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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Plato says that if you want to destroy your enemy, let him become a tyrant and get away with it.

This is the jarring idea put forth in Gorgias.

On the surface, this dialogue asks what the purpose of rhetoric is, but at its core, it examines the two most fundamental life philosophies that guide the destiny of all human beings.

Every person, whether they know it or not, chooses to live by one of these two philosophies, and Plato suggests this is the most important choice a human being can make. In fact, he says it’s the difference between living virtuously or making your life a living hell (both now, and for eternity).

Today then, we’ll discuss the battle of ideas in Plato’s Gorgias, understand both philosophies, and see the way of life that makes existence virtuous and beautiful.

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A Battle of Philosophies

From the opening lines, the Gorgias begins with antagonist Callicles talking to Socrates about warfare.

Already, Plato implies this dialogue is about war — a battle of two life philosophies.

These philosophies are effectively:

1. The metaphysics of power (championed by Callicles)

2. The metaphysics of justice (championed by Socrates)

This “war,” begins indirectly, by Socrates first questioning a famous rhetorician named Gorgias.

Socrates asks him a deceptively simple question:

“What do you do?”

He isn’t merely asking about Gorgias’ job title, but the ultimate purpose that his job entails. He asks, “You make speeches about justice for a living, but do you know what justice is, and can you teach it?”

Gorgias admits that he does not, and laments that many of his own students are unjust and themselves — refusing to pay him for the services he provided as a teacher.

Socrates then takes over and expounds on justice itself, beginning with a radical claim:

“It is worse to do injustice than to suffer it.”

This simple statement, fully considered, is quite extreme. Socrates says that an unjust tyrant — who enjoys unlimited wealth, pleasure, sex, etc. — is more unhappy than an impoverished but just man who is hated.

In other words, if the human soul is made for justice, then a just soul can prevail against a world of torment and pain, but the unjust soul cannot be made happy even by a lifetime of comfort and pleasure.

These statements draw the ire of Callicles, who enters the conversation for battle.

The Metaphysics of Power

Callicles calls Socrates’ arguments foolish. He says that if Socrates is correct, and man is made to love justice, then the vast majority of human beings are failing their fundamental life’s purpose.

In reality, mankind naturally favors pleasure, money and glory far more than virtue and justice.

Callicles’ argument, by contrast, is far more pragmatic:

Suffering is evil, and no one likes it, and therefore it’s far worse to suffer injustice than it is to commit it. This argument is fair in itself, but then Callicles takes it a radical step further.

He says there is no such thing as true justice. Justice is not an objective virtue, but a human construct. The “real,” justice is found in nature, and the most fundamental law of nature is force, in which the powerful dominate the weak.

The alpha wolf is strongest, and therefore what he declares becomes justice for the pack.

Callicles then goes further and mocks Socrates’ idea of justice, which he claims is simply a human construct devised by the weak to protect themselves from the powerful.

Callicles’ position then, is the exact inverse of Socrates:

The happiest human being is the man who dominates through injustice. His domination over others satiates his desires, bringing him glory, wealth, pleasure, and happiness.

The reader now wonders — who is correct?

Socrates says better to be an impoverished, hated man who suffers much in the name of justice

Callicles says better to be powerful and dominate others, for domination brings wealth, status, and glory.

Here, Socrates turns the tables by returning to his most controversial idea of the dialogue.

Tyranny as a Self-Made Prison

Socrates says, “if you truly hate your enemy, you would wish that he commits injustice AND gets away with it.”

In other words, if you want your enemy to endure maximum misery, tell him to practice Callicles’ philosophy and become a tyrant.

But why would anyone want their enemy to prosper? Why wish your hated rival becomes powerful, wealthy, and satisfies all his desires?

Again, Socrates insists the worst fate that can befall a man is to live by injustice without punishment. Punishments on behalf of justice are not evil, but akin to medicine provided to a sick patient. Just as bitter medicine heals illness, so too does bitter punishment heal injustice.

