner’s critique of the Spanish-American War.

Big Tuna is really able to bring history to life and I learned a lot from his skillful narration.

The occasion was to discuss five essays by Angelo Codevilla that really lay out the American political landscape from 2010 to 2021. Codevilla is one of the most perceptive observers of American political life that I know of. Here are the essays that we discussed (plus one bonus essay that Matt brought up):

2010: “America’s Ruling Class”

2016: “After the Republic”

2017: “The Cold Civil War”

2018: “Our Revolution’s Logic”

2020: “Revolution 2020”

2021: “To Rescue a Nation”

The conversation was a blast!

I’m thinking it might be nice to have a discussion group or rolling set of recorded conversations with a friend or two on these and other works by Codevilla…

Previous Classical Conversations:

Ancient Gardener on the difference between classical education in the classical age and classical education in our time.

Arthur Powell on his poetry chapbook Skirmishes in the Atrium, the poet’s relationship to technology, and timeless / timely poetry.

Kruptos on building a parallel polity, the enframing of thinking by technology, and the loss of virtue.

Nobody on the core differences between ancient and modern poets, poetry vs. philosophy, and possibilities for the contemporary poet.

Lance Legion on contemporary military officer education, Romans vs. Greeks, Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, and the relation between Christianity / Vitalism.

Jeremy Carl on Hungary, right wing environmentalism, immigration, and Christian nationalism.

Space Age Maximalist on engineers as aristocrats of the future, technological optimism, and how to merge scientific and humanistic thinking.

William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.

Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)

David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College. Today I’ll be discussing Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This is part of our course, Shakespeare as Political Philosopher. Previously I covered Much Ado about Nothing with King Bolingbroke and then we did a 5 part series on King Lear. He won’t be with me this time, but I did listen to a helpful conversation that he recorded with Athenian Stranger that I will link to the page. I hope to have him back soon! Additionally I did a space on X with Rewire the West and Athenian Stranger which I also learned a great deal from.

I’ll start with a summary / overview of the play, then I’ll briefly bring to your attention an alternative reading of the play that is worthy of your attention but which I don’t subscribe to, and then I’ll offer a reading of the play that shows it be Shakespeare’s most Socratic play.

I.               Introduction

Summary of the Play:

The main character, Prospero, used to be the Duke of Milan. He prized studying the liberal arts over ruling so he allowed his brother, Antonio, to govern the affairs of Milan, though Prospero kept the title. Antonio turned to the King of Naples for help in overthrowing Prospero. Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, find themselves on a nearly uninhabited island. There is a monster, Caliban, and a spirit with great powers, Ariel, both of whom Prospero rules over. By chance, Antonio and Alonso are returning from a wedding in Tunis, and Prospero, with Ariel’s help, brings their ship to the island through a great tempest.

Three storylines emerge that eventually converge in the final scene.

1)    Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian, Gonzalo, and a couple of others are on one part of the island. At one point, all but Antonio and Sebastian fall asleep, and Antonio exhorts Sebastian to kill his brother Alonso and so become the king of Naples. This attempted coup falls short in light of Ariel’s intervention.

2)    Stephano and Trinculo encounter Caliban. Caliban treats Stephano like a god because of his liquor and gets them to agree to kill Prospero so that Stephano can take over as ruler.

3)    Ferdinand, the son of Alonso, is isolated from all the rest and immediately falls in love with Miranda. Prospero makes him work for her hand, lest “too light winning make the prize light.”

At the end of the play, Ferdinand is engaged to Miranda; Alonso feels repentance for his role in usurping Prospero; and Prospero makes it clear to Antonio and Sebastian—who don’t feel sorry at all—that he has dirt on them from their failed attempt to kill Alonso. The play closes with a soliloquy from Prospero that might represent something close to Shakespeare himself stepping onto the stage, in a play that is nearly the last one that he wrote.

Apparently, Europe has been in a fight against dogmatism that Nietzsche thinks will end poorly, namely, in the unbending of the bow. Nietzsche wants to avoid this fate, but not by turning back towards dogmatism. Like the Enlightenment thinkers, he too will attack dogmatism. He will attack the same dogmatism attacked by the Enlightenment but will be more thorough or attack it in a different, more profound, way. In this essay, I want to set down what his way is, how it is that Nietzsche reaps the benefits of dogmatism without being dogmatic.

What is dogmatism? We can approach this question by looking at dogmatism’s two greatest errors: “the invention of pure spirit and the good in itself.” I will focus on the latter error. The “good in itself” is an invention suggested by dialectic. Under the knife of dialectical inquiry, a man will have to admit some “good.” What that good is cannot be dialectically determined; it is a “given” discovered by the dialectician and then examined. All attempts to avoid this investigation are doomed to fail, unless of course the interlocutor refuses to debate. Anyone confident and generous enough to engage a Socrates can be compelled—however briefly—to cough up his notion of the “good.” Let me provide an example:

Example: You want to distinguish between what kinds of books should be canonical. Obviously, canonical books must be good books. Not only should they be good, they should be the best. So, you have to find a way of distinguishing between better and worse. You say, “canonical books should be those books which promote truth, goodness, and beauty.” The problem: why can’t anyone lay claim to these? What can you say to some idiot who claims that Martin Luther King Jr. is America’s greatest philosopher?

Not only will some people give such absurd content to “best,” but many will try to avoid admitting the distinction between better and worse—i.e., they will lay claim to a canon (or any preference) without admitting the grounds for their claim.

A canonical work must be one of the greatest works available. The dialectician, understanding this sort of compulsion, searches out what stands in the place of “true, good, and beautiful.” And, if a man tries to wriggle out of necessity, the dialectician pins him down to that. That is, the choice cannot be avoided by saying that it’s relative, or that the question is determined by some authority (“whatever society thinks”); the dialectician brings the interlocutor, the wriggler, back to the necessity of choosing.

So: we have people who import nasty content into the highest things; and then we have another group of people I am calling the wrigglers, who don’t have the audacity to say that garbage is beautiful, but at the same time don’t want to disparage the garbage.

A philosopher-dogmatist does two things: he pins the wriggler down and then safeguards the true, the good, and the beautiful (and God) by making these into “things in themselves” and providing content to those things that will keep people from saying stupid things like “MLK Jr. was a philosopher” or “there is no such thing as philosophy.” (And indeed, if those we call philosophers were no better than MLK Jr, there indeed would not be such a thing as philosophy. This is not a joke.)

Enlightenment thinkers rebelled against the artistry of such dogmatists, specifically, they didn’t like the Christian content in things like “the true, good, and beautiful” and “God.” Instead of fighting over this content, they sought to break the power of dialectic by making it as hard as possible for a dialectical thinker—be he a philosopher, theologian, philosopher-theologian, metaphysician, etc.—to make the necessity for choosing (and therefore for wisdom) evident. The Enlightenment thinker hides the necessity of wisdom, of knowledge. These thinkers came to the defense of the wriggler rather than debate the content of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Platonic Approach

I went some way to explaining the Platonic approach in the previous essay, but my way of explaining this phenomenon is untried. Going over the ground again is helpful.

I will talk specifically about the Throne and Altar regime in a later essay but want to use it as an example here, because it was this regime the Enlightenment attacked. Let’s compare the Enlightenment approach to the Platonic approach: each would attack the Throne and Altar regime differently.

Every regime must offer some way of distinguishing a murderer from a killer, i.e., unjust violence from lawful or legitimate violence. One approach adopted by the Throne and Altar regime was to say that no human being has a right to kill. Any man who kills another has transgressed; he has played God. – Obviously, this argument cannot be complete, because no good law or regime leaves the good guys so unarmed. The argument continues: Only God has the right to kill, but he gives this right to some men by anointing them, as King David was anointed. The anointed has the right to kill other men. Subjects deputized by the anointed also have this right.

I don’t say this was Throne-and-Altar’s only line of thinking on this matter. The notion of Divine Right lasted a long time and withstood many attacks. This way of distinguishing between killing and murder is an example of the kind of thinking that was popular during the time of Louis XIII and Louis XIV.

A Platonist would not have dismissed this argument either. There is a lot of truth to it; it could accomplish a public good; it secures right action to a sharp line of dialectical inquiry that ends, inevitably, in the existence and power of God and man’s duty to glorify him. However, if a Platonist wished to attack it, he could.

Let’s say that this line of argument was being employed by a nasty Communist, who might rephrase it as: no one has a right to kill; only the people have a right to kill; the people can designate authorities to execute this right as tools of the people.

The Platonist could attack it by asking if the People ever ask their instruments to kill unjustly? “No. The People always use their instruments rightly.” And what emerges is this interlocutor’s belief that there is a limiting power to the people, i.e., his own notion of justice.

But the dialectician forces the interlocutor down paths. Either the People always require justice or they don’t. If the People sometimes command unjust killings, then it is obvious men don’t have to obey the People in all cases. Which is to say, it becomes obvious very quickly that “justice” rules over the People and everyone else; and thus, those who see “justice,”—who know what it is—have more authority to act on its behalf than the People do.

But it might be asserted that the People always require justice—that every time the People has ever commanded a killing, they have been just in their command; if this difficulty arises, it becomes a question, like you find in the Euthyphro, of whether the People abides by justice or is the source of justice—i.e., the dialectician will force the conversation down another path. If the People abides by justice: then, once again, those who comprehend justice themselves stand as equals with the People in being able to act on its (justice’s) behalf. That is, you don’t need a dictate from the People to know what justice is if the people are abiders in justice rather than makers of justice.

So, finally, the dialectician might have to deal with someone who asserts that you must depend entirely on the People because the People are the makers of justice. – If a dialectician meets someone who is willing to go this far, the questioning becomes more difficult and varied. The gist is: how can the interlocutor, a subject of the People, know how to obey the People? Even if the People declare their will, are They required to not change their mind the next second? What if They consider disobedience just and good?—how would you know? Etc. The variations in argument are endless and yet bounded by these kinds of questions.

Enlightenment Attack

The enlightenment attack has a different character and is less compelling, i.e., is literally less coercive than the Platonist attack.

Here is an example of the Enlightenment’s attack on Throne and Altar’s distinction between murderer and killer:

“What a farce it is to say that this or that man has a right to kill because he is anointed by God. Anyone can say that. Every two-bit tyrant will make this claim to hide his misdeeds. You debase God making him responsible for these petty human concerns. Men with courage take responsibility for their own actions; they take the risk of error on their own heads, rather than passing it off on God.”

This kind of attack is not compelling. To use Straussian language, it does not penetrate the Fortress of Morality. An enlightenment thinker browbeats every which way, but cannot make an interlocutor blush.

