It’s no secret that the modern western man is anxious, restless, and discontent. Compared to earlier generations, he finds himself far lonelier, more heavily medicated, and spiritually malnourished.

Even the most well-adjusted of individuals suffer from a sense of malaise and silent desperation — an unspoken feeling as if life is not what it should be, or something is missing, or that one is unwell in a manner that defies understanding.

Indeed, whether one is impoverished, or a high level executive, or a run of the mill family man: a lingering sense of unease seems to follow him, making him “modern.”

But why is this so?

Why is modern man, by far the most materially prosperous of any generation, so fundamentally unwell?

Josef Pieper understood the source of modern man’s dread. He wrote a famous essay, Leisure the Basis of Culture, explaining why man is so spiritually unhappy, what’s missing from his life, and how he can recapture his lost sense of humanity.

Today’s article will be the first in a four part series on Pieper’s theme of leisure: what it is, why we’ve lost it, and how we can recapture it. To understand the fullness of leisure, is to understand the fullness of human nature, what’s missing from our souls today as moderns, and how we can recapture it to live well.

But to properly understand leisure, we must first understand where we are as a civilization today, and how everything went wrong…

The New Modern Man

Well how did everything go wrong?

For this, we must look to German philosopher Ernst Junger. He was one of the earliest minds to diagnose the revolutionary changes of “modern society,” that created, “modern man.”

Junger came to this realization as a veteran of World War I.

He, like many others, noted the absurdity of the war — not just from a political view, but on the frontlines itself. There was no human dignity to be found, no “honor,” to be won, nor opportunity for valor. Instead, war felt like a factory: soldiers as cogs in a machine sent to slaughter.

More interesting, however, was his return home.

In a strange sense, he felt this “factory,” sensation back in Germany during peacetime. Industrialization paved ways for massive factories and, and workers were more literally cogs in a machine.

In other words, modern society distinguished itself via “total mobilization.” Both war and peace were sapped of human dignity, in favor of an all-encompassing embrace of work, functionality, and productivity.

Junger makes this clear in his work Der Arbeiter, where he describes the Arbeiter (the Worker) as a new Gestalt, a totalizing form that’s remaking man, technology, and the state into a single integrated whole. In other words, the modern world is reshaping the soul of human nature by reducing him into a worker. No longer is he an ensouled being with dignity, but a mere piece of State-machinery.

Strangely, Junger almost seems to celebrate this change, but Pieper differs. He thought Junger’s diagnosis was brilliant, yet claimed nothing could be worse than man’s nature reducing itself to merely work and productivity.

If man is but a worker, then he becomes expendable. It’s only by reducing him to a “worker,” that the trenches of WWI, or the dehumanizing conditions of factory life, or the agonies of life in the mines, could ever be justified.

Pieper’s answer to Junger is far simpler: rediscover leisure.

The Total World of Total Work

Pieper introduces his essay with a simple claim, “leisure is one of the foundations of western culture.”

This draws back to Plato and Aristotle, who said the final aim of our labors is leisure. It’s also mandated in Scripture — work six days, so that you may rest on the seventh.

Yet Pieper says modern culture today has explicitly inverted this, quoting Max Weber:

“One does not work to live; one lives to work.”

It’s eerie how natural this sounds to modern ears. The common man could say the same thing at a local bar, and all listeners would nod their heads in lamentation.

Now Pieper’s critique of modern culture isn’t simply over the 40 hour work week, nor an economic argument about fair wages for the common man. Strikingly, he says all classes suffer from a lack of leisure and embrace of total work:

“Like the wage-earner, the manual worker, and the proletarian, the educated man, the scholar, too, is a worker… he too is harnessed to the social system and takes his place in the division of labor.”

But how is the scholar a worker? Shouldn’t the “ivory-tower,” professor be the peak of leisure?

Pieper says no. Leisure does not just mean reading books, nor even abstaining from work. Leisure is about rediscovering what a true education looks like.

A Servile Education

At the risk of redundancy — the loss of leisure in modernity has been replaced by the cult of productivity and embracement of total work.

All human behavior must be oriented to utilitarian ends, the “common need,” or some economic purpose. You must be useful.

Pieper laments that this belief system has engrained itself in modern education systems too:

“The worker’s world, as Ernst Junger puts it, is ‘the denial of free scholarship and inquiry.’ In a consistently planned “worker,” State there is no room for philosophy because philosophy cannot serve other ends than its own or it ceases to be philosophy…

The ancients, however, maintained that there was a legitimate place for non-utilitarian modes of human activity, in other words, the liberal arts”

We can understand this easily. Growing up, it was far more likely you were told education was for “getting a real job,” than it was, “learning virtue to liberate your soul,” which was the traditional view of education.

To put it simply then, the problem of modern man’s spiritual malaise is due to the cult of work and productivity, which has engrained itself into every fiber of the public domain.

We’re technologically prosperous, and spiritually impoverished. We have smart phones, cars, and climate controlled homes, and spend nights binging tv shows and hedonistic pursuits to numb the pain of being strangers in our own bodies.

Of course then, the problem is not just education — we have no issue teaching mathematics, science, or music as such.

The problem is a philosophic and theological issue:

“[we must] dig down to the roots of the problem and so base our conclusions on a philosophical and theological conception of man.”

And so the problem of leisure is the problem of human nature:

What kind of beings are we? What part of our humanity has been lost, and how do we rediscover who we actually are?

The Usefulness of “Uselessness”

Thus far, we’ve been stressing the “problem,” of modernity. We’ve been painting a coherent picture as to why modern man is anxious, unhappy, overworked, and struggling with the existential despair of an existence that feels meaningless.

We must understand and properly diagnose the problem before we can fix it.

Pieper now introduces a solution by invoking a contrast between observation and contemplation:

“Observation is a tense activity; which is what Ernst Junger meant when he called seeing an ‘act of aggression.’

To contemplate, on the other hand, to “look,” in this sense, means to open one’s eyes receptively to whatever offers itself to one’s vision, and the things seen enter into us, so to speak, without calling for effort or strain on our part to possess them.”

Pieper says modern man is stuck in the strenuous activity of observation, and has forgotten how to contemplate reality.

He then invokes the middle ages, who distincted between ratio and intellectus:

• Ratio is the discursive mind at work (searching, comparison, abstracting, etc.) It’s effortful by nature.

• Intellectus, by contrast, is the mind’s capacity for simple, receptive beholding. It’s what Aquinas called simplex intuitus, a simple gaze that takes in truth the way the eye takes in light, without labor.

Pieper’s argument is that human knowing has always involved both — but modernity has effectively forgotten intellectus exists at all, collapsing all knowing into ratio, into work. To know something, in the modern view, is to have earned it through effort. The idea that truth might simply give itself to a receptive mind sounds, to modern ears, like mysticism at best or laziness at worst.

So the first path to leisure then (and escaping the modern trap of total labor) is to rediscover the lost art of contemplation (intellectus). Such is the practice that places man back into harmony with his own being, and restores his relationship to reality at large.

Next week, we’ll continue this diagnosis by observing the deadly vice of acedia (the key driver of the “modern worker mentality,”) and how we can conquer this vice to make contemplation a norm in our daily lives.

An honest appreciation of the Western intellectual tradition requires a careful inquiry into Church history.

Whether you’re of the faith or not, the Church was the dominant philosophic and theological paradigm of Western Civilization for well over a millennium.

And the best way to understand Church teaching and its influence on civilization is through a careful inquiry into the “Doctors” — the teachers the Church holds up as authoritative.

Here, you’ll find intellectual giants like St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas — whose treatises are among the most influential accounts of God, the human soul, and life’s meaning ever written.

And yet, there’s one particular doctor whose inclusion is surprising at first glance. It was an illiterate, uneducated woman, who strove to live a quiet life of prayer and seclusion.

Instead, she was thrust into the public domain of political life, provided aid to countless souls during the Black Plague, became world-famous for her piety, and even had a personal meeting with Pope Gregory XI — where she helped convince him to relocate the Papal office back to Rome.

This woman was St. Catherine of Siena.

But why was this illiterate woman so celebrated? Why is she venerated by the Church as an equal to the greatest intellectual minds who ever lived?

In short, she understood a truth of the human condition that goes beyond intellectual grandeur. Her life was a living embodiment of spiritual surrender that helps the human soul become what it most truly is — to live a near-perfect life of self-forgetfulness that leads you to find your truest self, and live in harmonious communion with the divine.

Here’s what St. Catherine of Siena taught about the human soul, and how to perfect its orientation to God.

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Today’s article has been inspired by an incredible project by Evan Amato and The Culturist to restore classical beauty back into modern civilization.

The Makings of a Saint

St. Catherine was born in 1347, and distinguished herself early by a deep devotion to God and a rich interiority of spirit.

To her parents’ chagrin, she rejected marital arrangements and devoted her life to Christ at 7 years old, following the ways of a lay Dominican.

Her early life followed a strict asceticism of prayer, fasting, and charity. She liked to envision her father as Christ, her mother as Mary, and her brothers as the apostles — humbly serving them — and was quick to give the poor what little food or clothing she had.

Accompanying her piety were frequent visions of Christ which enthralled her into ecstasy. These visions were a constant throughout her life, though Catherine never renounced her worldly affairs, affirming that even an unhealthy attachment to spiritual ecstasy could corrupt the purity of a soul devoted to love.

Contemporaries described her in these states as almost unrecognizable, rigid, radiant, sometimes bearing wounds no one could explain. It’s a strange kind of testimony in which those closest to her didn’t just hear her wisdom, but watched her body strain toward something beyond it.

To the skeptic, this mysticism sounds off-putting, but Catherine’s defenders point to the fruits of her life. She did not appear an unstable mystic; her spirit imbued a peaceful joy that attracted all in her presence. She grew a group of followers devoted to her ministry, who faithfully called her “mama,” for her maternal devotion.

The more Catherine humbled herself, the more the world demanded her counsel:

She indefatigably provided aid amid the Black Plague. She advised the Pope to relocate the papacy from Avignon to Rome. She helped negotiate peace in a war-torn, tumultuous Florentine Republic.

This article isn’t meant to stress the significance of her worldly affairs, but to answer why the leading political and spiritual authorities of her day venerated her as a genuine authority.

What exactly did this illiterate woman know of the human spirit, that even the greatest powers of the day bowed to her wisdom?

The Bridge to God

To appreciate Catherine’s teachings, we have to look at her work.

First, recall that her writings were not systematic like Aquinas. They were dictated to a scribe, and read as affective and experiential: closer to an intense love letter than a logical treatise.

Perhaps the most important metaphor Catherine used to describe her teaching is Christ as the Bridge.

She likens the fallen world to mankind drowning in a river of sin, saved by Christ, who was sent by the Father to be a bridge to beatitude.

The bridge tracks the soul’s ascent to God, and follows 3 steps:

“The feet of the soul, signifying her affection, are the first step, for the feet carry the body as the affection carries the soul…

[The second step] manifests to you the secret of His Heart, because the soul, rising on the steps of her affection, commences to taste the love of His Heart, gazing into that open Heart of My Son, with the eye of the intellect, and finds It consumed with ineffable love…

[Finally] the soul reaches out to the third—that is—to the Mouth, where she finds peace from the terrible war she has been waging with her sin”

Nominally, the 3 steps of the bridge are titled:

1. the feet

2. the side/heart

3. the mouth

But what is the point of this abstract language?

It’s made more clear when we recall St. Catherine’s assertion of the 3 powers of the soul: will, understanding, and memory.

In other words, the bridge can be restated as such:

• The Feet = the human will learning to long for God

• The Side = the maturation of intellect via contemplation of God

• The Mouth = perfection of love by remembering life is a gift freely given by Him

The bridge then, is but the map of the ascent to God via maturation of the three powers of the human soul, perfected by charity.

As she succinctly concludes:

“On the first step, then, lifting her feet from the affections of the earth, the soul strips herself of vice; on the second she fills herself with love and virtue; and on the third she tastes peace”

Most importantly, the bridge is held together by Christ’s blood.

For Catherine, the blood shed on the crucifixion is the pinnacle of charity — a selfless gift for the good of man — and to meditate upon it is to give the soul courage to suffer.

Catherine believed this so fervently that her reported last words were “sangue, sangue” (blood, blood).

The point of the metaphor, it seems, is that the soul ascends to God by persevering in pain and heartbreak for the sake of charity, and that the courage to do so comes from meditating on Christ’s own suffering. Such meditation gives the soul a strength that surpasses understanding, as testified by Catherine’s own life.

The Cell of Self-Knowledge

If the bridge of Christ is the map of ascent, then the Cell of Self Knowledge is Catherine’s tool to perfect the soul’s relationship to the divine.

Surprisingly, it reads as an unwitting maturation of a lesson from Socrates.

Socrates, the wisest man to have ever lived, famously “knew that he knew nothing at all,” and took seriously the Delphic maxim to “know thyself.” Later, in Plato’s Alcibiades I, he asserts that you come to know yourself through knowledge of the soul, and that this is facilitated by gazing into the eyes of a Platonic lover — usually a teacher who selflessly cares for his student.

In other words, self-knowledge in philosophy was reached through a selfless love of two souls united in shared desire for the Good.

Catherine said the same: self-knowledge comes from love.