But what needs healing in the tyrant? Why would the tyrant want to repent from a life of unlimited power and freedom?

Socrates explains that the tyrant — the powerful man of unlimited freedom — is the most enslaved man of all.

Consider the case of the cruel, murderous, unjust tyrant who satiates all his desires. One thing he cannot do is walk freely in public — he could be assassinated. Nor can he rest at ease in his palace, for there is paranoia that he shall be betrayed, just as he’s betrayed so many himself. Nor can he slumber in peace, for his dreams are as murderous and violent as the life he leads.

By contrast, the just peasant may be poor and hated, but he can walk freely, sleep peacefully, and enjoy an interior harmony that brings genuine peace.

Perhaps the poor and hated peasant isn’t happy — his lot in life is worse than most — yet he is far superior to the wealthy and powerful who are wicked, as injustice corrupts your soul and makes your reality itself a prison.

We are reminded then, of a timeless question asked by Scripture, namely:

“What good does it do a man to gain the world if he loses his soul?”

As such, Socrates says if you hate your enemy, let him prevail in injustice. If you truly love him, then pray for his punishment — for a just punishment is a corrective that restores a soul to virtue.

By the dialogue’s end, Callicles is reduced to silence. He’s lost the “war,” but hasn’t been persuaded.

Socrates concludes then, by becoming a rhetorician himself — he tells his audience a myth that explains why man should love virtue and justice.

Divine Justice

First, why exactly does Socrates resort to myth? After all, he just defeated Callicles, so why not end in triumph?

Again Callicles was defeated logically, but not persuaded. Pure argumentation alone can’t reach an argument already committed to power. So Socrates’ myth is pedagogical — in real time, he’s showing us the proper use of rhetoric as an aid to justice.

This myth is meant to draw on narrative, imagery, and emotional grandeur in a way that logical argumentation cannot. We can consider this myth then, the hallmark of beautiful rhetoric as the handmaiden to philosophy.

As for the myth itself, Socrates tells a story of the afterlife:

After humans die, all souls are sent to an afterlife where they are stripped naked. Their souls are laid bare, and are scoffed with blemishes for every sin, vice, and crime they’ve committed. These souls are then judged by an infallible set of rulers with perfect justice.

Good men are sent to the Blessed Isles

Bad men are sent to Tartarus in two groups:

• The wicked but correctable are punished, but eventually reincarnated on Earth.

• The wicked and unredeemable are punished eternally.

We see then, a pagan vision of an afterlife that roughly corresponds to what Christians will later identify of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.

It also provides the bedrock of humanity’s greatest poets like Virgil and Dante, of Aeneid and Divine Comedy fame.

Socrates’ appeal to an afterlife teaches us that man cannot know himself without due reference to the divine.

If man is but meat and flesh, with no life after death, then Callicles’ philosophy is correct, and man ought to embrace power, oppression, and desire by any means.

We might also recall that Plato wrote this after Socrates — the most just man in Athens — had been unjustly sentenced to death by the city.

But if the divine is real, then man’s ability to know himself, live well, and find redemption comes solely through his ability to live in harmony with the reality of the divine.

And so Gorgias teaches us that every human being faces the same dilemma — to embrace a life in pursuit of power, or truth. This simple choice is the difference of not just the life one lives, but mankind’s destiny in total.

And if Socrates is correct, then man cannot find himself until he forgets himself, in pursuit of truth, with philosophy as his guide.Plato says that if you want to destroy your enemy, let him become a tyrant and get away with it.

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Very few men loved beauty like Oscar Wilde. History celebrates him as a romanticized but tragic rebel and defender of beauty — England’s literary “rockstar,” who revolted against the stifling and austere Victorian Era that stifled human freedom.

His masterpiece was The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel that espoused his life philosophy which celebrates beauty by any means.

The novel caused great scandal for its romanticization of pleasure, indulgence, and vice — and eventually it contributed to Wilde’s downfall — but it’s since lingered on as a beloved and celebrated work to this day.