The Enlightenment philosophers went after the famous “Summum Bonum” (Greatest Good, i.e., Salvation or Wisdom), that is, they attacked the idea that there is an authoritative human association with a specific end. These philosophers gave support to the type of man I called “the wriggler.” Enlightenment philosophy never sought any confrontation with the regime of Divine Right; or, they did but they went a long way to hide this. The goal was always to make such a confrontation appear nigh impossible, to bring the possibility of such a confrontation into serious doubt. “Every king claims to be wise, or divinely ordained… it's impossible to know who is such a thing, even if there is such a thing. It’s a useless claim. Let’s drop it. It’s ungentlemanly to assert a divine right or a right according to wisdom or excellence.”

Now we can compare the two approaches:

The dialectical inquiry presumed a greatest good, an ultimate ground for choosing between one and the other. A king could know justice and so be a wise king; and in any event, someone must know, or claim to know, what justice is for the conversation to take place at all. Either the interlocutor knows what justice is, or the king does.

The enlightenment inquiry loudly draws attention to the fact that everyone presumes to know the greatest good. Every king—and indeed, every man—thinks he knows what justice is and so the claim to know justice is essentially worthless. This goes for all ideals generally.

Nietzsche’s Method

Nietzsche adopts the Enlightenment approach, but tries to restore the same sort of striving and love of excellence associated with the ideals of Platonism, the ideals the Enlightenment approach denies. Why does he doe this?

The ideals safeguarded by dialectical analysis are important for being a good person and living a good life. If justice can be known and wisdom can be exercised, then those without this knowledge or power are unjust or slaves (or both). The existence of justice and wisdom, their reality and possibility, gives life “weight”; only once we admit that it’s possible to be a mutilated man living an aborted life can we begin to seek out the good life. If there is nothing seriously good about life, there is nothing seriously wrong with wasting your life. The Enlightenment denial of justice and wisdom endangers what makes life worth living.

The Enlightenment approach “de-centers” man. Yes, it is true, all kings might claim to be just and wise; they might even all claim to be chosen by God. Even if every man is “orthodox unto himself” (to use a Lockean phrase) and believes he has the truth, that does not mean the truth is not possible. – Once it becomes a maxim that no power can be attributed to what can be universally claimed, then men stop believing in their right to exercise power. Decadence overwhelms them and a younger, more confident people—a people that doesn’t mind if some other idiots claim to be wise and just, because it believes in its wisdom and justice—will come along to knock them off.

What Nietzsche does with this fact is accept the mode of Enlightenment definition, that any man can claim to be just and wise, but he revives a (non-dialectical) reason to believe in justice and wisdom: everyone believes in their personal ideal, he admits this, but he goes on to explain that every man’s personal ideal is a result of his quality; there are good men, and these have good ideals; there are bad men, and these have bad ideals. The Enlightenment taught that every man claiming to be “Wise and Just” was a reason to disregard such claims; Nietzsche suggests we take those claims seriously, when they come from good men. A conscience is only as good as its possessor.

Nietzsche cannot compel a bad man to admit to himself that he doesn’t even know what justice is; Nietzsche cannot make such a man blush before others. What Nietzsche can do is appeal to everyone: isn’t this man’s notion of his justice inseparable from what we all see, namely, his badness?

What is an Appeal? Example: Appeal in Hobbes’ Introduction

Hobbes opens his Leviathan making an appeal. (I am making the point that enlightenment philosophers make appeals, whereby the Platonic philosopher compels):

But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serves him only with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind; which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be onely to consider, if he also find not the same in himselfe. For this kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration.

Hobbes is going to explicitly deny the kind of dialectical demonstration he knows full well exists, and which he himself will use at times to bolster his enlightenment-rhetoric. Hobbes’ philosophy cannot compel anyone. It is very suggestive. Men read it and think to themselves, “I do lock my doors and distrust people.” But they can also say “I don’t lock my doors or distrust people and I don’t like his conclusions about the people who do!” Many academics today make their living pretending to refute Hobbes’ “non-demonstrable” arguments. And Nietzsche is the same as Hobbes on this point. He is not speaking demonstrably. He is avoiding demonstrable talk, because he is avoiding dialectical analysis. He is avoiding dialectics because of the weakness of dialectics vis-à-vis mad men who would claim things like “MLK Jr. is a philosopher.” Nietzsche does not appeal to things like “the desire for self-preservation”, which seem so very evident and therefore so very powerful. Instead, he appeals to our sense that some men are better than other men, an appeal that would not be very interesting in earlier, illiberal, ages. He appeals to our suspicions that men tend to hide from themselves their own weaknesses.

To bring things back to the initial point: Nietzsche will not rely on dogmatism (the belief in a transcendental set of “things in themselves” that would anchor things like wisdom and justice). Nor will he permit the bow to be unbent (by denying the compulsive power of ideals). He will bring about the proper tension by non-dogmatically establishing the importance of ideals.

The Nietzschean Plane

This project goes from moral concerns down to more strictly “natural scientific” concerns. And here I’m pretty directly riffing on Strauss.

The Platonists and enlightenment thinkers like Epicurus used to do battle, and their battle was fought on a specific plane, with specific opposing camps. In the Platonic camp, man’s ideals were held up and defended. It was denied that man, and life generally, could be explained materialistically. On the other hand, in the Epicurean camp, the opposite view was held. It was said that all of man’s ideals were masks and different names for his one true aim: pleasure. The Epicureans held that man, and indeed everything, can be explained materialistically. Life was to be understood in terms on non-life; the animate is just a more intricate machine than the inanimate.

Nietzsche claims to have transcended this debate altogether. He can revitalize philosophy because he isn’t bound dogmatically and doesn’t make the mistake of viewing life mechanistically. Contrary to both Platonists and Epicureans, Nietzsche replaced “pleasure” with “will to power”; and thereby explained that all life, and indeed everything in the world, including the inanimate things, was driven by will to power. He refused to let men explain man and the higher forms of life in mechanistic terms. It’s the other way around: even the stupid stone is to be understood in terms of will. The lower is always understood in light of the higher.

Problems:

It’s possible I don’t fully understand the Nietzschean plane, in which case, it is possible that once I and others do, we can embrace it and use it. Either I don’t understand it, or it has weaknesses. I will list what I think its weaknesses are.

First, replacing “pleasure” with “will to power” does not really save ideals. It just makes their defense seem a little more sensible. I am open to Meier’s recent suggestion that the Will to Power doctrine was not only not sincerely held by Nietzsche, but that it was going to be superseded in his later works. If we think back to the argument above: if everyone can claim to be just, and everyone thinks he is wise and good, then these claims are called worthless by the enlightenment. Nietzsche provides a way of distinguishing between better and worse claims, even though he admits everyone makes these claims. But his way is just to say some men are good and others are not good; some are masters and healthy and others are slaves and unhealthy. Is there a reason given why we should wish to be one or the other? If the slaves are in power and slaying (literally and figuratively) the master-men, what could be wrong with being a slave? To put it very straightforwardly: why would someone prefer to be Nietzsche over Yuval Noah Harari or Karl Popper? Nietzsche was a failure in his lifetime, whereas these garbage intellectuals enjoyed immense success during their lives. But who cares about the truth, or, why should we care? Nietzsche clearly does care. I think he had something more than the Will to Power doctrine to explain why he cares but the Will to Power doctrine evidently does not explain this. Or maybe you can educate me.

Second issue: In order to see all things in light of the higher, to see the stone in terms of Will to Power, Nietzsche has to deny the distinction between the real and apparent world. “We only have access to the apparent world, and our access involves Will to Power, which in turn means we have no choice but to understand the stone in terms of Will to Power.” Well okay, but once we even admit this to ourselves… haven’t we thereby recognized the distinction between “real” and “apparent” and gained access to the real over the apparent world? Why would we try to understand “the world seen from the inside” when we, by realizing we are inside, gained access intellectually to the “outside”? Why not try to understand the stone in other terms besides the will to power; why not try to free ourselves from the apparent world? “We can’t…” But by having this discussion we already have. And let’s be honest: dialectics is “the world from the inside” and enlightenment rhetoric is the world from without.

Third issue: I dislike Nietzsche’s devaluation of Platonic dialectic. This is a matter of personal taste. A full explanation of my dislike would involve an examination of Nietzsche’s “the problem of Socrates.” I have written on this question, in part, namely, how he mis-represents Socrates’ last words. I may take up the whole section from Twilight of The Idols in a future essay. I think Platonic dialectic is absolutely necessary for our time, both for the Pagan-right and Christian right. Zarathustra went to the mountain, but what did he teach in the mountain? The multitudes must sense the greater power of philosophy. A young man can enjoy the zingers of a Hobbes or Nietzsche, but he also wants the satisfaction of dialectical compulsion. Every serious young man wants this.

Essentially, there is no theology without dialectics, and I like theology. Where there is no respect for theology or its origination in Platonic political philosophy, everything becomes dull incredibly quickly. Even in the Nietzschean world: everything degenerates quickly into a third-rate search for reasons someone is coping. There are no interesting debates and few people are interested in debates as a result. The great chain of being—between those who can discipline, who can bring a compelling power, and those who need such compulsion—is severed by all enlightenment style philosophizing, no matter what the plane. And while Nietzsche and others of course can compel dialectically, and do compel dialectically, they really hid this power of theirs much deeper than Plato did. I want to make this power of philosophy manifest.

Every philosopher produces a division between good and bad. This is what (I think) is meant in Plato’s Republic when Socrates says the Philosopher is compelled to return from the Realm of The Sun to the world of shadows: it’s impossible to speak about what has been made visible by the sun without at the same time designating some type of man as an ideal type. This artifice is a requirement of language that compels everyone. Even a radical egalitarian-cultural-racial-Marxist produces, promotes, and defends an ideal type. Even Tolstoy was bound by this necessity. The philosopher is a type of man who understands this compulsion. 

·       In Plato, “the Philosopher.”

·       In Aristotle, “the landed Aristocrat.”

·       In Cicero, “The Citizen. The Stoic when no citizenship is possible.”

·       In Machiavelli, “The Prince who makes a republic.”

·       In Hobbes, “the Author of Monarchy. Namely, Hobbes himself.”

·       In Locke, “The Rational and Industrious man.”

·       In Rousseau, “The Citizen. The sentimental fruit when no citizenship is possible.”

·       In Nietzsche, “The Overman and his Free Spirits.”

·       In Strauss, “The Philosopher in the Scholar’s robe.”