Here’s the breakdown of her Cell of Self-Knowledge:

1. You cannot love your neighbor until you know yourself, and you cannot know yourself until you look into the mirror of God. When you look at God, you realize you are nothing, and God is everything. God is said to have told her: “I am He Who Is; you are she who is not.”

2. God doesn’t need your love, and so demands you share it with your neighbor instead — as he told Catherine: “I require that you love me with the same love with which I love you. This you cannot do to me... you must give it to your neighbor.”

Notice how self-knowledge again requires gazing into the eyes of a lover. But for Catherine, the true lover is God, and only God’s love gives you true self-knowledge — and only this knowledge of self allows you to fully share love with your neighbor.

This is why the great saints, even humble souls like Mother Teresa, had an indefatigable capacity to love others.

They were not great-souled by their own nature, but through their love of God; their souls overflowed in charity because they sought first the presence of the divine.

As Mother Teresa put it:

“If I didn’t pray to God each day, then my soul would be too poor to help the poor.”

Embodying Sainthood

St. Catherine’s mysticism often sounds off-putting to moderns. We tend to be skeptical of the spiritual life, let alone ecstatic visions of higher realities.

Yet this is precisely why her teaching is valuable to us today. One need not be a believer to discern real truths about the human soul through St. Catherine. She is a living testimony that man cannot live off bread alone.

Not only did she literally abstain from food in her fasting — she nourished her soul with a charity that was desired by all who came into contact with her. Her teachings, then, are not meant to be studied, but practiced.

To begin an active prayer life, and an active service of selfless charity, is to begin contemplating like St. Catherine, to reach a humility so gentle it can move mountains, if not papal offices.

And go check out this amazing project to bring St. Catherine to life in a newly commissioned, life-sized portrait!

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If you want to fully appreciate the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s literary genius, then the Fall of Numenor is a must-read.

The work appears in The Silmarillion, following the collapse of the greatest human civilization to ever appear in Middle Earth. This story not only provides you with the rich history of Middle Earth, but functions as a meditation on human nature, politics, and empire.

In the collapse of Numenor is a warning of how all great civilizations begin to die and collapse, and it’s not for the primary reasons you’d suspect.

Tolkien suggests that civilizations rarely collapse because they become hegemonically weak. More often, they collapse after becoming so powerful that they forget who they are — and begin striving to attain that which man by nature was never meant to possess.

So the Fall of Numenor becomes an invaluable story to grasp the rise and fall of human empire, the nature of man, and how the fate of civilizations ultimately depends upon the souls of the men who lead them.

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A Gift from the Divine

Numenor’s history begins thousands of years before the Lord of the Rings takes place.

In the height of the second age, the Valar (angels) gifted the island kingdom of Numenor to the descendants of men who fought nobly against the Dark Lord Morgoth. It proved to be a prosperous kingdom, benefiting from its fertile land, merchants, and ample trade routes.

Through commerce and maritime technology, it became a powerful empire, its people beloved by God and the Valar. There was only one rule placed on their kingdom — they could never sail west to the Undying Lands of immortality.

At first glance, the command seems almost arbitrary. Why would the Valar deny such a blessed people an even greater blessing?

Through this command, Tolkien is highlighting a classic piece of wisdom in antiquity: every created being has its proper limits. One of the greatest temptations mankind must conquer is the temptation to reject his nature and strive beyond divinely ordained limitations (think the Garden of Eden).

Nonetheless, the Numenorians seem to have a good deal — a rich kingdom that enjoys peace, long life, and ample prosperity beyond all desire… but unfortunately, human desire proves insatiable.

As generations passed, the Numenorians grew forgetful of their favor with the Valar. They began to resent their inability to sail West, wondering why they need be inferior to the divine.

This becomes the first crack in civilizational collapse — a cultural amnesia that results in impiety and ignorance of one’s roots. A civilization begins to decay the moment its people forget that their greatest blessings were first received as gifts.

For the now restless Numenorians, they adopt a new strategy to console their discontent — endless expansion.

The Rise of Empire

Rather than sail West, the Numenorians expanded East into Middle Earth.

They became a maritime empire, and amassed their army to colonize other peoples under their rule. In fact, they were so powerful that the Dark Lord Sauron himself, upon seeing the Numenorian army, surrendered without conflict.

This could have been the Numenorian’s crowning glory — to permanently defeat the evil war lord who later became the main antagonist of LOTR. Instead, however, the Numenorians committed a grave folly:

They brought Sauron back to their empire as a prisoner.

This might sound merciful at first, but strange things started happening. Reportedly, King Ar-Pharazon began having dialogues with Sauron. Not much later, Sauron was allowed reprieve from his prison cell — touring the castle on house arrest. In due time, he became the King’s primary advisor.

Why did Sauron become so valuable?

He knew the King’s greatest fears — and the fears of the Numenorian people — that they were going to die. He discovered their desires to sail west to the undying lands of Valinor, where immortal life could be grasped.

Notice then that Sauron’s most devilish vice was not raw power, but deceit. He was able to corrupt his listeners by twisting natural fears or desires, while tempting mankind with transgressive counsel that validated their vicious desires.

In fact, Sauron promised that all their desires could be satiated, including immortality, if they did but one practice:

Worship the Dark Lord Morgoth.

A temple was then constructed in his name. The old religious order — faithful to Eru (God) and the Valar — was persecuted. Traditional temples, rites, and relics were shattered. Morbid new religious practices were put in place. It’s said that even human sacrifice became a norm in the temple of Morgoth.

At first glance, this appears like the moment Númenor falls. It reasonably cannot get worse than blasphemy, idolatry, devil worship, and human sacrifice.

Yet Tolkien reconciles this idolatry as a symptom of Numenor’s ills, rather than a root cause. Long before the devil worship changed, the hearts of the people had already grown rebellious in spirit, yearning for power, longevity, and even immortality.

As such, the worst of their evils has yet to come.

Sauron would trick Ar-Pharazon into committing the one unforgivable transgression against the divine. A crime that would result in not just the destruction of Numenor, but a permanent cataclysm that would forever mar the lands of Middle Earth.

Here’s what happened…

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Of all the great thinkers in the Western Canon, the ancient historian Thucydides is perhaps the most wrongfully overlooked.

It’s understandable why. He’s considered a founder of political realism — the “Machiavelli” of Ancient Greece — with a relentlessly pessimistic account of human nature. For Thucydides, war is the great revealer of mankind, stripping away the comforts of peace and exposing what men become when fear, honor, and self-interest rule.

And nowhere is this assertion made more clear than in the infamous Melian Dialogue.

It’s one of the most brutal episodes in all of ancient history, in which a small Greek colony begs for its life against a colonizing empire. Yet this dialogue’s value lies precisely in its darkness. To understand the Melian Dialogue is to confront the greatest tragedies of a fallen world, and to ask whether your own beliefs about justice, morality, and God can withstand them.

For that reason, Thucydides’s value transcends that of an ordinary historian. He’s the ultimate moral testing ground. Any philosophy or religion that claims to explain the human condition must first survive contact with him.

Here, then, is the dark account of the Melian Dialogue, and the timeless truths it reveals about the human condition.

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A Possession for All Time

The Melian dialogue is recorded in Thucydides’ Histories (Inquiries) into the Peloponnesian War.

Before we get to the dialogue itself, let’s recap some of the key arguments Thucydides asserts in his work.

First off, he has a concise account of human nature, positing that mankind is motivated by three forces:

1. Fear

2. Honor

3. Self-interest

He says the most honest account of human nature is to analyze what scares him, what feeds his ability to be honored and celebrated, and what practically motivates him for gain. When compared to the tradition of natural law, this is arguably a reductive account of human nature — but its simplicity is crucial to understanding Thucydides’ genius.

That’s because his next claim is easily as powerful as it is controversial:

“War is a rough teacher that brings most men’s characters down to the level of their fortunes.”

He claims this is a universal truth of the human condition. Namely, wartime reveals the human condition most clearly, because it strips away the excesses and decadence of civilized man in times of peace, and shows you what remains in life or death situations.

And the grim reality of what remains is made most clear in the Melian dialogue itself.

A Dark Debate

The Melian dialogue takes place between Melos and Athens. The former is a small civilization — allied with Sparta, but who wants to remain neutral in the war.

Athens is a superpower who demands Melian loyalty. They approach the small colony with a simple ultimatum:

“Ally with us, or die.”

Athens asserts neutrality is not an option, for they cannot risk appearing weak to their allies whose loyalty they rely on. They reason that peace is mutually beneficial:

Athens gets a tax-paying ally

Melos maintains its livelihood

Nonetheless, the Melians sue for peace. They refuse to ally, but appeal to argument and reason to avoid war. Their arguments can be summed up in four points:

1. You can’t sack us, for that would be unjust in the eyes of man

2. You can’t sack us, for that would be unjust in the eyes of the gods

3. Imagine what the world would think of your atrocities?

4. Sparta is our ally, they’ll save us

Athens’ rebuttals to these points are simple. They infamously assert:

“The strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.”

In other words, Athens is free to sack Melos on the account of their strength, because this is how the world works. The human sense of justice is meaningless in the face of force. The opinions of the world don’t matter either — for they are powerless to stop Athens. Sparta won’t come to save Melos either, for it’s not in their self-interest to do so.

And to give the Athenians credit, they were proven correct on all accounts above. Yet their most chilling rebuttal is their account of divine justice:

“Neither our pretensions nor our conduct are in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.

And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do.”

The Athenians assert it’s moral to sack Melos if they choose to, for they’re merely following the behavior of the gods, who rule as the strong do. In other words, the Athenians state that war reveals what justice truly is — not a virtue ensuring equality and protection to humans, but the normative right of all beings to assert dominance and take what they wish by force.

It’s not too dissimilar to the account of nature as that espoused by Hobbes — that the natural world is ultimately a war of “all against all.”

This final assertion effectively ends the debate of the Melian dialogue.

Melos chooses to fight rather than surrender, and Athens obliges.

What follows is the darkest episode in Thucydides’ writings — but also the reason the Melian Dialogue has endured for over two thousand years. To confront its conclusion is to learn how to stare into the abyss of human evil without surrendering your own humanity…

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Homeric vengeance is the biggest obstacle modern readers face in truly understanding Homer. The Iliad gets written off as antiquated slaughter from immature warriors; the Odyssey, as a poem glorifying “eye for an eye” bloodshed.

It’s understandable — the violence is jarring. But the uncomfortable reality is that it’s precisely Homer’s moments of vengeance that have offered humanity its greatest wisdom: what it means to be civilized, and how to move beyond bloodshed to actually preserve civilization.

This is because Homer’s moments of slaughter are rarely aimless, rather they’re often pedagogical and teach us a greater truth.

This is perhaps made nowhere more clear than in Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors. His epic killing spree goes far beyond personal vengeance, rather it’s Homer’s ultimate meditation on the genealogy of legitimate authority.

To say it more bluntly — to fully appreciate why Odysseus slaughters the suitors is to understand the framework that makes human civilization possible itself in the first place. In fact, you can even argue that Odysseus himself is the mythic archetype for the virtuous statesmanship that builds and maintains civilization.

Here’s how…

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An Unhappy Homecoming

When most readers think of the Odyssey, they imagine the famous beasts, islands, and adventures at sea, as Odysseus makes his way home.

In reality though, this poem isn’t so much about “returning home,” as it is “returning order to home.”

In fact, almost the entire second half of the poem follows Odysseus’ trials on Ithaca, as he attempts to overthrow the suitors.

Recall that the suitors — 108 young men — have been betraying the divine law of xenia (guest-host friendship) to plunder Odysseus’ wealth and attempt to marry his wife.

Thus there’s 3 levels of interpreting the Odyssey’s meaning:

1. A revenge story against suitors

2. Odysseus as protector of xenia — a man preserving the divinely sanctioned order of human affairs

3. Odysseus as the mythic archetype of judge and lawgiver, who builds civilization itself

It’s this third layer that asks our focus today.

Restoring Order to Home

Now before we get to the slaughter, let’s remind ourselves of the need for the slaughter.

The earliest books of the Odyssey showcase the suitors abusing Odysseus’ household, while his son Telemachus denounces them in vain.

How did such tyrannical young men overrun the household of their king?

Recall that Ithaca actually had laws, an assembly, and democratic-esque forms of structure in place. The problem is — there were no strong men to enforce these laws. All the strong men went off to fight at Troy. After 20 years of their absence, what remained were the now full grown suitors, and old men too weak to stop them.

This is the core truth of all politics — that force is the fundamental law of nature that precedes even justice itself. A set of perfectly just laws cannot stand a tyranny of unjust men. Thus, though justice is greater than force, the problem of force must be answered before justice can be established.

This later becomes Plato’s greatest concern. He recognizes that justice is far superior to force, and explicitly rejects the notion that “might makes right,” but he still has to address the problem of force.

For instance, The Republic asks “what is justice?” but in Book 2, before he even attempts a definition, he asks an even earlier question:

“Who’s going to police the police?”

All civilizations need strong men to protect them from invaders, but the polis must also protect themselves against these men who monopolize force.

This is the first step that makes Odysseus an ideal statesman — his return makes him the first threat to tyranny, because he’s an actual threat.

However, we’ll see it takes far more than brawn to save a household, let alone a kingdom…

Mending the Soul

Right now, it’s still not obvious how Odysseus dons the role of a mythic statesman.