In a nutshell, Dorian Gray asks “what does it mean to live a beautiful life?” and “can beauty alone lead you to prosperity, happiness, and fulfillment?”

Surprisingly, the answer is far darker than you might imagine. In a stunning twist, Oscar Wilde, the infamous “worshipper of beauty,” warns us that the very worship of beauty will lead you to ruin.

Here’s what Oscar Wilde warns about beauty, how it can become dangerous and destroy you, and what a true and virtuous love of beauty actually looks like.

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God-like and Innocent

The Picture of Dorian Gray follows protagonist Dorian Gray.

He’s introduced as a handsome and aesthetically beautiful man. In fact, Dorian’s close friend Basil compares him to Antinous — a young man from antiquity who was deified for his masculine beauty.

Wilde is stressing that Dorian is more than handsome, but an object of worship in a contemporary England society that had stifled beauty, aesthetics, and man’s natural creative impulses.

Just as important is Dorian’s innocence. Friends remark that his face is placid and tranquil, as if not a single troublesome thought has ever entered it.

However, everything changes when Dorian meets an infamous friend, Lord Henry, who has a dangerous life philosophy.

When Dorian hears it, he’ll be corrupted.

The Fall From Grace

Lord Henry is a modern day sophist.

He has no regard for truth, ethics, or virtue — rather he’s decadent, a firm lover of pleasure, and a soundly gifted rhetorician.

Upon meeting Dorian, and fawning over his beauty, Henry shares with him his life philosophy:

“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly…

I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream -– I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy.”

And why exactly does Henry say we should embrace spontaneous lives of hedonism, pleasure, and personal expression?

It’s not just because he thinks pleasure is an end itself. Rather he thinks that personal expression of desires attunes one to the highest form of life itself, which is Beauty alone:

“Beauty is a form of Genius — is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation”

These statements are made in irony, as Henry does not practice anything he preaches. He is instead sadistic by nature, enjoying the thrill of corrupting others and watching them fall.

Tragically, however, Dorian accepts Henry’s words as if they were gospel.

He believes that Beauty is the hallmark of genius, and recognizes that his own beauty will fade. This is effectively Dorian’s “fall,” or loss of innocence. Just as Adam and Eve became aware of death, so too did Dorian recognize his beauty shall fade (and he shall die).

And it’s here, where the troubled Dorian Gray makes his infamous “deal with the devil.”

Forever Young, and Vicious

Now troubled, Dorian lashes out at the portrait gifted to him by his friend Basil.

The portrait now haunts Dorian as an image of the very beauty that he himself will lose in real time.

He then makes an infamous wish:

“If only it were the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that, I would give everything… I would give my soul for that!”

Dorian’s wish comes true. He’s granted immortal youth, and his soul becomes infused in the portrait, which now will age as the real Dorian ought to have.

One might look at this as Dorian dividing his nature — his soul (the interior seat of truth and goodness) lives in a picture, sacrificed for his love of external beauty.

From here, the novel becomes a fascinating exploration of human nature:

Dorian’s immortal youth makes him equivalent to a god of Greek mythology. He has effectively conquered the most pressing concern of human nature itself, which is death. As such, this novel should be a utopian read, or a dream come true for Dorian. Yet it proves to be the opposite.

Dorian hereafter devotes his life to the worship of beauty. In this case, beauty is defined as rampant hedonism and decadence. This includes affairs, drugs, and thrills that incite scandal. And yet we find this hedonism is not just innocent fun, but morally corrupting.

Dorian soon finds himself descending into crime, blackmail, and even murder. All the while he stays young, but interestingly, his portrait continues to age. And with each crime he commits, the portrait doesn’t grow older, but uglier.

By the novel’s conclusion, its hideous nature is unbearable to look at. Dorian himself is forced to face the grotesque nature of what his portrait (his soul) has become.