Without entering into Socrates’ argument, we can see the necessity of ideals by looking at bare necessity. A division between good and bad men is justified even if we only consider the bare-minimum standard, self-preservation. No division would be necessary if all men were equally good and nature limitlessly bountiful. Since men are often lazy and vicious, and nature is not limitlessly plentiful, division is justified. Locke has not been refuted: man’s right to preserve his life gives him the right to join with others over and against that original “society of mankind.” – This fundamental division is not enough though, because even after the separation has been made from mankind, there must be a separation within the society itself between good and bad, or better and worse. A society needs a law. A society will allow some deviation from its ideal, from the ideal which made the original separation possible, but it must needs draw a line. Of this ideal there will be exemplars, failures (mediocrities to criminals), and everything in-between.

Our Bad Time

Good men have the right of separation and of rule. In good times, men distinguish between law abiding and criminal, not to mention the extra-legal distinctions of breeding, family, wealth, natural gifts, and so on. But our times are bad times—our times are so bad that not only is it often illegal to make those extra-legal distinctions, our own government is actively seeking to define away criminality.

According to our nation’s “most advanced” thinkers and public servants, everyone who is poor or lower class (or promoting revolution in the name of the lower classes) is exempt from legal censure. A poor man is not genuinely responsible for his actions; they cannot genuinely break any laws. If it ever appears to be the case that the poor and desperate are breaking laws, we are told that the law is criminal, i.e., unconstitutional. The circumstances that put the poor and desperate man at odds with the law are unjust circumstances. The poor and desperate man is an oppressed man or, if not oppressed, then pitiable.

Only “the privileged” can be, properly, criminal. The very people on whom the civilized life rests are the people this ideology says are the bad people.

Privilege, fundamentally, is power. All inequalities are conventional; all inequalities in one’s favor are “privileges,” in other words, all inequalities in one’s favor produce a debt; privilege must be paid for. Power can only be legitimately exercised if it is exercised for others. Power used for the possessor of power is illegitimate. In other words, only hypocrites can legitimately wield power. Only men who are deceivers and self-deceivers can wield power legitimately.

(Consider also: since all those who have power, who enjoy inequality to their benefit, are essentially indebted to those who are not their equals, who are poorer and everything else, those that they help owe them now gratitude. The privileged owe the underprivileged. History’s unfortunate peoples are thereby encouraged to cast off God, to separate themselves from the divine. They are encouraged to view existence as essentially unjust and any improvement in their existence is, essentially, late.

A wealthy nation raises a class of former underlings—and then owes them for the time before it could raise them, the time when they were creating the privilege. How could that people be thankful? I mean the former-underlings, but also the self-immolating “privileged” men? Under this dispensation, no one—powerful and dispossessed alike—has any room for the feeling or exercise of gratitude. The privileged must feel guilty for being so late in forfeiting their privilege, which is indeed a painful thing. And if a privileged man forfeits his privilege out of gratitude to the underprivileged he paradoxically gains freedom from the underprivileged. He has paid them. They have to stop demanding he pay them more. But this is impossible so it turns out the privileged can never adequately pay the underprivileged. How can a white man get out from underneath hundreds of years of mastery?

History’s unfortunate people must feel frustrated at getting the good things so late; how much better they would feel and be if only they had the centuries or even decades of privilege unjustly taken from them! What could these people have to do with Nature or Nature’s God? Their whole lives are spent in correcting His improvidence or essential injustice. Where there is no gratitude, there is no god. Where there is no god, there is no law. And here is a secret: not only is there no law for godless people, but they cannot even be married. It’s impossible for ungrateful people to put up with each other.

This is of course unbearable. Against this philosophy raises up a standard by which men can be distinguished, by which the better men can justify their quest for perfection, i.e., their power, right of exclusion and much else that is hard for modern sensibilities. Philosophy establishes (in thought) the grounds for man’s gratefulness. By showing men the strength and necessity of nature, and therefore of their part within the whole, philosophy makes it possible for men to establish law and the rank ordering based on law.

Nietzsche and Leo Strauss were the last two chances the West had of re-establishing law and of extricating itself from this ideological death-labyrinth. However: not only did each uphold different types of men, but they took different approaches (I don’t say entirely) to establishing their respective types. Nietzsche sought to establish a new radical enlightenment, so it is only fitting that he took the style of philosophy created by the earlier enlightenment thinkers and tweaked it. Strauss accuses Nietzsche and the enlightenment generally of being insufficiently philosophic. He teaches that our present malaise is due to philosophy’s insufficient response to communism, i.e., that enlightenment philosophy mocked egalitarianism but did not refute it. Plato, he contends, refuted it and it is to Plato and the ancients we must look for a way out of our present predicament.

Enlightenment Thought

Why did Nietzsche seek to radicalize the Enlightenment?

Consider the earlier Enlightenment’s war on theology and miracles. How did Enlightenment philosophers attack miracles? They did not disprove miracles. Rather, Enlightenment philosophy made it almost impossible for an honest man to admit any miraculous claims. An honest man will never let his desire for miracles lead him to a belief in them; nor would he be very willing to admit the claims of others when those claims could be traced to such desires. In order for any religious claims to be plausible, they would need to be stripped of interest; religious claims—indeed all claims about metaphysics and nature—need to prove themselves as disinterested claims, otherwise they would be suspicious. An honest man does not let himself be deluded by his own desires, but what is a religion that is not desired?

From this developed the famous “relativism” and “utilitarianism,” both of which would get exploded by Nietzsche to make way for the reintroduction of nobility.

It is easy to see how utilitarianism would develop from a demand for honesty. At first, no claims but disinterested claims could be believed. If a man wanted to experience miracles, that was a good reason to doubt him when he eagerly announced he had witnessed a miracle.

Now apply this to morals: if people wanted others to sacrifice themselves for the common good, that was a good reason to doubt that one was required to do so, i.e., their demands for noble self-sacrifice are undercut by their evident gain from such sacrifice. Or again, in the realm of moral commands such as chastity: cui bono?

While these kinds of thoughts are demoralizing in a strong sense of that word, there were still many moralized men who were not interested in giving up morality. There were men who were persuaded that all moral and metaphysical claims are only trustworthy when we are being honest with ourselves. “We must be honest with ourselves. We must also have morality.” These two dictums inspired the utilitarian to say, “Well then, we will be honest with ourselves and admit that all morality is a matter of self-interest. The truly moral man is the prudently self-interested man. Once we establish just what exactly is in man’s interest, we can figure out what morality really is. Now, man’s first interest is self-preservation…” And so, the utilitarians sought to prove that there was a natural morality based on self-interest by starting with the “hard facts” one finds in books like Machiavelli’s Prince.

Then there is the more complicated thing of relativism, whereby no moral claims can be genuinely demonstrated: The utilitarian hope was a naïve one, because different people at different times and places, etc., will have different advantages. Different types of men would have different advantages. The truth is that there is no real “truth.” It seems so obvious that all morality is determined by the interests of society or individuals in different times and places.

This occasioned a genuine crisis. Oliver Wendell Holmes admirably summed up the rotten position when he reduced truth to be “whatever is widely accepted”:

“When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” (Abrams 1919)

Enlightenment thought began as an attack on miracles that ended in the rankest superstition imaginable. Or it would have ended there had it not been for Nietzsche.

Nietzschean Enlightenment.

Nietzsche accepted the premise of relativism, but located within it a delusional moral kernel. Relativism is right about morality: a man’s morality is fitted to him. His interests dictate his morality. Further, there is no saying which morality will win out. There is no “true” morality; there is no impartial judge watching things unfold who would prefer one morality to another. There is the morality of this type of man, that type of man, and all types of men… and there is no way of preferring any given type of morality outside of being one of the types of men. Thus far relativism is true. But there was still a moral strain within Enlightenment thought whereby a command was laid on Western man that, since no morality could claim to be the favorite of an impartial judge, that an intelligent or good man must therefore respect all moralities. A relativist man will respect all the other types of men because he is no better than they; everyone has their own type and their own morality and so everyone is equal, no on being no better than anyone else. The exception of course being the men who refuse to admit the truth of this fundamental equality.

Nietzsche explodes this democratic hypocrisy by demonstrating that there is in fact an impartial way of judging even if there is no impartial judge; indeed, every “type of man” and every “type of morality” has such a way of judging inherent in it which is inescapably a part of it. The democratic-relativist is just another one of these types and his impartial way of judging is his claim that all moralities and types of men are equal, such that anyone who admits this equality is superior to whomever does not. In other words, the relativist is right that each type of man has his corresponding morality, but democratic-relativism is wrong to claim that this means they are all equal.

The evidence for the democratic-relativist view is that all moralities and possessors of these moralities appear to be equally innocent of evil or wickedness. Relativism was a weapon fashioned for attacking Christianity. The relativist won victories over Christianity by persuading people that every type necessarily has a morality, that these moralities are as chosen as our biological lineage. Nietzsche points out that being equally innocent, i.e., being unable to help your morality, is not an argument in favor of any given morality. The “slave morality” is adopted by the slavish people; slavish people require slave morality; slavish people require hypocrisy; slavish people cannot help being hypocritical. But so what? What if you are not a slave? What if you are a slave but are one of those in-between types that can escape his gutter existence and enjoy the life a free man? There are men born to honesty who are unable to flatter themselves with lies, for whom the assertion that “everyone is equally good” or “that everyone deserves respect” is laughable when it isn’t grotesque. That slavish men can’t help being hypocrites doesn’t mean non-slavish men must respect hypocrisy or hypocrites.

It’s on behalf of the honest men that Nietzsche teaches. Nietzsche teaches that all morality is a result of the type of man, but that there are better and worse types of men based on this very insight. Nietzsche is an honest relativist. He is not satisfied with attacking miracles—which can never be objects of demonstration anyway. He wants to attack the egalitarian morality as such; he is not interested with attacking mere metaphysical claims because he sees all these as stemming from moral commitments anyway. Some men believe in miracles for one reason, others for another… blowing up miracles doesn’t get to the root of the matter. Better to leave that kind of thing alone entirely and open up a direct attack on the hypocrisy and dishonesty of egalitarianism.[1]

This is the first part of a series of essays that you will get, in monthly installments. I have to limit the amount of time I spend on each, and a 15-minute reading worked well for my last essay.

What will follow:

·       A commentary on Nietzsche’s “Preface” to Beyond Good and Evil. The “Preface” is helpful for understanding Nietzsche’s style of writing. Nietzsche adopted the Enlightenment’s way of arguing because, like the Enlightenment philosophers, he attacked the dogmatism of the Platonic tradition. Leo Strauss turned back to the Platonic tradition and blamed Nietzsche for being insufficiently radical in his attack on hypocritical and dishonest egalitarianism.