After all, on the surface, all he does is come home and murder a bunch of criminals. Maybe the slaughter is justified, but it still appears barbaric.

The first detail we need to remember, then, is that Odysseus’ slaughter brings order to his household:

He reunites his family, purges the immoral, and rewards the loyal. A quick reminder of Aristotle’s politics helps us appreciate the significance of, “getting your house in order,”:

In his Politics, Aristotle explicitly argues that the household (Oikos) is the foundational microcosm of the city (Polis).

Odysseus is King of Ithaca, and yet true statesmanship begins with ordering his household right. The idea is, if you want to rule a kingdom, first rule your house.

And yet, Homer’s wisdom goes even deeper:

The first half of the poem — Odysseus’ journey home — requires him to first bring order to his soul.

When he left Troy, he was proud and arrogant. Though already wealthy from the war, he took to pirating and plundering neighboring islands. His faceoff with the cyclops also revealed his imprudence and pride — when he shouted his name in victory, which brought Poseidon’s wrath on Odysseus’ voyage.

In short, for the hero to come home, his soul had to be properly ordered. This doesn’t happen until Book 11 — when the gods call him to the House of the Dead. Here, he sees his deceased mother, brothers in arms, and all the past heroes of Greek mythology. It’s this disillusionment that makes Odysseus virtuous — allowing him to shirk his excessive love of glory and earnestly yearn to return home.

Thus, his 10 years of toil, heartbreak, and long suffering at sea gave him a wisdom and self-restraint that later proved necessary to conquering the suitors.

So to return order to Ithaca, Odysseus had to return order to his house, and to return order to his house he had to impose order on his soul.

This detail becomes the running theme of classical statesmanship — you cannot rule a kingdom, or even a family, well until you learn to rule yourself.

Pious Odysseus

The final piece of Odysseus’ statesmanship is his piety.

His slaughter isn’t just a personal vengeance, but the will of the gods. Recall that Athena is his protector, and primary helper in the slaughter, and that Zeus himself gives a divinely sanctioned sign right before the slaughter takes place.

The point is that Odysseus was not just strong, nor wise in his own eyes, but an executor of divine justice. His vengeance was truly just because it was not rooted in his opinion, but the authoritative decree of the divine.

This last point is not merely mythic, but necessary in history:

• Minos, the legendary lawgiver of Crete, reportedly sought Zeus for his laws

• Lycurgus, the historic lawgiver of Sparta, first sought the Oracle of Delphi

• Plato, in his laws, says the lawgiver’s laws reflect divine realities (and said atheism is a crime against human civilization as such)

Odysseus’ slaughter then, was ultimately venerated because he was protecting the divine law of xenia — making himself a friend of the gods who imposed order on reality.

The Mythic Statesman

The running theme of all these great thinkers and statesmen — from Homer, to Lycurgus, to Aristotle — is that the true statesmen is called to be a “conduit of Zeus.”

Odysseus himself is the mythic story that dramatizes the process.

The Trojan War made him virtuous in brawn, but it was his long suffering that ordered his soul to wisdom. The wise and shifty mind of Odysseus, complimented by his sheer strength, allowed a slaughter that was not so much blind vengeance as a protector of divine law (xenia) that restored order to his house and kingdom.

So too are all called to follow in his path — whether that’s restoring order to a kingdom or household alike. True statesmanship is not made possible through brute strength, or masterminding the perfect system of rationally constructed laws, but is made possible through a life long pursuit of virtue.

A well ordered soul can bring goodness out of a tyranny (Odysseus is proof), but a tyrant can only bring destruction to even the most prosperous of kingdoms. The art of statesmanship then, is but the art of living — for you cannot rule others well if you cannot rule yourself — and one who lives enslaved to their passions is anything but free.

The life of true rule then, is but the life of virtue.

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Pericles’ Funeral Oration is amongst the greatest, and perhaps most overlooked, speeches in human history.

It was delivered on the eve of the Peloppensian War — right before Athens and Sparta would engage in a grueling, bloody, decades long conflict for dominance over the Mediterranean.

But this speech’s relevance amounts to much more than a mere motivating war cry. In totality, it’s a revolutionary dialogue that reveals an important truth about human nature, and what happens when mankind tries to deify politics in place of the divine.

In short, what happens to mankind when politics becomes the new religion?

What follows, then, is a timeless warning: that the worship of the state leads ultimately to the destruction of the polis, and that Pericles’ speech even gestures toward an ancient warning first found in Scripture itself.

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In Praise of Greatness

Pericles’ Funeral Oration is distinct in that he gives an emphatic praise of the city of Athens itself.

Recall first, that the Athenian culture is in stark contrast to Sparta. The Spartans were a militant, pious, traditional people who celebrated action, warfare, and courage above all. The Athenians, by contrast, were democratic, cultured, and philosophic.

In a sense, this war was a conflict of word (logos) vs deed (ergon). The mindful Athenians vs the muscular Spartans.

Pericles then, praises Athens’ brilliance in mind:

“Our strength lies… in that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.”

This “mind,” is not just a reference to philosophy, education, and culture — but technology too. Athens had a dominant navy and scientific culture. Their technical mastery is what enabled them to have a strong navy, become a maritime powerhouse, and expand their empire throughout the Mediterranean.

In fact, Pericles even goes on to call Athens the “school of Hellas,” or the cultural, intellectual hub of all Greece. And if you think that sounds prideful, it’s just the beginning.

Pericles’ most jarring claim is what follows:

“We shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. For we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity.”

This rejection of Homer could not be more radical. Recall that in Athens, for centuries, Homer was the poet who grounded all education. The meaning of life in Ancient Greece was about seeking immortal glory (kleos) through honorable deeds in which poets could deify your name.

Now Pericles says, “we don’t need Homer anymore, Athens shall be our immortal glory.”

In other words, he has deified the polis. Politics is the new religion, for Athenians can be assured of immortality by expansion, servitude, and exaltation of their empire.

And believe it or not, Pericles was proven correct.

The Athenian Golden Age

This might sound strange at first — the oldest warning in literature is do not worship earthly things. Piety is giving due reverence to the gods, and the worship of worldly things is idolatry.

Yet, one has to give Pericles his due:

Athens was amongst the highest, greatest, and most cultivated civilizations in human history at the time, and it came precisely due to civic pride in their own polis.

Recall Pericles’ days were the historic golden age of Athens. It was this precise era of polis worship that birthed the likes of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, along with the legendary tragedians of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comic playwright Aristophanes.

Beyond the arts — science and mathematics saw expansion through the likes of the Pythagoreans and later Aristotle — and Athens was made incredibly wealthy through its navy and expansion.

In other words, one of the greatest, most beautiful, and intellectually sophisticated civilizations to have ever existed in history, was a civilization birthed out of a civic pride that deified its own political and empire-centric ambitions.

And yet, Athens’ history is more than a two-dimensional celebration of glory.

Its greatness carried within it the principle of its own undoing. The city did not fall by chance, but according to a pattern older than history itself — a pattern first articulated in the opening pages of Scripture.

What follows is that pattern, and how it came to be fulfilled in the fall of the greatest civilization of early antiquity.

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The greatest disaster to befall Modern Civilization was the persecution of the common man.

Chesterton articulates this in his essay aptly titled… The Common Man.

He laments the worst feature of modernity is not its tendencies to chastise tradition, celebrate taboos, or embrace libertine freedom — rather he says it’s our contempt for the ordinary.

Specifically, we’ve not just become apathetic to truth, beauty, and tradition, but we’ve learned a direct contempt for the smallest, ordinary citizens of our country — the common man.

Today then, we’ll see what makes someone a “common man,” why that common man is under attack, and why the common man lifestyle ought to be protected at all costs.

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Uncommon Emancipation

Chesterton begins his essay with commentary on modern emancipation — or freedom from traditional morals and norms.

His thesis is blunt:

“Modern emancipation has really been a new persecution of the Common Man. If it has emancipated anybody, it has in rather special and narrow ways emancipated the Uncommon Man. It has given an eccentric sort of liberty to some of the hobbies of the wealthy, and occasionally to some of the more humane lunacies of the cultured. The only thing that it has forbidden is common sense, as it would have been understood by the common people.”

In short — modern emancipation oppresses the common man.

Before we explain his reasoning, let’s briefly define the common man.

Chesterton says he’s your average working class citizen with normative desires:

• Work an honest job

• Enjoy leisure with friends

• Get married and start a family

Conversely, modern emancipation is not about maximizing the freedom of the common man, rather a celebration of the transgressive and taboo. This traces back to the logic of classical liberalism — which states that the individual is the ultimate reality, and the highest good in life is autonomy.

The golden rule of liberalism as practiced today is, “don’t impede my freedom, and I won’t impede yours.”

This sounds fine on the surface — but how exactly does this oppress the common man?

Well, if autonomy is the highest good, then modernity rejects any values that constrain it — like classical conceptions of morality, truth, and justice.

If the pre-modern view said man is a social animal who is happiest when he has a family — and is both a valued and valuable member of a society — the modern view says such ideas were falsehoods. True happiness is simply the authenticity of embracing your passions and whims — whatever they may be.

We can now further appreciate Chesterton’s defense of the common man:

The problem is not that modern civilization has abolished the common man’s life. The problem is that modernity has abolished all the cultural honor from it. The ordinary desires of the common man — work, marriage, children, friendship, stable community — are no longer the central paradigm for a happy life. Instead, we celebrate the taboo, the transgressive, and the new… anything that exalts the expression of the individual.

Now, we need to get a deeper understanding of the war on the common man.

Freedom No One Asked For

Chesterton goes on to express how modern emancipation persecutes the common man. He lists off 3 examples of oppressive modern freedoms:

“if we begin with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we find that a man really has become more free to found a sect. But the Common Man does not in the least want to found a sect. He is much more likely, for instance, to want to found a family.”

“[today] the form of freedom mostly claimed is the freedom of the Press… Modern emancipation means this: that anybody who can afford it can publish a newspaper. But the Common Man would not want to publish a newspaper, even if he could afford it. He might want, for instance, to go on talking politics in a pothouse or the parlour of an inn.”

“it is the boast of recent emancipated ethics and politics not to put any great restraints upon anybody who wants to publish a book… Yet there is a great deal to be said for song, or even speech, of the old ribald sort, as compared with writing of the new sort”

To summarize:

1. Man is free to found a sect, but would rather found a family (discouraged today via Malthusianism/anti-natalist rhetoric)

2. Man is free to publish a newspaper, but would rather talk politics at the inn (discouraged by “old democracies,” and “new dictatorships…” or hate speech laws as we know them today)

3. Man is free to write a coarse book, but can be arrested for singing a coarse song

The trend is simple — freedoms that nobody wants are imposed on the Common Man, while freedoms the ordinary people want are restricted.

Thus we see that the Common Man is actually under attack by the Uncommon Man.

And that’s because there’s a malicious force at work against him…

In Defense of the Ordinary

If a single word defined the Uncommon Man, it would be contempt:

“It is quite certain that many modern thinkers and writers honestly feel a contempt for the Common Man; it is also quite certain that I myself feel a contempt for those who feel this contempt”

Out of this contempt for the common man arises globalism, and a growing desire for a strong centralized government to rule the masses. The common belief is the experts, the educated, and the elites know better than the common man.

Yet Chesterton muses that this ideology is disastrous:

“It is easy enough to say the cultured man should be the crowd’s guide, philosopher and friend. Unfortunately, he has nearly always been a misguiding guide, a false friend and a very shallow philosopher. And the actual catastrophes we have suffered… are almost invariably due to the highly theoretical people who knew that they knew everything.

The world may learn by its mistakes; but they are mostly the mistakes of the learned.”

What’s implied by Chesterton is this love of autonomy runs breeds a corresponding hatred of classical freedom — the flourishing that arises from loving truth. The celebration of autonomy is the condemnation of virtue. The embracement of tolerance is the intolerance to the orthodox:

Man is free to be anything but a Common Man.

And yet, Chesterton maintains a firm admiration for the Common Man:

“I do not adore him, but I do believe in him; at least I believe in him much more than I believe in them.”

This belief is not an all-out celebration of the Common Man. It’s not that ordinary citizens are bastions of virtue, or the heroes against the “evil, high-cultured,” Uncommon Elites. He simply recognizes that the simplicity of the Common Man makes them the guard rails of human nature.

Whereas modern emancipation seems eager to embrace a progress that emancipates us from our human nature itself, the simplicity of the Common Man’s desires becomes the torch bearer of humanity — that man is a social animal whose nature is perfected via communion, civic duty, faith, and familial love.

For indeed, “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”

Perhaps, then, the Common Man is civilization's last and best defense — not because he’s virtuous by default, but because he still wants the ordinary things that are actually worth wanting. To honor him then, does not require a grand political project (as espoused by our Uncommon ideals of today).

Instead, the proper honor is done through simplicity:

The simplicity of choosing the honest job, the family dinner, the Sunday at church, and the contented satisfaction of wanting nothing more.

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Eros and Psyche is one of the richest meditations on love and the human soul ever penned by the pagan imagination.

The tale — translated as “Love” and “Spirit” — is one of the most moving romance stories ever told.

In fact, it singlehandedly inspired C.S. Lewis’ final novel, Till We Have Faces, which he considered his magnum opus.