What Dorian sees destroys him… And yet, what Wilde the author saw, would eventually save him from a similar doom in his own life.

The difference between those two endings is the real subject of this novel, and the most important thing Wilde ever said about beauty — about how to properly love it, so that it doesn’t destroy you.

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The Divine Comedy and Lord of the Rings are amongst the greatest works of human genius ever conceived.

The former is glorified as the apotheosis of all pre-modern thought in human history, the latter one of the greatest selling works of all time, despite its relatively recent publication compared to most classics.

And there’s a strange point of connection between both Dante and Tolkien — that fueled both their artistic genius and taught them deep insights into the human condition. It’s subtly one of the greatest reasons that distinguish them both as literary and theological giants amongst mankind.

That point of connection isn’t just their love of Catholicism, myth, and philosophy, but also a heartfelt love of language itself.

Dante’s master innovation was to make beauty of the Italian vernacular (a historically unprecedented move), and Tolkien spent an entire career studying language as a philologist.

But what exactly did their love of language teach them?

Today we’ll discuss how they studied language, how it influenced their greatest works, and how we too can embrace a love of language to cultivate a genius like Dante and Tolkien.

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The Origins of Speech

Dante boldly sought to write his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, in the Italian vernacular.

Again, this was unprecedented, as at the time it was normative that scholars wrote serious intellectual works in latin — the “learned language.”

Yet Dante felt otherwise. Though he was learned in Latin — and respected as a language to preserve and convey truth across time, place, and culture — he believed that perfected vernacular had more beauty than Latin.

He argues this explicitly in his unfinished work De Vulgari Eloquentia.

He begins with a simple question: what is the purpose of language?

Theologically, he notes, language is a gift unique to man. Animals do not speak, and angelic beings, possessing superior intellects, communicate without words.

He then reflects on how this gift was first given to Adam:

“it is reasonable to believe that the power of speech was given first to Adam, by Him who had just created him. As to what was first pronounced by the voice of the first speaker, that will readily be apparent to anyone in their right mind, and I have no doubt that it was the name of God”

Dante argues that the first word Adam spoke (in Hebrew) was “God.” His point was that the purpose of language is not just for man to communicate, but to use their communication to know themselves, their neighbors, and God. This knowledge finds a perfection in love that brings man together and makes life worth living.

So if the purpose of language is love and self-knowledge, how can we study and perfect language itself?

Dante tackles this question next.

Natural Beauty

Dante argues the vernacular is superior to latin language:

“Of these two kinds of language, the more noble is the vernacular:

first, because it was the language originally used by the human race;

second, because the whole world employs it, though with different pronunciations and using different words; and third because it is natural to us, while the other is, in contrast, artificial.”

Latin was the language of scholars, theologians, and intellectual life. It was stable, universal, and learned, yet Dante insists that the vernacular has the greater potential for beauty because it is natural, lived, and rooted in human experience.

That said, there’s still a problem that needs to be addressed. The vernacular, as it actually exists, is fragmented.

Italian dialectic varies region to region:

• Tuscany speaks one way

• Sicily another

• Romagna another

Each of these dialects are authentic and natural, but also flawed and coarse in their own right.

So which of these expressions of the vernacular is the most beautiful?

Dante’s answer is simple — none of them are.

Yet this is where Dante’s genius comes in. He says the goal of the artist is to make “illustrious vernacular,” that isn’t drawn from any one dialect, but manifests as the perfection of them all.

Where can you find such an example of illustrious vernacular?

Dante did it himself with the Divine Comedy — a perfected form of the Italian language.

No Italian in his day spoke like the Italian in the Divine Comedy, but thereafter the Divine Comedy became a form of excellence of the Italian language, culture and spirit. It set the standard thereafter in which Italians themselves aspired to beauty in their language.

And yet here’s where the real beauty of illustrious vernacular comes in — it becomes a gateway into knowing the soul of a people.