·       An explanation of Strauss’ resuscitation of Platonic political philosophy. I will praise Strauss’ willingness to draw modern political questioning into a dialectical analysis, i.e., I will praise his willingness to view an argument from the inside rather than judge it from the outside in the style of the Enlightenment thinkers (including Nietzsche). I will then blame Strauss for his moderation. Based on this I will myself openly attack three regimes in the name of Platonic political philosophy. That is, I think it’s time we combine the compulsive power of Socratic dialectic with the daring of Nietzsche.

·       I will begin with our present regime, which I call the Abolitionist Regime because the “democratic enlightenment” is essentially premised on a desire to abolish nature. The democratic enlightenment believes the abolition of nature is the essential prerequisite for justice.

·       Next, I will examine Liberalism, specifically the Lockean form of it that came to fruition in America during our republican period.

·       Finally, I will show how the Enlightenment could have attacked the regime of Throne and Altar and explain why they preferred not to do this, i.e., what conditions led them to abandon the strictness and power of Platonic political philosophy.

You will notice that for all my ambition, all I claim to be able to do at this point is destroy old things. We will see if that changes.

[1] As an aside: It’s my experience that Straussians genuinely believe miracles can be refuted. They are completely mistaken on this point. Even on an “esoteric” level… let them say how someone could go about doing such a thing and they will tell you, “by proving that nature exists, that we are bound, and all things are bound by the necessity of nature.” But every person who believes in miracles believes that what is nature is what is necessary, but that miracles are an otherwise impossible occurrence that crosses that necessity. The only thing any Platonic philosopher ever thought he could question is what kinds of commands men derived from their claims regarding these miracles.

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College! Today I will be talking to Ancient Gardener. He is an X poster and I heard him on Lance Legion’s podcast when I was preparing for what was fun discussion with him, where Lance made the strongest case possible for why Agamemnon has a case to make for why he should be considered the best of the Achaeans. But I remember you saying some striking things about Neo-Platonists, Nietzsche, and Christianity and vitalism, so I thought that you were somebody that I could learn from and who would be able to assist MCC listeners in their own education. We had talked about doing an X space on the classical school and homeschool movements in the United States, but I started to think that this was a topic and Ancient Gardener’s thoughts on it were more well suited to the leisure of a recorded podcast.

Outline of the core questions:

1.     For starters, could you please tell us a little bit yourself. Why is your name Ancient Gardener? Who are some of your favorite thinkers and why? And what some of your favorite problems or questions to think about?

2.      One thing that got us talking was an essay my friend Phocaean wrote called “Right-Wing Thought and the Reemergence of Philosophy.” I’ll offer a short summary of the essay and then you can bring to light the points that you found most crucial or salient.

Men have rediscovered that philosophy is dangerous. The radical questioning of Socrates in our own mouths today re-opens access to uncomfortable truths that the dogmatists of today would like to muzzle. Phocaean turns our attention to Aristotle’s claim that equipment is necessary for virtue. We could that some version of this argument is in Cephalus’ mouth in book one of Plato’s Republic when he says that the greatest goods that come from his wealth are that he doesn’t have to cheat or lie and so by being just, he stands a better chance of doing well in the afterlife. Phocaean says that youthful rightwingers are wondering if the elder conservative guard is ultimately not virtuous because they have surrendered the equipment of our nations most prized institutions to the Left. Without the equipment or property or owned space of the university, of NGO’s, of newspapers, of Hollywood, etc, what can we say that the American Right has, to think of Cephalus again, allowed us and younger men than I, to inherit?

It offends egalitarian sensibilities to say that not everyone can be virtuous because they lack equipment, because they are spending their time acquiring it, while not educating themselves liberally in the meantime. Think of the harried college student who is working so much that they cannot attend class very often.

Equipment could mean being a landed aristocrat, having a good disposition or nature, acquiring a good education which might presuppose good teachers, etc, and it might be required to do virtuous things. There are things outside of our control that prevent us from being virtuous. Most humans don’t like this and there are few who can accept it gracefully. Men fail to realize that one’s own happiness is the limit of other men’s happiness.

The reason we hate to hear that not everything is possible, is because it implies that we are ourselves might be bad. We want to believe in Malcolm Gladwell’s arguments about training for 10,000 hours or whatever. Ancient, what does this summary strike you as right and what else did you take away from it?

3.     The promise / peril of classical education today.

Some people say that the classical education movement can save the republic; is this true? We know what the result of education is not supposed to be—hating America while not knowing anything about it. What should education look like today?

4. An attempt at a whitepill? What is possible and good and on what scale can it be done?

Previous Classical Conversations:

Arthur Powell on his poetry chapbook Skirmishes in the Atrium, the poet’s relationship to technology, and timeless / timely poetry.

Kruptos on building a parallel polity, the enframing of thinking by technology, and the loss of virtue.

Nobody on the core differences between ancient and modern poets, poetry vs. philosophy, and possibilities for the contemporary poet.

Lance Legion on contemporary military officer education, Romans vs. Greeks, Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, and the relation between Christianity / Vitalism.

Jeremy Carl on Hungary, right wing environmentalism, immigration, and Christian nationalism.

Space Age Maximalist on engineers as aristocrats of the future, technological optimism, and how to merge scientific and humanistic thinking.

William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.

Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)

David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.

The re-emergence of genuine rightwing thought has coincided with the reemergence of philosophy.

In the Modern West, i.e., in the Liberal West, politicians and men of action have treated philosophy as outdated; perhaps philosophy was historically necessary for the advent of modern natural science. Since most men of action are satisfied that science has brushed aside religious cosmology; that, indeed, all life is something of a “struggle for survival,” and that all claims to justice and morality are merely weapons in this struggle, philosophy has been viewed as something less impressive and not so needful. An interest in ancient Greek philosophy has been considered strictly an antiquarian affair.

Not so any longer. A series of philosophers and thinkers have broken through, and we understand once again the problem of Socrates. The inner meaning of dialectics has been re-proven, re-experienced, and re-established. Many men in the West now understand that dialectical analysis produces spiritual mastery and hence resentment and hatred in the uninitiated. It was thought that, in the Liberal West, Socrates would have been treated with condescending respect. We know again that society as society and hence liberal society cannot bear to look at or hear about the person of Socrates, at least not an unvarnished Socrates.

One error has resulted from this—well, many errors are resulting from it but there is one in particular I want to address, namely, the belief that this antagonism between Socrates and society exists because Socrates genuinely corrupts, that dialectics destroys or makes men worse than they were before philosophy. Western men have rediscovered the dangerousness of philosophy but that rediscovery has included—understandably—doubts about its goodness.

I will address a single question in this essay, namely, the Aristotelian question of “equipment,” known in our times as “property” and “owned space.” The right-wing has rediscovered the need and importance of equipment for virtue. There are professors and thinkers, both conservative and liberal, who are trying to paint this concern for equipment as emotional insecurity, “unsafe,” and “radical.” The conservative professors are offended that their students demand that equipment and virtue be closely tied; they’ve spent decades forfeiting their universities and don’t like the youthful complaint that they failed. They see this youthful disgust with their institutions as zealousness. The leftists on the other hand just cannot bear to hear it said that people need things—equipment, property, a good education, a good disposition, etc.—to be virtuous.

While I am only going to discuss equipment in this essay, this introduction here will serve as a general background for a series of essays and talks on philosophy as a right-wing phenomenon.

2.      Equipment

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics offends egalitarian sensibilities. Leaving aside Aristotle’s promotion of natural mastery, he teaches that virtue requires equipment, meaning that not anyone can choose to be virtuous; many or most men do not get the chance to be virtuous because they either do not have equipment, or have to spend their time getting the equipment (instead of liberally educating themselves).

It is true, a thinker can stretch “equipment” to mean something less than being a landed aristocrat by pointing out various provisions men might take to secure their personal independence. Consider Jünger’s “Anarch” in Eumesville. The protagonist of the novel is not a landed aristocrat but, considering his circumstances, he retains his independence; he can think for himself and act for himself. It is true, when he acts on his own behalf, he won’t be acting in a grand or magnanimous manner. Not everything is possible.

Even in a situation like the Anarch, where men without any real power are shown a way they too might be free, there are limits that people often find unsavory. For example, the family man: a powerless family man seems cut off from living as the Anarch lives—unless he be willing to abandon wife and child to take to the woods. Even then, he needs a wood. There might be a path for the powerless family man, but the point is that there also might not; not everything is possible.

That not everything is possible might be easily admitted, but easy admission would mean the point is missed. I can hear someone saying, “yes, not all things are possible, therefore we should learn to humbly accept the limitations we have. A truly good man will no want more than his portion.” Okay sure, yes, it might be good to humbly accept the limitations we have—but even this might be beyond the ability of most men.

The reason that people are offended at hearing that not everything is possible is because it contains the possibility that they are bad, petty, resentful, etc., through no fault of their own. Let the word “equipment” mean what it truly means: ability. Education makes men able. An education is a type of equipment and is a type that perhaps is almost always necessary and that, when men don’t have it, they turn out bad. And then we learn that, not education, but a good education is what is needed and that many men who go in for education are made worse in their attempts, their sincere or genuine attempts, at becoming good. That men need equipment to be good fundamentally means that men who are bad are so through no fault of their own, that they didn’t have the chance to be good. And then all sorts of offensive things result from this.

A man who doesn’t have a chance to be virtuous would not, according to Aristotle, have the chance to have a genuine friend. He might betray his friends; he might betray virtuous friends precisely because they are virtuous and he is not. Genuinely virtuous men might not like him because he is not virtuous. He might not like virtuous men because he is not virtuous. And all this he might not be able to help.

Suppose gods were more likely to show favor to the virtuous; it is said, “God helps those who help themselves.”

It’s my claim that these offensive truths must be admitted so that we can have good things and rid ourselves of this decrepit regime.

3.      Equipped Politics (Armed Politics)

Good politics require some level of virtue. Every political order must draw a line, and those falling below the line would need to be excluded. But since not everyone below the line will be easily set outside the bounds (or definition) of the political society, they would need to be what is called “oppressed.” – I have said as much in newspapers before (except I obviously don’t call distinction “oppression”) and the typical response is: “yea, well, maybe we will just have to oppress you!” It’s really a vile sort of response, where they admit you’re right and offer to attack you for being so. They evidently agree with you but consider it evil to say the truth out loud.