Yet this story is far more than a romance. It is one of mankind’s oldest reflections on the relationship between love and the human spirit.

For the myth of Eros and Psyche asks a timeless question:

Can the human soul ever be united with the love it desires most?

It offers one of the most profound and enduring answers to this question, which has captivated mankind for millennia. Today, we’ll explore the Eros and Psyche’s profound answer on the human soul, love, and how the two can be united in eternity.

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A Marital Curse

The story begins in an ancient Greek kingdom, following the King and his family.

The king had three daughters, one of which was named Psyche. She was the most beautiful of all and beloved. Strangely, however, Psyche was never married.

Her sisters had no troubles, yet no man ever approached Psyche.

Troubled, the King sought out an oracle of Apollo for marriage advice, who gave a strange prophecy:

“[Psyche’s husband] is no wight of human seed,
But serpent dire and fierce as may be thought,
Who flies with wings above in starry skies
And doth subdue each thing with fiery flight.”

In other words, Psyche is to be wedded to some immortal, serpentine spirit with “wings above in starry skies.” As such, Psyche is dressed in funeral garbs, brought to the edge of a cliff, and swept away by a western wind.

Already, we should notice something peculiar, namely, Psyche’s marriage resembles a funeral. The union she is called toward requires a kind of death before it can begin. As we’ll see throughout the myth, the soul cannot attain its highest fulfillment without offering a selfless sacrifice of sorts.

Eventually, the wind places Psyche in a paradisal temple — the home of her lover. However, we’ll find it’s no ordinary lover awaiting her.

Psyche meets her anonymous lover in the darkness of night. They consummate their longings for each other and begin a long romantic affair.

In the days, Psyche lives in paradise in her palace without a want, and in the evenings she is reunited with her lover. There is only one rule:

She can never look upon his face.

Hence we have the beginning of a happy marriage, but this marital arrangement itself raises a deeper question:

Why can the spirit [Pysche] not look directly upon love?

The myth never fully answers this question, yet it hints at an enduring truth. It’s often the case that the greatest and noblest loves of the human condition surpass our understanding. Like Psyche, we long for beauty, goodness, and love itself long before we possess the wisdom required to behold them directly.

This myth helps us appreciate the struggle, and yearn to mature in these very loves that make life meaningful.

That said, despite the paradise of Psyche’s new marriage, touble will soon be brewing.

Lonely in Paradise

Though Psyche spends her days in bliss, and even becomes pregnant, a dissatisfaction begins to emerge. She finds herself lonely, missing her family.

It’s important to stress this loneliness of Psyche, which not even Paradise and the perfect lover can satisfy.

We’re reminded of a universal truth, namely:

Man’s nature cannot be perfected in isolation.

She echoes Aristotle’s later assertion that man is a political animal. He cannot find himself, or the optimum level of fulfillment, living separated from his fellow man. Not even erotic passions, or a happy marriage, can quench the sorrow of the human soul in isolation.

Luckily, Psyche’s husband permits her to visit her family.

Though it’s a happy reunion, we find that jealousy soon sours the meeting. Psyche’s sisters envy her paradisal life and her mysterious lover, whose face she still has not seen. When they learn this, they convince Psyche to shine a light upon her sleeping husband — for surely she will discover he is some beast who has taken advantage of her.

Distraught, Psyche agrees to do so.

Yet upon her return to the castle, lamp in one hand, knife in the other, she is shocked at what she finds in her bedroom:

Her husband was none other than Eros — the god of love himself.

Consider the significance of this symbolism:

Psyche, whose name means spirit/soul, has already been united with Love, yet she cannot naturally trust this love, as suspicion mires her heart. It’s a classic case of mythic downfall, because man sought certainty where trust/fidelity/faith was asked of him.

The god awakens, sees that Psyche has betrayed him, and flees, leaving her abandoned.

This is the infamous climax that most readers remember. The great separation between Eros (”love”) and Psyche (”spirit”).

At first glance, the lesson appears bleak. The human spirit longs for a sort of heavenly love, yet cannot seem to hold onto it. Through fear, pride, jealousy, or mistrust, it repeatedly separates itself from the very thing it desires most…

Yet only half of the story has been told thus far.

Indeed, many know of the great divorce between Eros and Psyche, but equally important is what comes next:

Psyche’s grand pursuit of Eros.

For the remainder of the myth is devoted to a single question:

Can the human spirit, once separated from love, ever find its way back?

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For years, I hated Ancient Greek Literature.

Since elementary school, these archaic Greek myths were shoved down my throat against my will. I was told these stories, thinkers, and playwrights were important, but could not make any sense of them whatsoever.

As far as I was concerned:

• The pagan gods aren’t real, so these myths are bunk

• Homer Simpson had more to offer me than Homer the poet

• Socrates was poor, ugly, and bald — so he had nothing to teach me

You can chalk up this original ignorance to youthful arrogance. If the dictum is true that the most confident scholars are also the most ignorant — then I was the crowned monarch of the proudly ignorant; the blind leader of the blind masses proudly reveling in our blindness.

Thankfully, for all our sakes, I was humbled by father time. In university I discovered my love of literature. This love led me to discover, to my shock, that there are many figures smarter than me, and that perhaps I was not that smart after all. Truly, the greatest lessons are the ones you least want to learn.

Yet even as I persevered into a newfound love of classical literature, I remained baffled by the Greeks. I could not understand why all the greatest writers — from Virgil, to Dante, and even Lewis and Tolkien — were severely indebted to Ancient Greek myths, tragedians, and philosophers.

Yet I persevered in my inquiries of these obscure Grecian folks — for I was too stubborn to stay satisfied with my ignorance. Today, after years of inquiry, I could not be any more grateful for my perseverance.

Truly, with the exception of Sacred Scripture herself, there are no greater boons left behind for mankind’s flourishing than the corpus of Ancient Greek literature.

To ingratiate your imagination with the narratives and ideas from Homer to Aristotle is to witness the birth, maturation, and apotheosis of the intellectual pre-Christian western mind — which is ultimately your mind as a Westerner today.

To see, know, and love the Greeks then, is to see, know, and love yourself. Better than that, it’s to understand your human nature, your telos, and what contributes to the common good for your fellow man.

And believe it or not — according to the Early Church fathers — to pay close attention to the Ancient Greek development of thought is to see the workings of Providence playing out over centuries. To put it bluntly, if Christ became Incarnate in the fullness of time, then God used the Greeks as a crucial people to prepare mankind for that very revelation.

With all this said… it would be a shame to live a full lifetime, and die, without having read the Greeks.

Today then, I’m going to give a recommendation of 10 must-reads from the Ancient Greeks, to help you appreciate their true identity as a cornerstone of Western Civilization. May you find a similar joy in these texts as I have.

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1. The Iliad — Homer

Of course Homer starts this list. If Athens and Jerusalem are the cornerstones of the West, then Homer is to Athens what the Bible is to Jerusalem. Homer wasn’t just one poet among many, rather his Iliad and Odyssey were the literal education of Ancient Greece itself, lasting for roughly 400 years until Plato.

Yet the Iliad is often overlooked today. The modern outsider sees only carnage, destruction, and massive human egos in collision. But properly understood, The Iliad is one of the most enduring works in human literature — precisely because it’s the most relentless depiction of violence ever written.

In other words, this is not story of a mythic war from long ago, rather it portrays the ever-present hell-on-Earth that awaits when civilization collapses:

Indeed, civilization is a fragile thing, and very much worth preserving. No book ingrains that idea more than Homer.

2. The Odyssey — Homer

If the Iliad is “man at war,” then the Odyssey is “man at peace.” Odysseus endures every trial, tribulation, and temptation under the sun — from offers to immortality, to man-eating Cyclopeses, and facing the wrath of Poseidon himself.

But Odysseus is, in short, a man who wants to come home to his family. And this journey home is a universal longing — for all mankind finds themselves lost in a figurative wilderness — searching for a communion of friends and family, and a place of rest to ease our ever present sorrows and aching heart. Odysseus’ journey home then, is your journey home. Read this story carefully. Read it many times. Keep it close to your heart.

3. Theogony — Hesiod

Hesiod was a contemporary of Homer. Though far less famous today, he was once considered his equal.

The Theogony is a Greek creation account explaining the primordial structure of reality — how the cosmos emerged from Chaos, and how the gods themselves were born into a world of conflict, succession, and eventual order. What makes it philosophically remarkable is that Hesiod is asking a genuinely serious question:

What is the nature of things at the most fundamental level?

Notably, eros — love — plays a central role in that order. Both Plato and later Christian thinkers would take note of Hesiod’s claim that love is woven into the fabric of being itself. The Theogony is a primitive cosmology, yes — but it’s also the first sustained attempt in the Western tradition to answer the question every philosopher after him would inherit:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

(Honorable mention: Mythology — Edith Hamilton, a classic compendium of Greek myth.)

4. Oresteia — Aeschylus

Aeschylus is considered the “Father of Tragedy.” He, Sophocles, and Euripides are the 3 great Greek Tragedians whose plays are a bridge from Homer to Plato. In other words, these plays are the bridge from the mythological centric mind of Homer to the philosophic and intellectual mind of post Socratic Greece.

Reading these playwrights is like witnessing man begin to “wake up,” and rationally comprehend the cosmos in real time.

The Oresteia is the crown jewel of Aeschylus. It follows Orestes, who is commanded to avenge his father by killing his mother. But this act awakens the wrath of the Furies — primordial forces bound to blood guilt and family crime. The trilogy is one of the earliest sustained attempts to ask, in a serious way: what is justice?

(Honorable mention: Sophocles — Antigone)

5. Alcibiades I — Plato

Alfred North Whitehead famously said that all philosophy is “footnotes to Plato,” and there is truth in that.

Plato single-handedly reshaped Greek intellectual life. Before him, education was largely shaped by Homeric ideals of glory and honor. Plato turns that world inward: life is not about glory, but virtue, knowledge, and truth. He reframes human fulfillment around self-knowledge and moral order.

Alcibiades I is a perfect entry point. It was traditionally the first dialogue studied in Plato’s academy. Socrates attempts to redirect a politically ambitious young man toward self-knowledge:

If you would rule others, you must first rule yourself.

6. Apology — Plato

This is Plato’s most famous work, recounting Socrates’ trial for allegedly corrupting the youth and introducing impious ideas.

Socrates is condemned to death, yet remains remarkably untroubled. He would rather die than abandon philosophy. Even more striking is his defense: he is less concerned with self-preservation than with urging others toward truth and philosophical life.

He embodies the dictum that to philosophize is to learn how to die.

7. Phaedo — Plato

The Phaedo recounts Socrates’ final hours before his death. He suggests his trial in The Apology, was a “scam trial,” for he was condemned by inferiors who could not understand philosophy.

Instead, this final discussion in Phaedo is his real trial.

Why?

Because he is asked to defend the ultimate claim in all of philosophy:

That the philosopher should not fear death, but welcome it with peace. This is not because death is desired in itself, but because a life ordered toward truth, virtue, justice, and piety is already oriented beyond it.

If this argument holds, his death becomes the culmination of his life, and the ultimate triumph of philosophy over death. If it fails, then philosophy itself is placed in doubt.

8. Republic — Plato

This is Plato’s magnum opus. It attempts to answer the question “what is justice?”

Arguably no other work of Plato’s has drawn so much attention, curiosity, ire, and praise than this work. Idealists love it, Nietzsche hated it, Christianity embraced it — every great thinker/tradition has something to say about it.

To my estimation, the Allegory of the Cave is the greatest piece of philosophy ever written by a human being. It would be a shame to have lived a full life without encountering Plato’s Republic.

9. Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle

Aristotle, Plato’s student, was so revered in the pre-modern world that he was simply called “The Philosopher.”

He was philosophy’s first systematic thinker, who pioneered countless disciplines (science, logic, zoology, etc.), and created a framework to understand everything in reality.

His Ethics asks a basic question: what is the meaning of life?

His answer is eudaimonia — human flourishing or happiness — which is achieved through “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”

It is one of the most precise accounts of human fulfillment ever written: rigorous, structured, and deeply practical. Few works better explain what it means to live well.

10. Politics — Aristotle

Aristotle explicitly recommends reading the Politics after the Ethics. If ethics is about human happiness, politics is ethics at scale.

Man is, by nature, a political animal. We realize our flourishing not in isolation, but within a community ordered toward the good.

To live ethically is therefore to live politically — and to live politically is to participate in a shared pursuit of human flourishing with others.

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As we discussed last week, the Scouring of the Shire is the most important but overlooked chapter of Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien called it essential to understanding the full story, but few fans fully appreciate it because the chapter was omitted from the movies.

The Scouring of the Shire is famous for its political prophecies that are coming true in real time in England — but the deepest message of this chapter actually transcends politics itself.

To fully appreciate Tolkien’s genius, we have to understand Frodo’s crucial faceoff with the last standing villain of Middle Earth — the evil wizard Saruman.

Saruman’s last stand offers us a masterclass in Tolkien’s pedagogical vision of grace and mercy as the only true solutions to tyranny and human depravity. When you understand this vision, you understand the fullness of the LOTR trilogy — why Frodo was chosen, why the fellowship failed, why Boromir and Denethor died, and why the ring had to be destroyed instead of weaponized.

Today then, we’ll revisit the Scouring of the Shire to analyze Frodo’s final faceoff with Saruman, and Tolkien’s ultimate doctrine of mercy.

