Poets & Philosophers

PDF of The Great Conversation

We're talking about the Great Books of the Western World. It's a 50+ volume set created by Mortimer Adler and many other academics. In particular we're talking about the first volume, titled "The Great Conversation"

It was written by Robert Hutchins, the President of the University of Chicago.

Dr. Hamilton is a professor in the Biblical Studies Department at Florida College. He has developed at habit of reading the Lord of the Rings every year.

In this episode we discuss the timelessness of Tolkien's work including how Christians can read this work.

We discuss the medieval form of education called disputation where two students will argue over a point in the lesson to understand it better.

Dr. Woods is the Headmaster at Veritas Christian Academy. He also founded the Great Books program at Faulkner University. We interview him about his book Mortimer Adler: The Paideia Way of Classical Education

Mortimer Adler was the "every-man's philosopher" as well as an educational reformer. In Dr. Woods' book he brings us to Mortimer Adler and the goals he sought to reform education to be focused around the Great Books.

Books Mentioned

Adler, Reforming Education: Opening of the American Mind

          The Difference of Man and the Difference if Makes

          The Paideia Program

          The Paideia Proposal

Comeius, The Great Didactic

Veith, Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping American

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Collections

The Great Books of the Western World

Gateway to the Great Books

Great Ideas Program

The book on Amazon.

Beowulf is a wonderful ancient story of a larger-than-life man named Beowulf. In the podcast we discuss our thoughts after reading the book and how Beowulf is a timeless story.

Features of this Episode

You know of C.S. Lewis. You know of J.R.R. Tolkien. But do you know Owen Barfield? You may after this episode. Barfield was one of Lewis' key interlocutors on his journey from Materialism to Christianity. How to persuade such a mind as C.S. Lewis, listen to find out.

In this episode, we discuss,

the audio is this is a bit rougher than normal

Politics. Everyone has an opinion on politics, even Socrates. In this episode we cover the Republic's Book 8.

We discuss:

In this episode, we discuss Irving Babbit’s EssayTwo Types of Humanitarians Bacon and Rousseau.

We discuss

The basis of the poets is story. A story is an imitation of life. Why do we love stories? Why is there Hollywood and Bollywood? What should Christian make of these stories? In this episode we will discuss the purpose of stories according to Aristotle, the genres of stories, and how Christian should engage them.

Leisure the Basis of Culture (1948) is a classic praising the liberal arts. Josef Pieper argues that to build a meaningful life, we must be willing to practice leisure. Instead of always working on maximizing our time to be the most productive, Pieper says we must work to live. In our podcast we discuss his 70 page book.

Features on this podcast:

Why do so many philosophers and poets call for a slower life? Why would Kierkegaard prescribe silence for modern ills (in the late 1800’s !)? Listen to this podcast to slow down and not miss out on what silence can teach us. 

In this podcast we discuss:

Recommended Works by Kierkegaard

How should we understand God? How should we begin to approach understanding God? Is the Bible literal when it describes God? This episode we sit down with our friend Shane Scott, and preacher and a Ph.D. student. He has a wonderful way of explaining things and what better thing to learn about than the nature of God.

In this episode we discuss:

This episode is about how we study and the habits we have to study. If you're someone whole likes to talk about productivity and habits, this is your type of episode.

In this episode we discuss

What is a soul? Can we name its parts? What does a soul have to do with a city? This episode covers Plato’s Tripartite Soul. A scintillating idea that once you understand it, you’ll see it everywhere. And we do mean everywhere. Listen up, because Plato is handing out red pills.

In this episode we discus James Emery White’s bookA Mind for God. Dr. White has many insights on what it means to think Christianity and how to engage the culture by going back to the past.

Creating a reading habit of difficult books is hard. We know there is a payoff after and even during reading those difficult books, but getting started is difficult. On the podcast, Abe and Sam discuss their own journey to reading difficult books and how they continue to read them.