To study a luminous vernacular is not just to learn words and grammar of a language, rather it’s a method to enter into the way a people sees the world. Every dialect carries a fragment of meaning and a piece of lived experience, but the artist gathers those fragments and gives them form.

That language doesn’t just capture the particular soul of a people, but transcends time, place, and culture too — and teaches you universal truths about the human condition. This is why, to this day, we still read and are moved by an 800 year old work of Italian poetry.

And so Dante’s mastery of the Italian vernacular was crucial to the Divine Comedy’s success, but Tolkien will take it up 10 notches — by mastering many languages to create an entirely new reality that speaks to the deepest universals of the human condition.

Philology as Subcreation

Again, LOTR is worth considering for the simple fact that it had no business succeeding. It was a feel-good fantasy story written at a time when the genre was scoffed at, and the world was jaded and disenchanted.

Hobbits and dragons shouldn’t go on to sell hundreds of millions of books across generations, and launch a multimedia empire that’s still producing spin-offs today… but it did.

While Tolkien’s Catholicism, his theory of subcreation, and his decades of studying and building his own mythological universe played a crucial role to Tolkien’s success, so too did his love of language.

In fact, his love of language came first. By adolescence he had studied several languages and was already inventing his own. He began writing fantasy largely to give those languages a world to inhabit.

He later became one of the world’s leading philologists, eventually reading over twenty languages.

Why does this matter?

Tolkien’s philology background gave him a felt sense of culture, history, and human nature. Language is not just a means of communication, but a bedrock of culture itself. It’s the foundation in which civilization emerges and communicates the spirit of a people.

To study a language then, is to understand:

• What a culture has many words for (what it values)

• How it handles timeless human values like love, virtue and vice

• The rhythm of speech (direct, formal, rhythmic, hierarchical)

In totality then, language becomes a compressed record of how a people perceives and inhabits reality itself.

Again, this is quite literally how Tolkien built the grandeur of Lord of the Rings:

• He studied language

• Invented roughly 15 languages himself

• Used these languages to build the civilizations and races of Middle Earth

And as Tolkien himself said, good fantasy is “truer,” than reality. It’s perhaps no coincidence then, that his works have sold millions, worldwide, across generations — his languages, civilizations, and sub-cultures are particular, real, and moving, yet correspond to universal truths of the human condition.

It’s why his heroes are so loveable, his villains so chilling, and his themes so enduring.

Language, Being, and Love

We reconcile then, that learning languages — or mastering one’s own vernacular — is not merely done for the sake of sounding “cultured,” or presenting one’s self as educated.

To love language is to love reality more precisely.

Dante shows us that the vernacular can be perfected into a timeless form of beauty, while Tolkien shows us that language carries the soul of a people — that to understand it is to understand how humans inhabit the world.

Taken together, we reconcile that language is not just how we speak, but how we perceive and comprehend reality itself.

And the more deeply we enter into language, the more clearly we begin to recognize both the uniqueness of each culture and the shared structure of the human soul, and ultimately, reignite a love for the timeless truths and beauty that make life worth living.

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Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is perhaps his most famous work.

It follows protagonist Raskolnikov and his attempt to become an “extraordinary man” — someone strong enough to liberate himself from traditional morality.

He famously commits a gruesome murder, and the book traces his mental deterioration thereafter.

Most people understand this novel as a discourse on the natural moral law and the human condition — that morality is objective, and man cannot transgress it without suffering.

But what’s often overlooked is this:

What turned Raskolnikov into a murderer in the first place?

Dostoevsky’s genius shines brightest here. He grasped a key truth about the human condition, and foresaw dangerous ideas from modern philosophy taking shape across Europe.

It was these ideas that not only made Raskolnikov a murderer, but helped pave the way for Russia herself to become a genocidal communist state a few decades later.

Here’s what Dostoevsky saw, what it reveals about the human condition, and the antidote to the murderous spirit of Raskolnikov.

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Dostoevsky’s Enemies

First, if you want to understand Dostoevsky, you have to know his ideological opponents.