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An Unhappy Homecoming

As a reminder, the Scouring of the Shire takes place after Sauron has already been defeated.

Frodo and his friends return home victorious, but find their homeland in shambles. The Shire has been ravaged with industrialization, and ruffians have overrun the country. They’re led by Saruman who rules with an iron fist.

Though the situation appears dire, this scene is ultimately an anticlimax:

Frodo and his friends rally the masses, and defeat Saruman’s forces with ease at the Battle of Bywater.

But, it’s not the battle that matters, rather it’s the final conversation Frodo has with a newly defeated Saruman.

It’s this simple exchange that is perhaps the final and fullest triumph of Tolkien’s grace triumphing over evil.

The Tyrant’s Last Battle

This exchange takes place in the Shire, as a defeated Saruman is surrounded by Frodo and his army.

Though he’s defeated, he is not without his wits, deceit, and treachery, which can prove fatal if the hobbits are not careful.

Before we get to the exchange, let’s analyze Saruman’s motive for sacking the Shire.

It may come as a surprise at first, for his plot to rule the Shire appears desperate compared to the Saruman of old. Recall that one book ago, he was a powerful wizard vying to usurp the throne of dark Lord Sauron himself. By comparison, Scouring the Shire appears like a pitiful power grab… except Saruman wasn’t pursuing power at all.

His true motive for tyranny is, frankly, embarrassing:

“I have already done much [damage] that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives, and it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries”

It’s truly a pitiful utterance. Recall Saruman’s true form was a maia (angel), sent by God himself to help bring grace to Middle Earth. Not only did he betray his divinely ordained mission, but he fundamentally destroyed his soul. In addition to losing his powers, his life has resorted to a petty mission of revenge against Hobbits.

Frodo himself acknowledge’s Saruman’s humiliation:

“Well if that is what you find pleasure in, I pity you… go at once and never return!”

These words are surprising. Frodo and the Hobbits have every right to administer capital punishment, and yet Frodo lets him walk free. The hobbits, however, disagree. They shout Frodo down and begin chanting “kill him!”

Saruman mocks them in turn:

“Kill him! Kill him! If you think there are enough of you, my brave hobbits…

Whoever strikes me shall be accursed. And if my blood stains the Shire, it shall wither, and never again be healed!”

Notice how Saruman mimics Biblical Cain — the exiled murderer, forced to wander Middle Earth aimlessly, vows divine punishment to any who strikes him down. The connection exemplifies that Saruman’s soul — if not irredeemable — is about as close to purely corrupt as possible.

Yet still, Frodo calls for mercy:

“Do not believe him, he has lost all power, save his voice which can still daunt you, and deceive you, if you let it. But I will not have him slain. It is useless to meet revenge with revenge. It will heal nothing. Go Saruman, by the speediest way”

This might sound jarring at first. Saruman has attempted to enslave an entire people out of malice. He’s done nothing to warrant mercy nor repentance. Politically speaking, Frodo’s mercy is perhaps the most foolish and naive decision that a statesman can make.

The catch, however, is that Tolkien is not writing this passage as a political exhortation. He’s not saying that all statesmen should radically forgive crime. The message of this passage is actually a teaching on the doctrines of justice and mercy, namely:

True mercy is a grace that even presupposes the nature of justice itself.

Mercy can only be offered to one who commits an injustice, and therefore deserves punishment. Frodo and company were in the right to hang Saruman if they desired, but Frodo withholds the very justice that Saruman deserves — as an act of genuine pity for one who wishes goodness to an enemy that does not deserve it.

This might sound soft, or sentimental — and it would be if the story ended here — but it doesn’t…

Saruman is given a free escape, and you would rationally think he would take it — to run with his life in joy, live to fight another day, and perhaps commit more grave evils.

Yet Saruman’s reaction to Frodo’s mercy is anything but rational.

Instead, he glares with rage and a heart of wrath, clutching at a sword beneath his cloak.

What follows is not only the unexpected demise of Saruman, but a jarring glimpse into the true nature of evil — and Tolkien’s only solution to defeating such depravity without getting corrupted yourself…

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Can you find meaning while starving to death in a Nazi death camp?

Victor Frankl affirmed you could… and he knew from personal experience. He not only survived several such camps, but spent a lifetime afterwards with an obsessive study on one question:

How can human beings persevere through pain?

Frankl reveals not just the horrors of the gas chambers, but the depths of suffering in the psychology of its countless victims. And yet, only by trekking into the abyss does Frankl discover a true light in the human condition — a means to not just persevering through pain, but living a meaningful life in even the most meaningless pits of despair.

Today, we’ll explore the key ideas of Man’s Search For Meaning, to learn how man can live with meaning even inside a living hell.

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Prisoner Psychology

Frankl affirms that his book is not primarily about the horrors of the Nazi death camps, rather the psychological state of mind of its prisoners.

Specifically, he was curious about what was the common pattern amongst the survivors, compared to the many who perished.

Of course, blind luck played a major role, but this didn’t explain the full picture to Frankl. He was baffled by the fact that many prisoners who were physically strong and capable perished, while sickly souls who had no business doing manual labor persevered through years of torment.

It was a phenomenon that defied understanding, and not only until years later — after Frankl interviewed countless survivors — did he realize the main driver that helped a soul overcome the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp.

Your Choice is Your Destiny

Frankl said the primary driver of one’s survival came down to a matter of choice. Most simply, the choice between hope and despair.

Those who despaired that life was meaningless perished, but those who found a will to live uncovered a remarkable strength of soul. Hence despair saps the strength of even the strongest men, while hope allows a sickly soul to draw from a strength that defies understanding.

One recognizes then that man is more than mere flesh and bone, and his true self is discerned through a spiritual life.

Frankl himself would agree, and he said such a strength is drawn through a strong why. Every survivor Frankl talked to said they had a reason to live. Frankl himself said his single vision of one day reuniting with his wife is what enabled him to endure years of labor, torment, and suffering.

In his own words:

“He who knows the ‘why,’ for his existence will be able to bear almost any ‘how.’”

But how do you build a strong why?

It’s not just as simple as making up false scenarios in your head, rather your “why,” must have genuine substance. This substance can be built from three domains:

1. Love (mankind, neighbor, spouse, etc.)

2. Work

3. Suffering with dignity

The first two are fairly intuitive, but the last point is perhaps the most remarkable.

Frankl expands on how to suffer with dignity:

“Dostoevsky said once, ‘There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.’ These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of the their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”

He later quips that, though man was the evil creature who created the gas chambers, he’s the same creature who enters those chambers upright with dignity [in prayer].

The dignity of one’s suffering then, can even be found in the gas chamber itself, if man stays resolute in his faith, his regard for man, or belief that life’s beauty remains - even while its present ugliness defies understanding.

In this lens, Frankl is in great company with many of the West’s greatest heroes — who suffered with dignity. We can think of Boethius — sentenced to death — writing The Consolation of Philosophy, in his prison cell as a final gift to the world. We imagine Socrates drinking the hemlock, at peace, comforting his friends who mourned his demise in tears. And the quintessential example is, of course, Christ’s crucifixion.

Man was Made for… Love?

Yet Frankl’s most beautiful writing comes not from his direct writing about camp experience, but from his observations of human nature.

For instance, he said there’s only two types of people in reality — decent people, and indecent people.

Shockingly, however, he says this binary is not as simple as you’d think. He writes that many fellow inmates were vicious, indecent people, and many guards were decent people! Specifically, Capos were inmates who ratted out prisoners to guards for personal gain, while some guards displayed sympathy or even acts of kindness to prisoners when circumstances permitted.

One cannot but admire this degree of magnanimity in Frankl’s soul. His ability to distinguish decency and indecency suggests a willingness to forgive his enemies — at least those of a good-nature.

And this forgiveness leads to an unexpected conclusion of Frankl’s work. Namely, a universal exhortation to love:

“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

Frankl is not just stressing that love and forgiveness were necessary to “move on,” from the horrors of the prison camps. He says these are the most fundamental realities of human nature — that you most truly become yourself when you lose yourself in love.

This is made explicit here:

“The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”

So Man’s Search for Meaning becomes far more than a manual for surviving Hell on Earth. It’s not a modern day stoic’s guide to persevering in pain, rather it’s a guide to meet life’s sufferings with dignity such that you become your most fully human self.

We might recognize then, as Frankl suggests, that man was made for love. Frankl’s news is as horrifying as it is beautiful. The good news is, indeed, you can find meaning in a Nazi death camp, even in a gas chamber. The bad news is… you can find meaning in a Nazi death camp, even in a gas chamber.

It impresses upon us that life’s battlefield lies in our choices. That in the grand scheme, and the small, we always act in manners that breed either hope or despair. And Frankl says that there is never an excuse for despair. Though we may be victims, it is never permissible to play the victim and withdraw from life.

Yet perhaps that brutal truth is the most beautiful thing you can hear. It’s a reminder that dignity belongs to even the lowliest of human beings who remains upright, even if he enters a gas chamber. And given that our life is but a blink of an eye in the face of eternity, then perhaps there is no better way to meet one’s destiny than to have spent a life lived in such dignity.

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You don’t understand Lord of the Rings until you understand the Scouring of the Shire.

This was the penultimate chapter of the novel that was omitted from the movies. And yet, Tolkien himself considered it crucial to understanding the full scope of Lord of the Rings.

In fact, the Scouring of the Shire is one of the most politically prophetic writings of the modern era. Tolkien warned of several dangers that have since become realities in England today, 70 years later.

Today, we’ll do a deep dive on the Scouring of the Shire, to understand Tolkien’s warning on what creates a tyranny, how it relates to England today, and what it takes to restore a crumbling civilization…

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An Unhappy Homecoming

The Scouring of the Shire is considered an anticlimax in LOTR.

At this point, the ring has been destroyed, Sauron defeated, and Middle-Earth is saved.

But when Frodo and his friends return to the shire, they’re shocked at what they find:

The country has been overrun by ruffians — spearheaded by Saruman — in the name of industrialization. The populace of Hobbiton has been enslaved to feed this centralized machine of commerce.

What’s interesting, however, is discussing how the Shire fell so quickly. It wasn’t as simple as Saruman and his men marching in and announcing a hostile takeover. Instead, it was a defeat of slow and steady compromises that traces back to one figure:

Lotho Sackville Baggins.

This character is a distant relative of Frodo’s, who is driven by greed and acquisition. And it will be his very amoral greed that compromises the Shire and leads it to destruction.

Here’s how.

Lotho’s Rise to Power

Lotho — already a wealthy businessman — begins buying up all the land in the Shire. Over time he amasses great wealth and begins to have a monopoly on the realm’s real estate.

The result is a growing wealth inequality in which he becomes a sort of oligarchic robber-baron. In due time, shortages begin to run amok and public grievances arise. Lotho initially uses his wealth to cover his neighbor’s losses and debts, but the result is that they merely become dependent upon him. Soon enough, Lotho withdraws his support, and hires ruffians — men foreign to the Shire — to protect him.

As such, he becomes a centralized figure who controls the land, wealth, and police force, while the hobbits stay indebted to him. Soon enough, his ruffians begin committing crimes, and the hobbits are powerless to stop them. The few who speak out against these crimes, like Mayor Whitfoot, get imprisoned.

It’s precisely at this point that the Shire succumbs into a tyrannical state of commercialism.

Lotho rules with an iron fist, and destroys the beautiful countryside in order to create industrialized factories to continue expanding his wealth and empire. Yet it’s precisely this moment when the true leader of the Ruffians — Saruman — emerges, recognizing that the Shire is now ripe for the taking.

The Shire and Modern Day England

Now before we get to Saruman’s reign, it’s important to analyze the political warnings Tolkien shared through Lotho.

The first issue with the Shire is the complacency of the Hobbits. Though we often celebrate “life in the Shire,” Tolkien was also critical of hobbits:

They had grown soft, sheltered, and naive. The Shire was only peaceful due to the rangers of the north — who slaughtered the many beasts who would otherwise descend on the realm — while the Hobbits lived in blissful ignorance.

And it’s this lukewarm ignorance to evil, and apathy to virtue, that precedes tyranny.

Out of this slothful culture arises Lotho’s greed.

Lotho himself isn’t explicitly malicious — but his insatiable greed drives him to commit great evils. In other words, the spirit of tyranny is preceded by the commercial spirit of wealth, detached from morality.

It’s worth noting that the Shire parallels England.

For one, the Shire was inspired by Sarehole — Tolkien’s hometown. It was once beautiful and idyllic, but eventually ravaged by factories and industrial expansion, much like Lotho’s empire did to the Shire.

And just as the Hobbits grew dependent on Lotho’s welfare, so too did Tolkien fear the English people becoming dependent on the “modern welfare state,” of England.

The same can be said of property ownership — as owning real estate is now a luxury afforded to the wealthy few, but unattainable to the common man.

And perhaps the most dangerous precedent was the influx of ruffians sent in by Lotho. This echoes the precise grievances no politician in modern day England wants to discuss — immigration, censorship, and the rise of the police state.

Yet Tolkien foresaw it all — both how these issues would arise, why they’d become grave risks, and how to solve them.