Men who deny this—and denial appears to be normal—not only accomplish nothing through their denial, though I guess this can be disputed, but they cut themselves off from the salutary consequences of admitting the truth of the statement. Once it is admitted that not everything is possible, men can start avoiding what is not possible and commit themselves to what is. Men should not try to embody the virtue of aristocracy when in fact they should devote themselves to an incredibly private life of exercise, writing, eating healthy and laying low; maybe they should devote themselves to an institution; maybe they should take to the hills. In any event, what should be done cannot be ascertained or even contemplated so long as it is asserted that the best sort of happiness is available to all without distinction, or that no greater happiness exists than what the least capable men can enjoy.

Desiring happiness does not make a man able to be so. Only being able to achieve a small amount of happiness does not mean, however equal you think yourself, that your happiness is the limit of other men’s happiness.

If we admit what is possible, we can responsibly demarcate what should and shouldn’t be allowed in political society, and, if we do that, we might avoid collapse. We could even put an end to this frivolous inflation of our currency. Our poor currency, which is constantly debased for the maintenance of the depressing and worse than useless ways of living—shouldn’t something be done? But we cannot do anything because doing anything means openly, thoughtfully, explicitly drawing a line between citizens and non-citizens, or between the good citizens and the bad citizens. “Oh yea, maybe we’ll draw the line and you’ll be the bad citizen!”

The American or Western leftist is caught in this view where there is, indeed, a line; but the line is drawn between those who draw lines and those who refuse to admit they draw lines, such that hypocrisy is required to be admitted into polite society (or society at all). The only men who are attacking, excluding, “oppressing” are the men who refuse to admit they are doing any of these things. The only men discriminating against others are the men who denounce anyone who discriminates against others. Such is our situation.

The typical—and lame—conservative response is to say:

“Leftists are hypocrites! They should stop discriminating. We agree that discriminating is evil, but the Democrats are the real racists, the real discriminators.”

That is defeatist conservatism, whose greatest achievement could only ever amount to a sort of Civil Rights carve out for white people or white Christians; this kind of conservatism can only “win” once it has lost, once white people are ghettoized or marginalized. “One day Sohrab Ahmari will draft new legislation for the American Dhimmi laws. We can have our own version of the Millet system!”

This kind of “conservative” response is devoid of any serious notion of Right. There is no, to continue with the Aristotelian usage, authoritative element. This argument amounts to pacifism: “you say you don’t want to hurt people but you’re hurting me, can we please be consistent and establish a world pacifism where no one hurts anyone.” Contrarily, a man or a people possessing the authoritative element would respond: "Sure… There can be a world pacifism, but under the protection of our guns (equipment, arms)."

In other words, the true conservative answer is to say: yes, there is going to be a line. The question is to make it a good one, not to do whatever can be done to avoid admitting we have one. The faux-conservative answer today— “hey, you say there isn’t a line but you have one. You need to treat us as if there isn’t such a line”—is doomed to failure; it is the famous “Washington Generals” strategy.

4.      Wisdom and Politics

The offensive claim, that equipment is needed for virtue, must be admitted if a responsible line can be drawn between citizen and non-citizen, good citizen and bad citizen. I have just argued that the line cannot be avoided, however much it offends liberals and apparently scares the conservatives.

(I think conservatives really feel that, if they inspire a “fellow citizen” to red hot anger, they deserve the anger. They’re very impressed by their own red-hot anger and think, when they see it in the leftist, that it has the same dignity or quality. This is a mere hypothesis, but some explanation is needed as to why they are so cowardly. How did they let their institutions go to the dogs? How did they let themselves get ruled by HR women and worse? Why are they still so contemptible in the face of this self-evident decline? Some answer to these questions is needed.)

So, let it be granted for the sake of argument that a line cannot be avoided, must be drawn. Some men are going to have to take it upon themselves to decide what kind of men (and which men) are going to be elevated to the ruling offices and places of honor and which kind of men are kept out and potentially put down. Here, the need for wisdom enters in again but not under the guise of “equipment.” I must leave this for a later discussion. The upshot: men would like to avoid this decision by submitting it to some impartial formula. For example, a man might say “we must distinguish between good and bad; I leave it to the Bible. Let’s let the Bible decide whom we should consider a citizen in good standing.” You can replace “Bible” with all sorts of standards and standards posing as non-standards. But a little investigation would reveal the need to interpret the Bible correctly and so on. Wisdom rushes in as the only solution to the political problem.

5.      Conclusion

In sum: the reasons for disliking the truth uncovered by philosophy are self-defeating because they involve men in attempting the impossible for the sake of avoiding the dangerous and disagreeable. Philosophy involves men in the dangerous and disagreeable, and while this might lead to the undoing and corruption of some, it is not the fault of philosophy. Recovering philosophy and recovering the dangerousness of philosophy are one and the same.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a masterpiece and I learned a tremendous amount from a recent re-read of it. Because of that, I decided to record a short lecture on it as an extra part of the Introduction to Literature Course (which has grown to 10 lectures!)

Here is an outline of the talk:

An Introduction to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:

I. How to Approach Great Books: The Problem of Pride and Prejudice in the Reader

II. Basic Facts

III. Scholarly Opinion: Vivien Jones and Allan Bloom

IV. The Poles of Human Experience:

a.    Seriousness vs. Playfulness: Mr. Collins vs. Mr. Bennet

b.    Utility vs. Romance: Mrs. Bennet / Charlotte Lucas vs. Elizabeth / Mr. Bennet

c.    Human Nature: Suspicion (Elizabeth) vs. Charity (Jane)

V. What is the purpose of Conversation? Triumph vs. Truth

I am joined by my friend Kruptos! He is the author of the website Seeking the Hidden Thing, the leader of a powerful group chat called the Christian Ghetto, and an illuminating twitter effort thread poaster. He has been on more podcasts than I can count, but I will link a couple that I particularly enjoyed. It was great to discuss building a parallel polity and the tradeoffs attending technology.

Links to Kruptos’ materials:

Twitter / X: Kruptos

Substack:Kruptos Seeking the Hidden Thing

Podcast Appearances: With Auron MacIntyre Can the Administrative State be Replaced? (he has many more all over but this was my favorite)

With The Crux of the Matter Christian Community in the Internet Age

Vitalism and Christianity (my appearance on his podcast (with Big Tuna) “The Christian Ghetto” which is on Seeking the Hidden Thing)

Core questions that we discussed:

1.     In a tweet that you put out this morning you quoted Elon Musk who said that the Democrats are bringing in illegal immigrants so that in the future they can cement one-party state status. You replied, “Only in America could you believe this. In many places where mass immigration is happening there is effective one party rule already. “Replacement” is not the right word. They hope to create world peace by mixing up the peoples of the world to create one global civilization.”

2.     You wrote a wonderful essay entitled, “Building a Parallel Polity: Sketching Out the Road Ahead.” What is a parallel polity?

3.     You say at one point in the article, “The key in this is to disentangle ourselves from both the punishments and the rewards of the regime.” Could you expand on this? I think that this is really important and is related to a lot of problems that say, Plato or Jane Austen are concerned with.

4.     Okay, so if a parallel polity is going to be a radically different mode of political organization than the state, it would follow that it needs a different relationship with technology. Before we move into the problems of technology, I thought we could discuss a BAP tweet that has really stuck with me where he has a picture of Werner von Braun standing next to model rocket ships next to a picture of a giant world favela that is tightly packed and dirt poor. The image basically says to us: which way Western man? I think you have an alternative in mind that pushes against this dichotomy; could you speak on that?

5. I really enjoyed your article, “The Loss of Arete: Why Technology Makes You Dumber and Less Capable While Making You Feel Powerful.” Could you lay out one of the arguments you make there, namely the problem of process or technique and specifically how it makes particular individuals irrelevant and ultimately worse?

Previous Classical Conversations:

Nobody on the core differences between ancient and modern poets, poetry vs. philosophy, and possibilities for the contemporary poet.

Lance Legion on contemporary military officer education, Romans vs. Greeks, Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, and the relation between Christianity / Vitalism.

Jeremy Carl on Hungary, right wing environmentalism, immigration, and Christian nationalism.

Space Age Maximalist on engineers as aristocrats of the future, technological optimism, and how to merge scientific and humanistic thinking.

William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.

Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)

David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.

Links to Nobody’s materials:

Twitter: @hyperpoeisis

Substack: Nobody

Founder of Classics Downtown in NYC which seeks to reinvigorate American poetry

Core questions that we discussed:

1.     I first met Nobody in one of Meta Prime’s Sunday spaces and in addition to his sense of humor it became clear that he is a serious and thoughtful reader of the Western great books, so it is a delight to have him here. To start with, can you tell us about your name?

-       Do you take special inspiration from Odysseus in your work or do you have any passages from the Odyssey that are of particular interest?

-       I love that Cyclops scene…Odysseus can’t bear to be a Nobody, he has to be Somebody and he never questions whether or not it is good to be a Somebody. Achilles longed to be a somebody, but he ultimately questions the goodness of that life.

2.     Can you tell us about your project HyperPoesis? How did it start and what do you mean when on your “about” page when you write, “At the frontier of the American and therefore at the frontier of the cosmic imagination?

3.     What is the role of the poet in our contemporary moment? What can hope to or dare to accomplish?

4.     Okay, so let’s move into the meat. Can you introduce your basic literary thesis and then walk through a few specific examples that help illustrate it?

Previous Classical Conversations:

Lance Legion on contemporary military officer education, Romans vs. Greeks, Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, and the relation between Christianity / Vitalism.

Jeremy Carl on Hungary, right wing environmentalism, immigration, and Christian nationalism.

Space Age Maximalist on engineers as aristocrats of the future, technological optimism, and how to merge scientific and humanistic thinking.

William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.

Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)

David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.

I also touch on the authenticity question around book 10 since a number of scholars argue that it is not by Homer.

Links to Lance’s materials:

Twitter: @LancesLegion

Substack: Lance's Legion

Publishing outfit: DVX Publishing Company

Here are the questions that I sent Lance before we spoke:

1) Introduction to Lance Legion--who are you (not asking for dox, etc, but whatever you want to say) and what is the purpose of your project?

2) You have said that you prefer the Romans over the Greeks; why is that?

3) Let's talk about a Grek man of power: Agamemnon. We will rehabilitate this great man's reputation!

4) Let's talk about a Roman man of power: Julius Caesar. I know that you have done a lot of work on him, so maybe you could walk through a couple of moments / aphorisms that you find especially powerful or illuminating.

5) I know that you discussed this with our mutual Ancient Gardener on your show, but I wonder if we could discuss the Vitalist / Christian synthesis question a little bit.

Previous Classical Conversations:

Jeremy Carl on Hungary, right wing environmentalism, immigration, and Christian nationalism.

Space Age Maximalist on engineers as aristocrats of the future, technological optimism, and how to merge scientific and humanistic thinking.

