How Much Lecture Is Necessary?

“How much lecture is necessary?” is a divisive question because there’s really no standard definition of “lecture” among classical educators. Some teachers think a lecture is an uninterrupted 45-minute talk on why Jane Austen didn’t like the city of Bath, which sounds a bit dull and unlikely to incline students to virtue—and the idea that a lecture is an uninterrupted 45-minute talk isn’t absurd given that it’s what a lecture is at a conference.

However, when teachers debate the relative merits of lecture, they always say “lecture” and not “a lecture.” There’s a considerable difference between the two.

-from my latest for CiRCE

Historians Always Judge Like Strangers

“History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset.”

-David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon

The First Gibbs Classical Meetup Is August 12

You’ve read the blog posts, listened to the lectures, and signed up for the classes. Now, eat the food. On August 12, I am hosting the first Gibbs Classical Meetup at my home in Richmond, VA. Come to my place and let me cook you dinner.

If you would like to come to the Meetup, please send me an email with “RSVP” in the subject line and let me know how many of you are coming. You can also RSVP through the Gibbs Classical contact page. I can only host 25, but I plan on throwing several such dinners in the next year. If you don’t make it into the first 25 spots, you’ll be toward the top of the list for the next Meetup. There’s no cost, you don’t need to bring anything, and I can work around your allergies. 

Against “Teaching To Your Top Third”

“Perhaps my objection to “teaching to your top third” is most clearly expressed in my objection to the idea a pastor should “preach to his top third.” I’ve never heard anyone put forward that idea before, of course, but I imagine most pastors would scoff if they heard it. “Preach to your top third? What sort of a thing do you take preaching to be if you believe there is a top third? And what do you expect your top third to do with this preaching that is tailored to them? Write better commentaries on Hebrews? Is that what pious old Mrs. Whitlock is going to do with your sermons?” On the other hand, a good sermon about the Beatitudes is going to hit your most pious congregants between the eyes—and your least pious congregants, too.”

-from my latest for CiRCE

Next Year’s Classes

Next year I will teach two classes through Gibbs Classical: Plato’s Republic for Beginners in the fall and Foundations of Modern Politics in the spring.

On several occasions, I have spoken of a brief period in my life wherein I considered myself quite liberal. This was sixteen or seventeen years ago now, shortly after I got married. I was, like most people in their 20s, rethinking everything, and at the time, the progressive conception of human nature simply seemed more compelling to me. It was also around this time that I read and taught Plato’s Republic and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution for the first time and I couldn’t help but noticing a remarkable connection between the two. Plato’s defense of an aristocracy and Burke’s explanation of an aristocracy were entirely compatible. They were both based on common sense, observation, and “the way things are.” At the same time, Burke’s conservative presentation of human nature struck me as far more mystical, far more transcendent, and thus far more satisfying than the progressive understanding of human nature as an endlessly manipulatable substance. Burke believed that a human being was a very particular kind of thing and that happiness was the result of working within particular limits. His promises were not as grand as progressives, but they were real. What Burke did for my conception of political man, Plato did for my conception of spiritual man. The Republic is a remarkably lucid argument for how a man ought to curate his soul, govern his soul, bless his soul, and converse with this soul. It’s a handbook on self-control, the same sort of self-control which enables a city or a nation to thrive. Many of the arguments I have made about good taste in the last several years began with reading Plato’s Republic, and I am quite happy to offer a fourteen week class devoted to a slow and patient read of this book. You can read more about that class and register here.

This is the third time I am offering Foundations of Modern Politics, and the class evolves just a little every time I teach it. My desire to offer the class was initially prompted by the movement to defund the police. So many of the arguments I read in favor of defunding the police were based on shallow, faulty progressive arguments about human nature, and yet I consistently found that conservatives were completely unequipped to offer reasonable replies. “We need to spend our police money on the problems that police solve. If people weren’t desperate and hungry, we wouldn’t need the police,” certainly has a gloss of common sense, but it doesn’t hold up to a little scrutiny. Nonetheless, Foundations of Modern Politics was a class that took students back to the beginning of the argument between progressives and conservatives. It explained the philosophical prejudices behind progressive beliefs about society and the individual, as well as the conservative philosophies of time and nature.

Foundations of Modern Politics returns next spring for the 2024 election year, when America will go mad for a little while and give itself over to irrational assertions, unverified confidences, and unfulfillable promises. If you would like to escape the deluge of our political passions and return to the source of the argument, consider enrolling. Don’t spend 2024 shouting at your television. Spend it soberly shaking your head.