Here’s what he says…

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Most people think eros is the enemy of human wisdom. In our modern, hyper-sexualized world, it becomes easy to adopt polarized opinions on eros — that we ought to either suppress it to “conquer lust,” or fully embrace it in the name of “free love.”

But classically speaking, eros was meant for far more than sexuality.

In fact, Plato argued that eros is the very gateway to appreciating beauty, virtue, and the divine.

In the Symposium, he shares his famous Ladder of Love, which claims to teach you how to train your eros to love beautiful things, so that your soul can ascend and contemplate the highest realities of beauty itself.

Today then, we’ll do a deep dive on Plato’s Ladder of Love, to learn how to perfect this ascent ourselves, and gain a deep appreciation of the highest form of Beauty.

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Plato’s Forms

First, let’s remind ourselves of Plato’s metaphysics.

Plato believed that reality was governed by the forms — an immaterial dimension where the highest reality of being was located. The ultimate form was the Good. Corresponding forms acted in unison, such as the form of Truth and the form of Beauty. Hence, Plato suggests that reality the cosmos is fundamentally predicated upon the forms of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

The good life was found through man contemplating these forms, and directing his life so that his soul was in harmony with the True, Good, and Beautiful.

As such, Plato’s Symposium asks, what is Beauty? How do we contemplate it? And how can we seek the form of Beauty itself?

Plato provides the answer to these questions through his famous Ladder of Love.

The Ladder of Love

Below is an outline of the Ladder of Love.

You’ll notice the Form of Beauty itself is at the top rung of the ladder. But the human soul’s ascent begins at the bottom of the ladder, at “a beautiful body.”

So how do we ascend the ladder?

The key is to understand your eros. Eros is the Greek word that corresponds to one’s romantic drive, or their passions. Plato’s first teaching is this:

Your eros fundamentally desires Beauty itself. Therefore, as a human, your goal is to channel and direct your eros so that it seeks Beauty.

Notably, Plato doesn’t instruct us to suppress our eros, but train it. The same erotic energy that can drive a man toward lust, addiction, and self-destruction can also drive him toward wisdom, virtue, and contemplation.

A proper contemplation of beauty then, promises to transform your very being itself to become beautiful.

Ascending to the Divine

Now let’s begin our ascent up the ladder.

First, why is the first rung “a beautiful body?”

Plato notes how, normatively speaking, beautiful people are the first things that inspire our eros in our youth. Think of your first crush, or the sight of a beautiful human being as you entered adolescence.

This love of a beautiful body is natural, and good, but not to be celebrated. It has to be matured. It would be incorrect to worship the body of your beloved — as that doesn’t lead to healthy relationships — rather it perverts your understanding of beauty and virtuous love.

The next step in your ascent is to mature from excessive love of a singular body, to appreciating beautiful bodies. This maturation doesn’t mean that you want to carnally engage with every beautiful person you see. It’s an intellectual maturation — you appreciation of beautiful bodies teaches you what makes a human body beautiful in a universal sense.

Here, however, we reach a problem, namely: physical beauty is fleeting.

All human bodies eventually age and lose their luster. Thus, we come to a turning point where our love of beauty matures in a deeply virtuous sense.

To mature our love of beauty beyond the physical, we turn interior — and learn to love beautiful souls.

Beauty and Goodness

The “love of beautiful souls,” means to love someone for their interior disposition — their virtues, desires, hopes, etc. In a sense, we love them for who they are.

This introduces a major maturation in our love of Beauty:

Our eros now has a moral element that accompanies it. A love of beautiful souls means that we learn to desire a selfless sort of goodness to our beloved. This begins to approximate a “true love,” that you find in a viruous marriage or friendship.

Notably, this point is where most of us tend to think a love of beauty ends — learning to apprecaite a beautiful and virtuous soul.

But notice on Plato’s ladder, we’re only halfway there. What follows is the truly transformative elements of beauty.

A Polis of Beauty

Once we learn to love virtue in a person, we naturally begin to ask what conditions help virtue flourish:

What kind of education produces noble character? What customs encourage justice? What habits cultivate courage?

In other words, we wish to see the beauty in our beloved reflected everywhere in reality. We want our very communities and civilizations themselves to reflect the beautiful qualities of soul.

This is where a love of laws and institutions comes in.

It might sound strange to invoke politics, but for Plato, the natural end of politics is Goodness itself. And given that Goodness and Beauty are inter-connected — then the creation of good laws and institutions means creating beautiful laws and institutions.

For Plato then, a virtuous love of the political means creating a beautiful civilization.

It’s this very love of laws and institutions then that helps us ascend in contemplation of beauty.

Why?

Because a love of laws teaches you the philosophy behind them — meaning you reach the next stage of Plato’s ladder: the lover of knowledge.

To restate it more simply, a lover of beauty will contemplate the highest goods capable of the human intellect — such as justice, virtue, and moral goodness — for these highest goods of knowledge are transcendental, and beautiful in their own right.

To restate it even more simply — a selfless love of beauty teaches you a selfless love of your fellow man, via love of Goodness itself.

And finally, this leads us to the top of the ladder — the form of Beauty itself.

Though for Plato, man can never directly encounter the forms — can never directly contact Beauty itself — his contemplation of heavenly things satiates his erotic desires for beauty far more than earthly things ever could.

To come full circle then, Plato teaches us that beauty is a gateway to contemplating and encountering the divine.

Beauty Incarnate

It’s notable that Plato’s idea was more than a pagan thought exercise. To this day, philosophers still hold Symposium as a gold standard to comprehending eros and beauty.

And yet, the one “shortcoming,” of Plato’s ladder is it ends in frustration. Though your eros seeks beauty, it can never truly encounter it. Man is left in a state of unsatisfied yearning, despite his best efforts.

Yet notably, Christianity would later adopt Plato’s thinking.

St. Augustine particularly credited Neoplatonic writings for inspiring his conversion to Christianity. He wrote that, in Neoplatonic metaphysics, he found everything expressed in Christianity except for the Incarnation itself.

In other words, Plato the pagan philosopher taught man to seek the unknowable form of beauty itself, and Augustine (and the Christian tradition), would claim the form of Beauty was made incarnate in Christ.

As such, Christianity can be said to have “baptized Plato,” by saying Plato’s ladder of love leads to none other than God himself.

What’s even more shocking, is Christianity inverts the ladder.

True beauty is not experienced by the select few philosophers who can ascend the ladder. Rather Beauty itself is made visible at the bottom of latter, through the incarnation of Christ.

To state it simply, the erotic desire for Beauty is fully satiated by those who abide by the golden rule of loving God and neighbor as self. For such love is the essence of the Good, and to love the Good is to love the Beautiful.

As Augustine said more succintly, “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”

And thus, a Beautiful life is freely open to all — not through exaltation of mind, but humility of one’s spirit. To love the Good is to love the Beautiful, and form your soul in accordance with Beauty incarnate itself.

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The Book of Exodus is of immense importance to understanding both the Biblical narrative and the intellectual development of Western Civilization itself.

This is the book that recounts Moses’ story as God’s chosen prophet, who leads the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into the wilderness where they form a covenant with God and become a nation.

To this day, this story comprises the very heart of both Rabbinic Judaism, and is also foundational to the Christian understanding of the messiah Jesus Christ. As such, it’s the foundational story that established monotheism as the theological paradigm of Western Civilization, and becomes crucial to understanding our own human nature.

And perhaps the most important detail that accomplished this is Moses’ famous encounter with the burning bush. This simple event is the revolutionary turning point of man’s comprehension of the divine.

Today, then, we’ll analyze it to discern the very wisdom that built the rich theological traditions of Western Civilization.

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An Exiled Aristocrat

If we recall Moses’ beginnings, he was an Israelite who survived the Pharaoh’s purgings of Israelite sons. He was rescued and adopted by the pharaoh’s daughter, and raised as an Egyptian aristocrat.

As an adult, he witnessed an Egyptian beating a Jewish slave, and Moses murdered him, which forced him to flee to the desert lands of Midian on account of his crime.

He lived for years in humility as a shepherd, which follows a precedent of Biblical heroes — they’re called into the desert/wilderness where they endure trials and tribulations with patience. The experience is often grueling, yet it becomes the means by which their character is refined and molded in accordance with virtue.

In the case of Moses — the once prideful, murderous aristocrat has now been humbled and made low as an exile.

And its precisely in this lowliness that his character is made ready for one of the most decisive moments of revelation in Biblical history…

The Burning Bush

After years of shepherding in Midian, Moses one day ventures with his flock to Horeb, on the western side of the country’s wilderness. Here, he’s stunned by a strange vision — a burning bush, ablaze in flames, yet not consumed.

This fire is revealed to be the presence of the Lord. Already, this narrative is teaching an important element of God’s nature — and what makes him distinct from pagan deities — namely God’s presence does not destroy creation, rather it perfects and makes it luminous.

Compared to pagan deities like the Greek gods, whose intervention often leads to death and destruction, the presence of God leads to radiance, and a purifying flame that perfects that which comes into contact with it.

Strange as this sight is to Moses, however, it gets stranger as he approaches the bush. As Moses closes in, God gives him a strange decree:

“Moses! Moses! Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

The removal of sandals is not just about “good manners,” in the face of a deity. It’s a deeply pedagogical gesture. To understand, let’s first look at the meaning of “holy ground.”

In Hebrew, the word holy means “set apart.” This means the holy ground that Moses walks on is “set apart,” from the rest of creation — what Moses is about to encounter here has no precedent in the wisdom of human traditions or religion. It implies God is also “set apart,” from other pagan deities of the day. He’s not just another God among many, but an ontologically distinct God — the “true God,” as the Israelites will later proclaim.

So we can appreciate the significance of this holy ground that Moses walks on, but why remove his sandals?

We must consider that the desert terrain of Horeb was not friendly to bare feet. The ground was littered with rocks and blazing hot sand that would make bare foot travel grueling, if not impossible.

In other words, the bare footed Moses is now approaching God in a state of dependency. This becomes the understanding of Israel’s relationship with God.

Compared to pagan deities, who had a transactional relationship — you sacrifice for personal gain, or to escape their wrath — the God of Israel says your fundamental existence is dependent on God himself. Sacrifice to God is not transactional, but an efficacious sign of man’s relationship to the divine; all being itself is contingent upon God, and a pious life is total surrender.

Through the introduction, we can appreciate God’s claim to holiness and dependence, but the greatest revelation is to come.

Moses asks God his name, and God famously replies:

“I AM WHO I AM”

At first, the answer seems almost like a refusal to answer at all. But within this simple name lies one of the most consequential revelations in human history — one that molds Israel’s identity, anticipates the coming of the Messiah, and defines the proper Christian understanding of God.

Here’s the meaning of God’s name…

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Aristotle said that he who cannot live in a city is either a beast or a god. And when you understand this quote, you’ll understand Homer’s Odyssey like never before.

And if you want to fully appreciate both Aristotle’s wisdom and Homer’s genius, then there’s a single concept to learn that is central to both — xenia.

This term becomes a running theme throughout the entire Homeric epic. On the surface, the term simply refers “guest-friendship,” or the practice of a host welcoming strangers into his home.

But we’ll see that both xenia, and Homer’s Odyssey, are both about far more than mere hospitality.

In totality, xenia not only teaches us about the Ancient Greek world, but also enrichens our understanding of human nature, our connection to the divine, and the very practice that makes human civilization possible.

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What is Xenia?

First, let’s fully explain the process of xenia.

If you were a travelling guest in Ancient Greece, and approached a strangers home, xenia would require this:

• The host would welcome you into their home, providing you food and shelter. Then, they would ask you where you come from

• Then you as the guest would explain your travels — a form of both entertainment and information exchange

• Finally, material gifts were exchanged in the conclusion, creating a material bond of friendship between you and the host

What’s more interesting is this bond was hereditary. Your father’s guest-friend was your guest-friend, and vise versa.

In other words, this practice of xenia created friendship and social bonds that transcended politics, nationality, and even generations.

Now this seems like a socially pragmatic tool to build trust in Ancient Greece, but xenia was arguably the very lifeline of human civilization itself.

To fully appreciate xenia, we have to zoom out and understand the brutal reality that was life in Ancient Greece in the Bronze Age.

Bloody and Lawless

To be blunt, life was brutal in the Bronze Age.

The country was composed of city-states constantly at war with each other. Many lived with the expectation they would have to fight and die at a relatively young age.

Lawlessness dominated the realm as well. There was no centralized police force, nor government, that can mandate law and order — which means the moment you left your polis, you were basically in the wild with no rights… and it was quite dangerous to leave the polis:

Pirates dominated the seas, bandits dominated the roads.

Life out of the city was something of a Hobbesian nightmare, where might makes right, and justice is the will of the stronger.

Therefore, men were incentivized to stay at home, making travel, trade, and transmission of information impossible. In other words, so long as lawlessness dominated the wild outside of the city, civilization would never develop beyond this bloody and tribal warfare amongst city-states.

How exactly then, could mankind rise beyond this brutal world?

In comes xenia as the solution.

Xenia became one of the few universal moral norms agreed upon throughout Greece — that any time a wandering travel arrived at the door of a host, that host was obligated to take him in and entertain him. Pragmatically, as explained above, this made travel possible, and built trust that transcended the polis.

Yet a closer examination shows that Xenia doesn’t just help individual travels. It becomes the bone marrow of high-trust civilizations.