William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.

Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)

David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.

Essays on MCC’s mission and vision for the future:

An Introduction to Montana Classical College

Should the Right Create “Activist” Universities?

Education in Great Tasks

There is No Such Thing as “Value Neutral” Education

A New Vision for Education

Education Toward Freedom

MCC’s Core Curriculum

Physical Education

Cool things that Jeremy has done related to our conversation:

Twitter: @jeremycarl4

Website: https://www.jeremycarl.com/

He has a new book on anti-white racism that is coming out soon! Keep an eye out for it.

Articles and Talks:

Open Borders and the Refugee Crisis under the Biden Administration (talk at the Danube Institute)

A Nation of Settlers

Parks and Devastation

Christian Nationalism or Godless Nationalism?

Sampling of Podcast appearances:

Alex Kaschuta"Settlers vs. Immigrants”

Isaac Simpson Episode 67

The questions that I sent Jeremy prior to the conversation:

1.     You were a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute in Hungary for five weeks last year and from what I understand, you are just finishing up another visit to Budapest. To start with, what is the Danube Institute What were your goals for your most recent visit? What lessons have you learned?

2.     Victor Orban has been the Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010 (he also was from 1998-2002). Do you have any sense of what the social / political situation was like in Hungary before his first victory? I ask in part, out of curiosity to see how applicable his approach and policies are to the United States; is there enough relevant similarity between our polities that we can or should attempt to imitate his approach? What is the most impressive of his accomplishments?

3.     During the Trump administration, you were the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior. From what little I know about this department, you would have worked on policy related to our natural resources and other similar concerns. In the mainstream media, it seems like only the Left cares about the environment—but this isn’t true! Could you say a little bit about what a RW or conservative approach to the environment / energy looks like?

4.     You have a relatively recent essay in Arthur Milikh’s outstanding new volume, Up From Conservatism, called “The Nuclear Option: Transforming America’s Failed Immigration Policy.” There, you note that “America will not survive in any meaningful sense if we do not get control of our border and develop a will for national life and a unified American identity.” So, the stakes are very high for getting this right! You outline a number of concrete policy proposals; if Trump or another serious candidate is able to win in 2024, what is the lowest hanging fruit that he should attend to on day one?

5.     Finally, you recently wrote an essay for American Mind on Christian nationalism. You argue that, in some sense, Christian nationalism has been tried in the United States, insofar as the Bible is cited more than Enlightenment figures during the founding period and you note as well that 9 out of the 13 original colonies had state churches (in addition to other convincing evidence). Do I understand your bold question at the end of the article correctly: that in order for Christian practice to remain a possibility—that is to exist at all—in the United States, some of the claims of Christian nationalism need to be embraced. Can you say more about what you mean?

Previous Classical Conversations:

Space Age Maximalist on engineers as aristocrats of the future, technological optimism, and how to merge scientific and humanistic thinking.

William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.

Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)

David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.

Other cool stuff that SAM has done so far:

Substack: Jungle Bunker Telemetric Funk

Twitter: @spaceageherr

Articles: For Space Age Maximalism (see page 48), The Hierarchy of Power

An appearance on the Meta Prime Project

Here is the set of questions that I initially sent SAM:

1.     Your third podcast episode is called “Advanced Eschatology and Influences Remix.” You reflect on your project as a whole and you lay out an admirable map of the dissident right terrain. You note that your first major essay, “For Space Age Maximalism,” is principally an emotional appeal that lays out an attractive vision of what could be, and that exhorts engineers to be more based. Could you spend some time laying out this vision before we turn to your more sober assessment of things?

2.     In the third episode you also note that getting into space isn’t really a technical problem it is more of a political problem. If, for instance, the United States made going into space a priority instead of fighting forever wars in the Middle East or as you point out in your manifesto if we stopped nannying other countries, we might already be on Mars. But, we seem to be a people who has lost self-confidence and who are in some sense exhausted. What are the first practical steps that could be taken that might help lead us into your Faustian vision of the future?

3.     What prevents engineers from being based; or is there anything in the typical engineer’s education that makes them prone to ideological capture?

4.     In a Man’s World article entitled, “The Hierarchy of Power,” you offer a rank order of the sciences: biology lowest, then chemistry, then physics, and then mathematics is highest. Could you explain why that rank order is what it is as well as offering a word on where engineering fits into that kind of rank order? I know that the purpose of the article was to analogize that ordering towards types of political power, but since I'm such a neophyte on the sciences, it would be interesting for me / humanities bros to learn

5.     In some of our discussion leading up to this, we noted that there seems to be a lack of understanding between scientifically oriented types on one hand, and humanities oriented types on the other; and that, in particular, there is often a disagreement about the status of technology’s goodness. Let’s start by working through some of the limits of technology that you yourself point to, and then if it makes sense, I’ll offer some examples of my own. Much to your credit, you aren’t an easygoing technological cheerleader—you are sensitive to its tradeoffs. In your third episode, you note that technology often has dysgenic effects; the weak prosper under its dispensation. Furthermore, the warrior, one of the highest human possibilities, has a difficult if almost impossible time flourishing; a man with Dorito’s dust can use a drone against him. If increases in technology soften man, prevent warriors from showing forth their excellence, and lead us to depend on complex systems which most of us don’t understand, then how can we place hope in technology to get us out of a situation that it is largely responsible for creating?

Previous classical conversations:

William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.

Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)

David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.

A Recipe for the American Dream (Ice Cream Nationalism)

Agriculture as Art (the quote on Left-wing environmentalism is here)

Dear Mr. Thiel (on a plan for a school)

Deification of the Woke Self

He has appeared on many good podcasts; the two appearances that I’ve enjoyed the most:

Caribbean Rhythms Episode 114 (link to the free version)

Reactionary Agriculture with Alex Kaschuta

Previous Classical Conversations:

Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)

David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.

If you have enjoyed this conversation or past ones, please hit “like” and share them with your friends!

Here are the core questions that I asked William; they serve as an outline of the episode:

1.     You have coined an outstanding phrase that contains within it immense memetic power: Agriculture precedes culture. You have already said a great deal about this elsewhere, but could you say a little bit about what this means? And furthermore, could you help us distinguish between Right Wing environmentalism and Left Wing environmentalism?

2.     Your letter to Peter Thiel in Man’s World magazine is wonderful and discusses founding a school informed by the principles you outlined on agriculture. Before we talk about the school that Thiel will be funding over the next 10 years, could we discuss how over immersion in the internet’s man made “realities” can potentially condition us into thinking about nature / biology in the wrong way? 

3.     Could you walk us through what a day in the life of Wheelwright Academy looks like?

4.     Speaking of your school, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine you teaching an elective there on Homer’s Iliad. You host a weekly twitter space on Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad; what led to you start this? And importantly, what is special about Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad?

5.     Do you have a favorite moment from the Iliad?

What Motivates Christians

Christianity and Power

An Aristocratical Christianity

Other links:

Our first conversation on the subject: Nietzsche and Aristocratic Christianity

My previous “Classical Conversation” with David Azerrad

Below are the core questions that I asked Phocaean:

1.     Why do you think that many Christians yearn for a scientific vindication of the Bible; for example, physical evidence of the flood from the account of Noah’s arc. What do they hope for out of the scientific explanation, and why shouldn’t they hope for this?

2.     You were driving at something interesting with respect to morality. You note that most people look at morality from the standpoint of selfish or selfless; do you think that this is a mistaken starting point? –i.e., to put it another way, they look at it as good / profitable vs. noble / sacrifice of something good.

3.     We talked about this a little bit in our previous conversation, but you seem to have developed your thoughts a little more on the relationship between Christianity and wealth and power. You propose two general interpretations:

a)     Power / money necessarily corrupts the man = communism as a secularized version of Christianity

b)    Power shows the man. A bad man with wealth / power will be revealed as such, and good man as well = liberalism as a secularized version of Christianity

Which one of these interpretations is more at the heart of Christianity?

4.     Why is Christianity so easily misunderstood? Is the problem more in the nature of Christianity or is it more within the types of men who examine it?

5.     You also recently sketched an outline for a possible book on the American South that carefully traces the way in which different interpretations of liberalism are developed in the North and the South and how Christianity developed in relation to these different interpretations. It sounds like a book well worth writing and you are probably the only man who could do it well. I wouldn’t ask you to walk through the whole arc of your hypothesis, but what do you take as the most important idea that you would hope to lay out?

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College! Today we will pick up our series of lectures on the Iliad with Book 8. Robert Fagles gives a title to this book: The tide of battle turns. Zeus becomes proactive about answering Thetis’ supplication—Achilles will be honored through the slaughter of Achaeans; and so, the Trojans bring the fight to Achaeans in a way that makes the Achaeans deeply feel a need for Achilles so that in Book 9, an embassy will be sent to persuade Achilles to return.

This time, instead of relentlessly focusing on juicy passages, we will follow the action of the book as a whole as it unfolds, paying attention to which side is truly stronger, and noting the interplay or conflict between prudence and courage that characters from both sides show.  

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College! Today we will be discussing Book Seven of Homer’s Iliad.

We will focus on two things:

1)    Nestor, who comes to sight not as a stodgy old blustering traditionalist, but as a man a great of great prudence who is able to make the necessary thing seem like the pious thing.

2)   The duel between between Hector and Ajax which reveals something about the relative strength of both sides.

1)    Diomedes;’ aristeia, which is to say, his moment of excellence in which he attempts to transcend human limitations

2)    Diomedes’ discussion with Glaucus and what it means for the generations of men to be like generations of leaves

3)    Finally, we will close with thoughts on Hector’s potentially confused understanding of nobility and prudence.

Two things for your consideration:

* Check out our recent interview with Dr. David Azerrad! He offers a brilliant account of the past, present, and where things ought to go next, with respect to American politics.

* Check out our last lecture on the Iliad (book four). I just looked back over it and it might be the best of the bunch so far. I am temporarily removing its paywall for the next 72 hours, so go check it out!

Here is the fourth and final discussion of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. We consider whether or not Doug has actually qualitatively changed in light of his education in loss. If to philosophize is to learn how to die, how philosophic has Doug become? Has he accepted his mortality?

First Session

Second Session

Third Session

This marks the completion of our summer projects! On Wednesday, we finished the King Lear series. It also partially substantiates the claim that you can expect a post every Wednesday / Saturday for the next month.

King Bolingbroke and I put a bow on our King Lear series! Previous discussions are linked below. He recently started a substack as well. You should read and subscribe to it!

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

I was compelled to head out of town last week, so the re-launch is off to a late start. Nevertheless, here is the first of regularly scheduled Wednesday / Saturday posts for the next month!