Consider again that xenia was hereditary — trickling down from generation to generation — and even friends could be sent to another’s house on behalf. This meant that, as you traveled, you could reasonably build social networks throughout the realm, that would be open to you and even friends sent on your behalf.

To get a sense of how serious Xenia was — Homer’s Iliad showcases Diomedes and Glaucus refusing to fight each other after realizing their father’s shared guest-friendship. Instead, they share gifts and part ways in the middle of battle… Xenia even transcended war itself.

The final question, however, is how was xenia made possible? How was this a universally agreed upon moral norm in a world that was largely lawless?

The answer is piety. Xenia was made possible because it was not just a mere social custom, but a decree of the divine. It was stated that Zeus was the patron of xenia, meaning anyone who violated guest-host friendship, risked incurring the wrath of the gods themselves.

This set the basis for centuries of political thought hereafter — that if politics and civilization is to arise, and thrive, it must be a pious civilization who respects the divine. In fact, Plato’s Laws goes so far to argue that atheism is a political crime that threatens to undermine the stability of civilization itself!

So now, we understand that xenia is a divinely mandated custom that builds the very trust that makes civilization possible.

Finally, as we return to the Odyssey, we can understand the grave threat the suitors pose…

Slaying the Suitors

As a reminder, The Odyssey is not just a story about Odysseus’ return home, but also his stand off with the wicked suitors.

Recall that Odysseus is king of Ithaca. The suitors were the boys who were too young to accompany Odysseus and his men to war.

It’s now been 20 years, however, meaning the suitors are full grown men who were raised without fathers. They are vicious, and stand uncontested as the most powerful men in the kingdom.

They also believe Odysseus to be dead, and have been vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage by abusing xenia:

They arrive everyday as guests and consume Odysseus’ livestock/supplies, without offering any reciprocal gift-exchange. It’s a parasitic relationship that shirks the natural philosophy of xenia that is built on mutual good will and friendship between guest and host.

This means that these suitors are not only trying to steal Odysseus’ wife, nor consume his wealth, but are effacing the divinely instantiated code that makes civilization possible. If they succeed — if one of the suitors marries Penelope and takes the throne of Ithaca, the kingdom will be subject to tyrannical rule that shirks good will, trust, and the divine.

In other words, Ithaca will become bloody, violent, and vicious, razing itself or its neighbors to the ground.

When Odysseus returns, the conclusion is indeed bloody and jarring, but it’s a divinely sanctioned slaughter because it goes beyond personal revenge. Odysseus is not just protecting his wife, nor his wealth, but the very code of morality that established the kingdom of Ithaca.

The fate of xenia is none other but the fate of civilization itself.

Beast, God, or Man

This theme of xenia takes on a whole new meaning once we recognize a final truth:

Odysseus is an allegorical character of mankind.

He represents you, me… or effectively what it means to be human.

How so?

We can recall that Aristotle famously said that “he who cannot live in a city is either a beast or a god.”

He meant that man is political by nature, and therefore his nature reaches its full purpose when he learns to live in harmony with his fellow man.

To live outside the city is to be bestial or god-like (and god-like in Ancient Greece means wrathful and cruel, not virtuous in the Christian sense).

This is precisely what Odysseus encounters on his journey home. He constantly encounters gods, goddesses, and bestial creatures, but no human beings. The threats posed on his journey threaten not just his life, but even his humanity — that he may become god-like or bestial (a corrupted soul). Only when he arrives in Ithaca does Odysseus reunite with his family, and find his soul flourish in virtue.

Thus, Odysseus’ quest to defend his house, and his kingdom, is also a quest to defend his own humanity. If Ithaca falls, he and his fellow man will be forced to be bestial or god-like due to necessity. It’s only the peace, stability, and virtue of the polis that helps instantiate man to be virtuous himself.

And as an allegorical character, Odysseus’ epic reminds us that we too face a similar reality. That civilization is a fragile thing — hard to build and difficult to maintain — but to maintain it is to keep our own humanity intact. The trial of Odysseus then, is nothing but the trial of xenia, or the trial of mankind itself!

To fully appreciate the Odyssey is to recognize that you too are Odysseus — that you’re not just searching for home, but have a duty to build, maintain, and protect the very home you’ve built.

Such duties demand much from us, but also give us the promise of both a meaningful life and a just civilization. And a life devoted to preserving civilization is a life well-spent indeed.

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The Ouroboros is one of the most infamous and haunting images mankind ever created.

If you’re unfamiliar, the Ouroboros is the symbol of a serpent in a circle, eating its own tail.

This symbol traces back to the deepest roots of Ancient Egypt — meaning for our purposes as human beings, the Ouroboros is nearly as old as civilization itself.

But what exactly does the Ouroboros represent?

Ultimately, it represents both the brilliance and the limits of the pagan mythological imagination. It shows how the wisest minds of the ancient world understood reality prior to Christianity, but also reveals the inescapable doom of the human condition when man lives without transcendence beyond the world itself.

Today, then, we’ll look at the ancient symbolism of the Ouroboros — to understand both the genius of mythological man, and why mankind ultimately needs the divine if he is to live a truly fulfilling life.

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The Serpent and the Sun-God

As stated, the Ouroboros appears as far back as Ancient Egypt.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead depicts the sun-god Ra-Osiris encircled by a serpent eating its own tail.

This symbol represented the sun’s journey through the underworld during the twelve hours of night before returning again to day. In other words, the Egyptians saw reality itself as a self-enclosed circle containing both life and death.

Why does this matter?

Because it reveals how pagan mankind grappled with the problem of death in a pre-Christian world without revelation.

Where Christianity teaches that reality was created — that it has a beginning and an end, sustained by a benevolent God — pagan man often conceived of the cosmos as eternal and self-contained.

The Ouroboros suggests that death is not an ultimate catastrophe, but part of a recurring cycle within an eternal world.

For pagan man, this was a remarkable mythological achievement because it gave meaning and vitality to life despite suffering and mortality. To see the world as an eternal circle was to inhabit a reality rich with wonder, mystery, and grandeur.

Life, for pagan man, was filled with adventure.

But while the Ouroboros was indeed a profound achievement, it was also a fragile one… containing a grave danger that would later be picked up by Norse Mythology.

World Serpent and Ragnarok

The problem of Ouroboros — of believing that reality is self-sustaining without assistance from the divine — is that it’s an unsustainable view.

This is proven true in Norse mythology. Like the Egyptians, the Norse mythology supposes that reality is sustained by a serpent eating its own tail, circling the world.

The problem, however, is that unlike Ancient Egypt, Norse mythology was not confident in its cosmology. Whereas the elder Egyptians confidently believed reality was an eternal closed circle, the new Norse mythology was tragic and fatalistic.

Norse mythology says that the universe is doomed to destruction via the apocalypse called Ragnarok. Part of this destruction includes the serpent ceasing to bite its own tail, and instead turn its fangs upon creation itself.

Though Thor defeats this serpent, he, the other gods, and creation itself ultimately collapses. This apocalypse wasn’t meant as a mere fantasy, rather it reveals the natural and fatal flaw of mythology itself:

A self-sustaining world is doomed to collapse and destruction:

If reality is self-sustaining — if the divine is just part of the world rather than the source of it — then the world is ultimately accountable only to itself. There is no external guarantor of meaning. No one outside the circle to say this matters, this is real, this is good.

As the mythological imagination exhausted its own internal logic, two replacements filled the vacuum in ancient history — escapism and nihilism.

Chesterton himself points this out in The Everlasting Man:

By the late 1st century BC, the Roman Empire dominated the West. What’s noteworthy about Rome at this time, however, was its culture was becoming increasingly materialistic (and therefore, nihilistic).

The self-sustaining circle of Ouroboros — of mankind attempting to live without God — culminates in the spiritual grandeur of reality and the human soul being sapped altogether. In time, reality itself becomes a prison. The Western solution was nihilism. The Eastern solution escapism.

In both cases, the Ouroboros shows the peak of human imagination, and the self-defeating limits of man who believes he has no God to answer to.

So how then, could mankind escape from such a prison? How could man discover a truthful way of living that made life meaningful, and restored the fallen beauty back into reality itself?

The answer is simple — the circle must be made broken by the sword.

But not just any sword, rather one that would crucify the very man who came to wield it…

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I didn’t always see it this way, but a civilization lives or dies by its cultural literacy.

An educated population thrives, a miseducated one dies.

That’s why the Great Books were once central to education — they stabilize civilizations.

Today, they’re no longer taught how they should be. These books are either ignored, or dismissed as oppressive.

And in many cases, when people do try to read them, they discover a harsh truth:

Just “reading books,” alone isn’t enough.

One of the greatest lies of modern education is that wisdom is something you can acquire in isolation.

Our idea of wisdom today is productivity:

• Read enough books

• Watch enough lectures

• Consume enough information

And somehow, eventually, you’ll become wise… but this is not how wisdom was ever transmitted!

Modern education teaches you productivity, but it doesn’t teach you how to cultivate your soul.

You may have tried to do this independently — picked up War & Peace or Brothers Karamazov — got confused, intimidated, and gave up after a few chapters.

The tragedy is, these books can be appreciated by anyone, but you have to learn how to read them.

How then, did earlier civilizations form human beings? How did we teach people to read the Great Books? More importantly, how did we cultivate virtue within the soul?

Ultimately, Western Civilization was not just built on information, but communities of formation:

• Medieval universities immersed students in the classics

• Monasteries preserved centuries of learning and scholarship

• Ancient academies formed philosophers in communities of study

You can trace this all the way back to Ancient Greece:

• Plato founded his own Academy

• Aristotle founded the Lyceum

And both of them had mentors:

• Plato studied under Socrates

• Aristotle studied under Plato

In other words, human genius was never formed in isolation. By necessity, the greatest minds of Western Civilization required teachers, dialogue, friendship, correction, and intellectual community:

Wisdom has always been relational.

Tragically, this is what our modern culture has lost.

Today, we’re no longer immersed in the Great Books. Formative study has been replaced by endless streams of fragmented “content,” broadcast through our phones. Rarely do you find a serious community dedicated to truth, beauty, virtue, and the cultivation of the soul.

In short, we find ourselves drowning in information, but starving for wisdom…

My own journey through the great books taught me this.

In university, I was lucky enough to be personally mentored by a few incredible professors whom I’m forever indebted to.

Through them, I was shocked to discover how many of the deepest crises of modern society had already been wrestled with in the Great Books.

Indeed, many of today’s deepest problems are not new. The Great Books wrestled with these same questions millennia ago.

As CS Lewis once quipped in Narnia:

“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?”

Indeed, it’s all in Plato, and all the Great Books. And with the proper guidance, these books begin to open themselves to you.

That is why I became involved with the Athenaeum Book Club.

Every month, thousands of readers work through the great books of Western Civilization together — entering into “the great conversation,” together.

But what makes Athenaeum unique is not simply the reading list. It’s the combination of serious mentorship and genuine community.

As the club’s primary lecturer, I guide you through these works as we read them, helping provide the historical, philosophical, literary, and theological context that makes these texts come alive.

At the same time, you’re reading these books alongside me and a vibrant community who are rediscovering the wonder that first gives rise to philosophy itself.

In many ways, Athenaeum is my attempt to create the kind of Great Books education I wish I had growing up.

These are the books we’ve read so far (we’re currently reading Crime & Punishment):

I genuinely believe communities like this matter.

Civilizations are not preserved automatically. They survive when people intentionally transmit their inheritance to the next generation: its stories, its philosophy, its theology, its moral imagination, and its understanding of what it means to live well.

That transmission has always happened through teachers, communities, and shared pursuit of truth.

That is what Athenaeum exists to help recover.

If you’d like to join us, you can become a paid member below. Paid members receive:

• Access to live biweekly discussions and recordings
• Guidance and teaching through the great books
• Access to the private reading community
• Essays and reading guides for each text
• Full access to the archive of articles and podcasts
• Voting rights on future readings

Athenaeum is entirely reader-supported.

If you want to pursue the great books seriously alongside others seeking wisdom and truth, we’d love to have you join us.

Join Us!

Western Civilization never faced greater peril than after the Fall of the Roman Empire.

Barbarians ravaged Europe, looting cities, burning buildings, and plundering whatever wealth they could seize.

The once-exalted Roman Empire was reduced to rubble and fractured kingdoms.

More tragic than the fall of empire was the loss of literature. The great writings of the classical era — Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Cicero, the Church Fathers — were all under threat of being lost to history.

In other words, mankind didn’t just lose a political empire, but risked losing the very ideas and traditions that taught them what it meant to be human.

And yet, in one of the darkest periods of history, a single man helped save the West from collapse.

He would not only rise to unite the divided states of Europe, but institute reforms that recovered, preserved, and promoted the Great Books of antiquity throughout the continent.

Here then is the man who saved Western Civilization from descending into a permanent dark age.

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The Frankish King

The man I’m referring to is, of course, Charlemagne the Great.

Today we know him as the man who founded the Carolingian Dynasty and ascended to become the first Emperor of Rome after its initial fall.

But how did he ascend to such heights? Especially considering his origins — leading a Frankish kingdom that was but one of many divided and warring city states.

Well, Charlemagne united Europe through conquest, but not as one might expect. He wasn’t a ruthless warrior in the vein of Achilles, nor a battlefield genius like Hannibal. In fact, Charlemagne often sought to avoid large-scale conflict whenever possible.

His genius lay instead in logistics and foresight. Rather than charging blindly into battle, he orchestrated calculated military campaigns that leveraged the strengths of his army.

For instance, he planned campaigns around Easter, when fodder was plentiful and troops could remain supplied for months at a time. In victory, he didn’t simply “plunder and run,” but established fortresses that ensured long-term control over newly conquered territory. He also used his numerical advantage to create chokeholds around key bottlenecks in enemy lands.

In other words, Charlemagne’s prudence in logistics, planning, and foresight enabled him not merely to win battles, but to build a stabilizing empire upon the fractured soul of Europe.

By the year 800, much of Europe had been united under his reign, and the Pope crowned him Emperor.

Yet Charlemagne’s greatness did not end with military success.

His true brilliance lay in his administrative reforms.

Rekindling the Embers

Charlemagne understood that education is central to unifying a nation. A civilization must be bound together by a shared sense of origin, morality, and telos — otherwise it will fragment.

And tragically, after centuries of disorder following Rome’s collapse, education had severely deteriorated.

To give you a sense of how dire things became, St. Boniface reportedly complained to the Pope that he heard a priest baptizing Christians in nomine patria et filia et spiritu sancta — “in the name of the fatherland, the daughter, and the Holy Spirit.”

Conversely, as ruler, Charlemagne seemed to intuit Plato’s assertion that if a man is to rule others, he must first learn to rule himself (through education).

According to his biographer Einhard, Charlemagne taught himself to read as an adult. He embraced a study of the seven liberal arts, frequently read Augustine and the Early Church Fathers, and even engaged with the classical thinkers of Greco-Roman antiquity.

He proved in real time that philosophy and politics are deeply intertwined. The emperor who cultivated a philosophic spirit would soon launch one of the greatest educational reforms in history: the Carolingian Renaissance.

It was this Renaissance upon which the fate of Western identity hinged. Through Charlemagne — and a handful of determined monks — Europe was spared from a cultural collapse that might have condemned it to a permanent Dark Age.

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The Lydian King Croesus was once thought the happiest man in the world.

He spent a lifetime conquering his opponents and expanding his empire, and became one of the wealthiest human beings in history. His name became synonymous with riches, and his kingdom helped pioneer the widespread use of standardized coinage in the ancient Mediterranean.

In short, few men knew power, fame, and affluence like Croesus.

And yet, the Greek statesman Solon saw it differently.

When Croesus invited the famed law-maker to his palace, he asked Solon if he considered him the happiest man in the world.

Solon’s reply was solemn:

“Count no man happy until he is dead.”

Croesus took this as an insult, and banished Solon. Tragically, his empire would later crumble, marking one of the greatest dynastic collapses in all of antiquity.

Here’s what happened, and what Solon tried to warn Croesus about the human condition and true happiness.

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The Famed Lawmaker

Before we get to Croesus, we must first begin with Solon. History celebrates him as one of the seven sages of Ancient Greece.

Why was he celebrated for his wisdom?

Because he introduced reforms that saved Athens from civil war.

In Solon’s time, Athens suffered from severe wealth inequality. Farmers were indebted, if not enslaved, to the aristocratic class, with no means of social mobility. There was widespread resentment and civil discontent — a hostile environment through and through.

Yet Solon was uniquely fit to solve this political crisis. He had a “foot in both camps,” as an aristocrat who rose to power off of popular support.

As such, Solon passed sweeping reforms that introduced debt forgiveness and greater representation of the working classes. Yet he wasn’t merely a populist — Solon also respected the interests of the aristocrats, and protected their core properties and interests as the entrenched ruling class.

The wisdom of Solon then, wasn’t merely shrewd policy making, but a wisdom that transcended factional interest of political parties to discern a universal sense of justice — one that saved Athens from civil war.

In hindsight, his reforms didn’t lead to immediate lasting change, but historians reconcile Solon’s laws as the seeds of Athens’ golden age, and the beginnings of democratic rule of law.

This alone makes Solon, properly, one of the “Seven Sages,” of Athens. And yet his most legendary life-experience has yet to come.

A Meeting With Royalty

After completing these reforms, Solon left Athens to travel the Mediterranean, while the people pledged to practice his laws for at least 10 years.

Solon’s travels took him through the known world, most famously to Lydia, ruled by none other than King Croesus — the richest man alive. It should be noted that this meeting is told by Herodotus, and is largely believed to be legendary, but the wisdom of this narrative has lasted the test of time for good reason.

As established, Croesus was the most powerful man in the world. He introduced Solon with welcome arms, and showed him around his palace. He expected Solon to be impressed, and then asked the statesmen who he figured to be the happiest man in the world.

To Croesus’ chagrin, Solon did not name him, rather three Athenian citizens. All of them lived noble lives, saw their city prosper, and died glorious deaths protecting their kinsmen. An outraged Croesus was offended, but Solon expanded on his reasoning:

“I see that you are wonderfully rich, and the lord of many nations… but I have no answer to give until I hear that you have closed your life happily. Assuredly, he who possesses a great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily needs.”

At first glance, one might suspect that Solon is suggesting, “money doesn’t buy happiness,” but that’s not quite right. His explanation concludes with a jarring finish:

“You should count no man happy until he is dead.”

At this point, Solon recognizes wealth is important for a good life, yet his conclusion seems to suggest that life itself is miserable — that the only true happiness is a death that ends life’s sufferings.

But this is not the case at all. Solon is actually drawing from a wisdom that will become a core truth of the humanities, teaching us an essential lesson about human nature and how one is to capture true happiness.

Oh Solon!

Solon’s meaning is best understood if we look at the reasoning of his three happiest men:

All were Athenians who lived noble lives and died in honor defending their loved ones.

His point is not that death brought them happiness, rather their life was lived in virtue, and ended in virtue. His moral lesson is a tragic tone of sobriety about the nature of fate:

Fortune is fickle, and even the wealthiest man can suffer its twists and turns, ending his life in misery…

Croesus, offended by Solon’s words, kicked him out from his palace… yet he would later come to regret this.

As told by Herodotus, the Lydian king would soon suffer grave misfortunes — his son would die, his empire would be conquered by Cyrus of Persia, and he was sentenced to death via flames on a funeral pyre.

Reportedly, his last words as the flames crept in were “Oh Solon…!”

It was a grisly, unfortunate end for a king… except it wasn’t.

Cyrus, upon hearing this name, spared Croesus and inquired about who this Solon character was. Croesus shared Solon’s wisdom, and an impressed Cyrus took Croesus in to be his advisor thereafter.

The implication is Solon’s wisdom helped guide Cyrus to be the wise, virtuous, and powerful ruler he’s celebrated as today. A virtuous king knows to count no man happy until he is dead.

Again, this story’s literal occurrence is contested, but history has preserved Herodotus’ account as insightful and revealing a core truth of the human condition. Moreover, Solon’s philosophy was taken seriously by the Greeks themselves.

The ancient playwrights — Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles — were famous tragedians whose works all expressed Solon’s wisdom. Their plays taught that fate rules all, and that existence is tragic, and indeed, you should count no man happy until he is dead… for in such restraint is a wisdom to navigate life’s sufferings.

Such plays helped fuel the imaginations of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who marked the beginning of the practice of philosophy as we know it today.

The Legend Lives On

So Solon’s story is legendary for a variety of reasons:

• His reforms showed the prudence that helped birth democracy.

• His travels helped mankind discern what virtuous rules of kings looked like.

• And his famous warning “count no man happy until he is dead,” teaches you the core truth of the human condition — human life (at least prior to the Christian promise of salvation), is inherently tragic.

The first path to wisdom — and happiness —- is a humility that grapples with the tragedy of life head on. But, stunningly, to wrestle with this suffering is what precisely fuels a meaningful life. It’s a paradox — that happiness is the byproduct of toiling nobly in accordance with virtue, despite one’s pains and burdens.

Solon stresses that the happy man is not he who is prosperous in the world, but he who is of a virtuous character who dies in glory on behalf of his country.

The wisdom of the good life then, in totality, asks of us a certain humility. The humility to die well in accordance with virtue… as such a death is the only path to true glory, and true happiness.

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Below is one of the most tragic posts I’ve ever found on the internet.

A gentleman was interested in studying literature, specifically the Great Books, but feared it was impractical:

“What are the benefits of reading the Great Books?

I work in a factory, and due to some unusual circumstances, it is very likely that I will always be stuck with low level labor jobs, no matter how much education I get. I can’t have a career in academics or become a professor. So if I can’t have a career based on classical literature, then what’s it all for?

People often say the liberal arts make you free, but I know that reading Plato and Aristotle isn’t going to fix the problems in my life or get me a better job.”

I respect the humility of asking this in earnest, but the framing is disastrous. He assumes that the great books are primarily for careerism, and they otherwise cannot fix the problems in his life.

And yet, the opposite is true. If we assume he’s correct about his career — that he’ll be trapped in low level jobs he presumably dislikes for the remainder of his life — then perhaps the only bastion of meaning that can help him is reading the Great Books.

Because the Great Books don’t just provide you with entertainment, rather they teach you how to persevere and find redemption and meaning, especially when you otherwise feel trapped without escape.

Today, we’ll explore why, and explain to this gentleman why reading the Great Books can save you from a life of otherwise meaningless, unfulfilling toil.

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Ancient Greece & Human Nature

The author’s assertion that reading Plato and Aristotle won’t fix his life problems is ironic, as it’s a statement of ignorance — he hasn’t read them, and is unqualified to say so.

But how can reading Plato and Aristotle help him if he’s trapped in inescapable labor he hates?

Well Plato and Aristotle both teach you a jarring realization:

Most human beings are miserable because they fundamentally do not know themselves, nor their life’s purpose.

Stunningly, Plato thinks the most miserable people aren’t the impoverished, but the wealthy who have all their desires satisfied, while living in ignorance of virtue.

If you find yourself in similar circumstances — menial labor, loneliness, or a fear life is meaningless — then Plato and Aristotle become doctors to heal your aching soul.

They’ll reveal to you that you likely don’t know yourself, and that your wildest dreams might actually be nightmares if they came true. They instead help you find your true self, as you discover that true happiness begins from within through philosophy, truth, and virtue.

To invert the popular saying of scripture — what good can the world offer a man already in full possession of his soul…?

To the outsider this can understandably sound like a cope for “losers,” but Plato’s philosophy has triumphed for 2,400 years because no man who lives by his decrees finds his philosophy wanting.

To hit the point home for our friend above:

An impoverished but virtuous janitor is far more free, happy, and enthralled with life than the decadent “trust fund baby,” who lives by cravings and impulses.

Perhaps Plato and Aristotle alone won’t guarantee you a salary raise — but they’ll teach you virtue, temperance, and self-mastery. Such a man stands to not only find better job opportunities, but also can withstand the strains of life’s suffering in general, even in poverty.

Never forget that Socrates — the wisest of all — was himself gladly impoverished.

Life as an Adventure

So far, we’ve made a brief argument for reading Plato and Aristotle. But this doesn’t yet cover the full gambit of benefits for reading the Great Books.

A critic thus far could say we’ve presented a stoic vision of reality — a defeatist attitude of quiet resignation, seeking peace in our lowliness rather than despair. While there’s wisdom in this, one notes that man was not made for silent resignation.

In totality, man was made for adventure. This adventure takes many different forms — some grand in stature, and some humble — but every one has a particular vocation in life that calls to them. You might consider this your destiny.

The Great Books continue to be helpful, because reading them seriously makes your life an adventure. The greatest epic poetry in history tends to be adventure stories that function as universal human allegories:

The Odyssey follows Odysseus battling the gods, monsters, and murderers for 10 years on his journey home.

The Aeneid follows Aeneas doing the same, called by the gods to found the Roman Empire.

The Divine Comedy is a trek through Heaven, Hell, and eternity as Beatrice calls her beloved Dante back to his vocation as a God-fearing poet.

These stories are grandiose and larger than life, but they’re also your story. You too are a pilgrim like Dante, walking the straight and narrow in a world undergirded by a spiritual war of good and evil.

You too are Odysseus, an exile battling with the sufferings of reality as you fight to build a life that resembles home.

You too are Aeneas, placed with a particular vocation — and the fates of your family and loved ones depend greatly on your ability to preserve in piety and gratitude for the divine and neighbor alike.

The author of the original post, by contrast, seems to believe that the aim of life is largely centered around utility, career, and social mobility to solve life’s problems.

The Great Books push back — life is about discovering your true self, but such a self-discovery is only found through adventure.

Only those who brave the desert — its storms, the scorching sun, the frigid nights, the hostile terrain — can discover what they’re truly made of. And only those few who do persevere on such a path find that there was no other path they could have taken.

And yet, adventure is not the final piece of life either.

Though the Great Books teach man virtue, courage, and adventure, they also reveal the danger of endless striving. No amount of glory, conquest, pleasure, or honor can permanently satisfy the restless soul.

Dante understood this well. His Ulysses is damned in Hell precisely because he cannot stop wandering. Even greatness itself becomes a temptation when man seeks fulfillment in striving alone.

For man was not merely made to wander endlessly through storms and deserts. Eventually, he must find his way home.

And this is perhaps the greatest truth that the Great Books reveal:

You don’t read them to escape suffering, but to discover the final end toward which all human striving points.

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