In this discussion, on chapters 21-30, Bradbury orients us toward thinking about whether the world is enchanted or disenchanted. Which of these accounts is true? What does it mean to be mature in the strictest sense? Is love about the body or the mind? Is action higher or is knowledge higher?

These questions are weaved into a coherent set of short stories that are commented on by the characters Douglas and Tom.

Don’t forget about the evolution of MCC—lots of excitement awaits!

Here are our earlier conversations:

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

King Bolingbroke and I walk through each scene and try to show how even the short ones seemingly designed to “just move the plot forward,” are artfully constructed and highly revealing. We discussed Edgar’s different approaches to guiding Gloucester and Lear; whether Cordelia has improved; the difference between reading and watching Shakespeare’s plays; and we broached the enormous question of what Shakespeare’s over-arching vision of human life is—among many other things. We hope that you enjoy!

Also, if you haven’t already, check out our essay, The Evolution of MCC. Some men who I really admire and who you will learn a great deal from, will be joining us for interviews in July / August!

I discuss chapters 11-20. Bradbury explores happiness and its relationship to how different human beings understand the past.

We discussed chapters 1-10 here.

This is such a wonderful book! Summer isn’t over yet. Go read it!

You might also enjoy a panel discussion that Bolingbroke contributed a lot to on Hamlet. Are you following his Shakespearean exhortations on twitter?

Whereas we focused a lot on Kent last time, this time we relentlessly focused on the psychology of Lear. We discuss competing views of nature that are brought out and the increasingly large intrusion of Christianity into what at first appeared as a pagan cosmos.

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College! I was joined again by the charming and intelligent King Bolingbroke who by this point holds the endowed chair of Anonymous Shakespeare studies at MCC. We discussed Kent’s arc of action in both Act One and Act Two.

Here is the article that we often referred to—I highly recommend that you check it out. It makes a strong case for Kent being “no less than he seems,” which is to say, that he is equal to or greater than he seems.

Here is our discussion of Act One.

“The Mystery Behind Philosophy”

“An Aristocratical Christianity”

I also quoted from this essay on Nietzsche.

Outline:

We start with a brief account of Nietzsche’s blame and praise of Christianity as a way to introduce a more aristocratic or noble vision of Christianity than we are used to seeing.

1. You say that, "Christian leaders face this conundrum: if they are assertively Christian they will alienate many thoughtful people who simply cannot accept either Christian metaphysics or Christian morals. On the other hand, if they try to edit Christian dogmas and morality out of their teachings they will be ignored by the intelligent people who see no difference between what they preach and what the politicians promise."

What should Christian leaders do in light of this conundrum? How should a Christian leader understand the task of ruling?

2. You say that, "The wagons must be circled. Unless the Christian faith can accomplish this it turns into “liberation theology.” Every dead faith is, at bottom, communist."

Can you say a little bit about what liberation theology is since it provides a stark contrast to your proposed aristocratic re-interpretation of Christianity?

3. Let's discuss a couple of the Biblical passages that a communistic human being might cling to and show how they look through the eyes of an aristocratic Christian:

a) "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matt. 19:24)

b) How should we understand the command to turn the other cheek?

4. Finally, what do you make of Christian Nationalism? How is aristocratical Christianity different (and better) than this?

Here is an outline:

* Bolingbroke exhorts you to read Shakespeare.

* I summarize Act One.

* We discuss the ways in which Lear may understand himself as a kind of god.

* We read out loud Lear’s “Meantime,” speech where he gives an account of why he wishes to split up his kingdom now. We discuss the soundness of the plan and how it reflects Lear’s self-knowledge or lack thereof.

* We discuss Cordelia’s truthful response to Lear’s account and whether it was the right thing to do.

* We read out loud Edmund’s speech on nature and discuss nature in general and whether or to what to extent Edmund has a coherent understanding of nature and himself.

Here is an outline of the conversation:

* Johann introduces his project and the challenge of thinking of practical solutions to our contemporary problems.

* We discuss what respectability is and why it is a problem.

* We discussed three articulations of the problem with attendant ways to manage it: classical, Christian, and Nietzschean.

* Concluding thoughts on self-knowledge—can we know what really moves us when we do something?

I have a had a ridiculous amount of fun reading this book and would like to share a commentary I’m writing on it orally. I’m treating Bradbury as if he wrote with logographic necessity (=every word is exactly where it needs to be in order to convey the teaching of the book) and the care I’ve paid to his text has been richly rewarded.

This session covers the first 10 chapters of the book.

If you have ever loved the summer as a boy you will love this book. It presents America as it once was and someday will be again. If Bradbury’s more famous book, Fahrenheit 451, shows us how we might lose something beautiful, then this book shows us what we stand to lose or what that beautiful thing is. It shows us as well how unscientifically a child looks at the world and the virtues and vices that attend that mode of perception.

This project is a labor of love that emerged out of nowhere. I hope that you enjoy it and that you read Dandelion Wine.

Here are the core questions that I asked Clawson. We went slightly out of order, we had a couple of friendly disagreements that were mostly resolved, and I think that you will find Clawson charming and interesting on how we ought to ACT right NOW. He is a barbarian who has learned to read the runes. You can buy his book here.

1) Posserilla is a sequel of sorts to Goonhood. The first book outlines a disposition, the second gives practical advice to those who embody that disposition. Could you remind us what it is to be a goon?

2) Could you outline the signs you see that indicate the kind of trouble America is in? I'm thinking especially of your comments on infrastructure, food, and water. As you suggest, it isn't a conspiracy that will bring us down, but rather a failure of competence about the most basic material needs.

3) In light of the difficulties that you bring out (in question 2) you suggest that the only response is forming a posse or goongang. Much of the first half of the book is devoted to explaining how we might do this. How do we do this? How do we find our frens?

4) Goonhood, if I remember correctly, featured what I took to be a mostly negative assessment of the LDS (Mormon) church; the principal criticism being that Mormons aren't able to resist believing in regime pieties. In the new book however, you seem to admire their social infrastructure. Can you say more about this?

5) You provide interesting sources for understanding human psychology, Carnegie, Alinksy, a man who helped you understand psychology through poker; what books or people were your most influential guides as you wrote the book?

6) As you point out, many sensitive young men are aimless--what should they aim for? How will joining a goongang fill their lives with purpose?

7) What is the proper relationship between reason and instinct? It seems like generally speaking, your book calls on us to hone and trust our instincts; that it is our reason that allows us to justify our inaction. But, how do you make sense of yourself as a book writing barbarian? Or is it possible to use reason to get back to a more instinctual way of understanding ourselves and the world?

Two of my favorite parts of the book were the accounts of the Troll (womon at pool) and The Hike...we don’t talk about these, but they are narratives that are worth buying the book for alone.

Outline:

* Introducing Anton’s synthesis of Straussian thinking and Online Right thinking

* America’s suicidal morality; or turning away from the nation toward the UHS

* A thoughtful response from another reader of Anton who discusses the vices endemic to commercial regimes as such

Links to things mentioned:

The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return

Michael Anton “Beto’s Republic”

VDH “The Coup We Never Knew”

John Quincy Adams “4th of July Address" (1821)

Pharnabazus “Towards A Clearer Trade-Offs Conservatism: Remarks in Partial Response to Michael Anton’s The Stakes”

Charles Haywood Review of The Stakes

Plato Republic

Who Rules? Nationalism, Sovereignty, and the Fate of Freedom in the 21st Century ed. Roger Kimball

I’m sure that you will find his writings on contemporary politics to be of interest and they can be found here:

* King of Twitter at American Mind

* That Hideous Strength Animating Joe Biden at American Greatness.

Here is a brief table of contents of our conversation:

* I introduce Bolingbroke and he tells us why Shakespeare writes such good books.

* I briefly summarize the play.

* Bolingbroke announces the theme we will focus on: the relation of the passions and love with reason.

* We discuss Benedick’s arguments against love.

* We discuss Beatrice’s argument against love.

* We read out loud and examine part of Act 1 scene 3 and explore Don John’s account of how reason is an instrument of the passions.

* We read out loud and examine part of Act 5 scene 1 and explore Leonato’s account of how reason is an instrument of the passions (though the scene is ultimately an inversion of 1.3).

* We think through the Prince’s speeches and deeds and find that while he attempts to transcend his attachment to love, he is still subordinate to it in spite of his best Machiavellian efforts.

* We discuss what Shakespeare ultimately has in mind about love and its relation to reason. What does a reasonable human life look like? How reasonable can the philosopher hope to be?

We prepared an outline before and had a pre-recording conversation but both of us also discovered a number of things through our conversation. I understand the play much better in light of our conversation and I think that you will as well.

Louise Cowan’s essay “Epic as Cosmopoesis”

This lecture provides an overview of Cowan’s essay; it is a poetic approach to Homer and epic that takes the idea of genre seriously in full awareness of the obstacles to taking genre seriously. She sketches the contours of the inner disposition of epic.

A brief note from an obituary of Cowan:

“Louise Cowan, university teacher and nationally recognized leader in humanities education, passed away Monday, November 16, in Dallas. She was 98. Dr. Cowan taught for fifty-three years at the University of Dallas, where she was chair of the English department, dean of graduate studies, University Professor, and the first occupant of the Louise Cowan Chair in Humanities. With her husband Donald Cowan, physicist and president of the university from 1962 to 1977, she worked steadily to build an internationally recognized university with a core curriculum based in the Western classics. She and political philosopher Willmoore Kendall founded the university's Institute of Philosophic Studies, a unique combination of doctoral programs in disciplines centered on the study of core texts, and she directed its growth. The dual focus of Dr. Cowan's life--on building the good city and educating to the fullest all the members of that citywas expressed in her founding, along with her husband and four other intellectual leaders, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture in 1980 to bring the life of the mind into dialogue with the city. She then conceived of and initiated the Teachers Academy at the institute in 1983, a program for Dallas public school teachers that from 1984-87 was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which cited it as a "model for the nation."“

This is a timely addition to our Introduction to Literature course.

Here we try to understand Scrooge sympathetically with a view to seeing how he understands himself and the world. There is a striking moment when the narrator speaks directly to the reader and tells us that he is as close to us as the spirit is to Scrooge. The narrator reaches past the 4th wall to speak directly to the reader and offers a kind of analogy. The spirit is to Scrooge as the narrator is to us; so if there is something wrong about Scrooge’s orientation towards the world, the narrator warns us that we ourselves might be in possession of the same malady that Scrooge has. That is, Scrooge’s name is synonymous with greed and miserliness; he is so extreme or spectacular in embodying his vice that we are likely not to think that we participate in it insofar as when we compare ourselves to Scrooge, we see a lot of distance. But the narrator warns us that we shouldn’t let ourselves off of the hook too easily. Just because someone else is bad, it doesn’t mean that we are good.

Scrooge seems to undergo a transformative education, but we are left with one crucial question: what at bottom motivates Scrooge’s change? His former fiancé Belle told him that he changed out one idol for another in preferring money to her; but has Scrooge here merely changed out one fear for another? Before he feared that pain that at least potentially attends all loving attachments to others. He sought to fortify himself against evils through the acquisition of money and through an unwillingness to open himself up to others. Is he now moved by fear of death and fear of punishment in the afterlife? Or is he now genuinely moved by a desire to benefit others regardless of the rewards that may come to him?

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Post thoughts and comments on the arguments from the lecture and raise questions about scenes not discussed in the lecture!

Montana Classical College promotes noble deeds, the understanding of nature, and nationalism. Please subscribe.

Phocaean and I discuss David Sidorsky’s article “The Third Concept of Liberty and the Politics of Identity.” This is the fourth and final session of our course “Understanding Modern Liberty: On Constant, Berlin, Strauss, and Sidorsky.”

Themes discussed:

I. What are the three concepts of liberty and why does one concept give way to another?

II. What type of person is each of these concepts designed for?

III. What are the consequences of accepting the third concept of liberty? Why is it incorrect?

IV. The third concept of liberty purports to be value neutral but in fact points toward a very ugly future that is not neutral at all.

Montana Classical College stands for nobility, nature, and nationalism. Please subscribe if you think that these things are good.

This lecture is focused on the deceptive Dream that Zeus sends to Agamemnon and Agamemnon’s strange response to it. We turn as well to the Catalogue of Ships. Many find this to be the most boring part of the Iliad but I aim to demonstrate that several crucial lessons can be gleaned from it.

What observations have you made when looking at the Catalogue of Ships?

This is the beginning of a course on Homer’s Iliad. There will be a lecture on each of the 24 books of the Iliad in addition to lectures on “theoretical approaches” to Homer which include Nietzschean, Platonic, and poetic approaches. The lectures on odd numbered books will be free and the lectures on even numbered books will be paywalled.

I have studied the Iliad with a handful of excellent individuals; I’m afraid to say that my ignorance has not yet allowed their brilliance to shine forth in this first introductory post but that I hope to do them increasing justice as the course moves on.

The movie takes place over the course of five days. Our analysis is broken up into an introduction and then thematic commentary on each of the days. This session introduces the movie and then comments on the first day.

Strauss’s essay “Relativism” from The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism appears to have 3 sections of unequal length.

* Paragraphs 1-14: On Isaiah Berlin’s “The Two Concepts of Liberty”

* Paragraphs 15-28: On Positivism (and Marxism)

* Paragraphs 29-33: On Existentialism; Nietzsche is the root and Heidegger the core

We will provide helpful reading notes in addition to the lecture / discussion here in the coming days.

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* We define negative and positive liberty and how John Stuart Mill does not satisfyingly reconcile them.

* We discuss Berlin’s own attempt to resolve this tension and his failure to do so.

* We look at how Berlin seems to point toward a so-called messy pluralism but in fact has a universalist position undergirding his view.

* We consider why it is that Berlin admires Constant so much on one hand, and yet fails to properly digest his teaching on the other.

* We blame Berlin for coping with his failure through a poetic flight from reason. We also speak a little more extemporaneously about related questions and issues.

Constant distills what he understands to be the essence of both ancient and modern liberty. We discuss his account, the difference between ancient and modern citizenship, the purpose of modern political philosophy, and why it is that we can’t go back to Athens or even to Constant’s more sober liberalism.

For those in the discussion group, please leave a question and/or observation. If you have thoughts on parts of the text that were not discussed in the lecture, those are just as welcome as comments on parts that were discussed.

Links to things discussed or which I consulted:

Leo Strauss’ Course Lectures on Nietzsche from 1957

Laurence Lampert’s Nietzsche’s Task: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil

Nostromo’s “On the Translator and His Shadow Part 2: Nietzsche’s Political Philosophy”

I. Moments when Progressive education is openly blamed; and a small moment reminding the reader of what the older education system looked like.

II. Atticus often evinces astonishing mental clarity which forms the foundation of very modest hopes for political life. This sobriety is upended or slowly eroded by an overly optimistic assessment of human nature.

* This optimism is all the more disappointing in light of Atticus’ awareness that sometimes civilization needs force to defend it (he knows how to shoot well and even has to make use of this skill, but he doesn’t teach his son how to shoot; showing that he hopes for a world in which such defense will no longer be necessary.

III. Atticus ultimately confirms something like the American Founders view of equality. Men are equal under the law and not necessarily in any other way.

In this way, a book that obviously promotes tolerance and decries prejudice suggests that progressive education and the progressive view of human nature are not the proper tools to bring about the world that the author hopes for.

Here is an outline with key quotations:

I. Why do Societies Fall Apart?

* This question is asked by the novel’s protagonist, Ralph, on two separate occasions (pages 82 and 139). In Ralph’s words, “what makes things break apart like they do?”

* This is one of the core questions of the novel and is a question of importance for human communities in all times and places.

II. Forming a Political Community

* The boys can build their government from scratch. What form of government will they choose?

From page 22:

  ”Let’s have a vote.”

  ”This toy of of voting was almost as pleasing as the conch. Jack started to   protest but the clamor changed from the general wish for a chief to an   election by acclaim of Ralph himself. None of the boys could have found    good reason for this…there was a stillness about Ralph…there was his size,   and attractive appearance.”

Form of Government: Democratic Monarchy or Parliamentary Monarchy

* From page 33: “We can’t have everybody talking all at once. We’ll have to have hands up like at school.”

* A conch is given to the person who speaks. There is thus supposed to be an equal opportunity to speak under the ”law”. This sustains the democratic element of the monarchy.

* Jack points to the need to enforce the rules: ”We’ll have rules, lots of rules! Then when anyone breaks ‘em—BONG!”

III. The Principles of their Political Community

* Ralph says: “We want to have fun. And we want to be rescued.” (page 37)

* Do you see any tension between these principles?

* Ralph (and Piggy) embody reason alone; Jack embodies force and willfulness.

* Jack says: “See, they do what I want.” (page 179)

IV. The Lord of the Flies or The Beast

* Simon: “What I mean is…maybe it’s only us?” (page 89)

* The Lord of the Flies in Simon’s vision: “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are as they are?” (page 143)

V. Is the Deus ex Machina Ending Fitting?

* Yes. The boys never fully confront that they are the source of their misery. Being lifted out of their problems through no virtue of their own makes it so that they never have to face up to this.

Outline:

I. Opening Thoughts on Civilization and Barbarism

II. Buck’s Early Aristocratic Beginnings

III. Buck’s Education in the Law of Club and Fang

IV. Can the Virtues of Civilization and Barbarism be Combined?

Key Quotation:

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not live” (pg. 46; emphasis added)

What is going on this passage? Why does London compare the soldier to Buck? More strikingly, why does London compare the artist to Buck?!

This is the edition I used. It contains an interview with Bradbury that I found interesting and illuminating.

There are probably helpful interpretations of F451 out there, but I did not encounter them—admittedly I did NOT make any attempt at an exhaustive list of sources. If you know of any helpful ones, please let me know.

If you think future literature lectures could do with more summary of the book as a whole at the outset, let me know, and I can add that in next time.

We turn to the exciting conclusion of Bacon’s “unfinished story”. If you made it this far, through all 4 lectures, I thank you for listening and I welcome questions or disagreements.

On the Feast of the Family and the conversation with Joabim.

Bacon shows how difficult it is properly legislate or contain eros just as Plato did in his Republic. In other words, Bacon seems to suggest that there are political problems that don’t admit of full solutions, and that these might very well create political instability if not properly managed, even in his utopian scheme. He thus tells those who wish to follow him to do so with some caution.

Structure of the text:

I. Opening

II. A priest of Bensalem has two conversations with some of the sailors. First: how does Christianity emerge here? Second: How does Bensalem know so much about the world and yet, the world knows so little about Bensalem? (we focus on this part in this session).III. Feast of the Father

IV. Jewish man Joabin’s account of, among other things, the erotic dimensions of the regime.

V. Meeting with the Father of Salomon’s House; we learn of the fruits of their scientific discoveries.

I am re-purposing some COVID recordings for MCC. This is part 1 of 4. I used this edition of the New Atlantis.

My understanding was greatly benefited by the interpretive essay in the edition mentioned above, as well as by the comments in this book and this book.

This is an introductory lecture that sticks close to the text. I genuinely welcome any critical feedback or interpretive disagreements.

II. Remarque’s Argument Against War

* War is Morbid/Horrifying

* War Turns Men into Animals

* War is Arbitrary

III. Jünger on War and Love

* On the Love of His Nation

* On His Love of his Enemies

* On His Love for his Friends

* On his Love for Himself

IV. Concluding Thoughts

* Why do Serious People on the Right and Left Oppose Liberalism?

* Does the Logic of Liberalism Point to a World State?

Links of things mentioned: (coming tomorrow)

II. Difficulties in Kant’s Preliminary Articles

III. Kant on Why an Allied Federation of Republics is Superior to a One World State

IV. Schmitt on how Liberalism Tries to Evade the Logic of the Political

V. Schmitt on What is at Stake if the Political is Lost

Links to things mentioned:

Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace

Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political

Wagner’s Parsifal (listen to this before Kant section)

Beethoven’s 17th Piano Sonata The Tempest (listen to this before Schmitt section)

Woodrow Wilson’s War Message

Concise outline of the audio lecture:

I. Introductory Thoughts

(Listen to Dmitry Shostakovich’s 2nd Waltz here to take a nice break)

II. A Satirical View of World History from the Perspective of the Universal Human Rights Advocate

(Listen to Eugen Doga’s Gramofone Waltz here to take a nice break)

III. A Praise and Blame of Curtis Yarvin

List of links to things mentioned:

Curtis Yarvin’s RIP Globalism, Dead of Coronavirus/Missionary Virus

Alexandra Hudson’s What Does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Mean Today?

Kenneth Waltz’s The Anarchic Structure of International Politics

Plato’s Republic

Plato’s Apology of Socrates

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

George Clooney on Brunei (BBC)

Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations

Curtis Yarvin’s Gray Mirror of the Nihilist Prince

Mencius Moldbug’s “Political Sanity in One Easy Step”

Moldbug’s “The Unlikely Appeal of Non-Idealism”