His four great novels (C&P, Idiot, Demons, and Brothers Karamazov) are all in part polemics against 19th century European philosophy.

Broadly speaking, this philosophy was grounded on secular humanism, liberalism, and technocratic optimism. To put it simply, mankind began to reject Christianity at scale, and envisioned a new anthropology which suggested this:

Human nature is malleable, and mankind creates his own morality. Humanity ought to be properly educated to create rational, selfless individuals, so that we can be liberated, happy, and live in highly developed, utopian-like civilizations.

Dostoevsky believed that this philosophy was disastrous.

He demonstrates through his books that those who believe such ideas can commit human atrocities in the name of “rationality,” (and be logically consistent in doing so).

Dostoevsky’s ultimate mission — if not to get Russia to re-embrace Orthodox Christianity — was to at least convince man that his nature is fundamentally flawed and fallen.

And nowhere does he argue this better than through Raskolnikov of Crime and Punishment.

The Making of A Murderer

As previously stated, Raskolnikov is the protagonist who plots (and follows through on) becoming an axe murderer.

He murders an old woman — a nasty pawnbroker — rationalizing that he can use her wealth for the betterment of humanity.

So his surface goal is “humanitarian,” but his deeper goal is ideological — that he wants to rewrite morality itself. He wants to commit murder and call it righteous. He’s not merely waging a material war against poverty, but a spiritual war against the moral order of reality.

But how exactly did he become so depraved?

The novel makes it clear that he was mentally poisoned long before he committed the murder. The beginnings of his corruption are summed up in one word:

Isolation.

Raskolnikov lives not just in poverty, but alone in St. Petersburg.

To be more specific — he’s been separated from his family, has dropped out of college, and distanced himself from all his friends (and rejects them when they reach out). He spends his time festering alone in his impoverished apartment, cut off from the public.

It’s no accident that his isolation makes him wicked. The classical tradition has always held that man’s nature is fulfilled in community.

Aristotle himself put it best:

“He who does not live in a city is either a beast or a god.”

Aristotle’s point is that human beings are political by nature — we are meant to live in communion with others. A man who lives in isolation becomes either bestial or godlike (neither of which is to be praised), because his nature is corrupted. He is, quite literally, dehumanized.

In ordinary life:

• Friendship teaches us regard for others.

• Marriage and parenting teach selfless love.

• Work teaches sacrifice and civic duty.

A man divorced from society — living in isolation — festers.

As Scripture reminds us, “it is not good for man to be alone.”

This is not to say that man has no place to withdraw from society. The monastic tradition, for instance, finds grace in a sacrificial retreat in pursuit of God. But such withdrawal is ordered toward love, not rejection — unlike the antisocial isolation of Raskolnikov.

But Dostoevsky goes even further.

He doesn’t merely show that isolation corrupts Raskolnikov — he shows exactly what evils arise from it.

He writes them out through Raskolnikov’s manifesto, “On Crime,” where he lays out his entire philosophy of human nature.

It’s the philosophy that made him an axe murderer — and the ideology that would later lead Russia into destruction and mass murder under the USSR.

Here’s what Raskolnikov says…

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Why did the modern world become so ugly?

Though modern man enjoys far more material wealth than his medieval predecessors, his relationship to art, beauty, and aesthetics is deeply impoverished.

Buildings today are often bland or sterile. Cities are carved up by mega highways, traffic, and unwalkable design.

Much of modern music is mass-produced and engineered for virality — recycling familiar patterns, chords, and harmonic structures to capture our ever-decreasing attention spans.

And perhaps most egregious of all is modern art, which has largely abandoned beauty in favor of shock, irony, and even hatred of the human spirit (if you think this sounds exaggerated, wait until the end of this article).

We’ll find that this abandonment of beauty is no accident. In fact, it was quite intentionally a war on beauty that began 100 years ago.

But why destroy beauty in the first place? Why would anyone reject it?

And more importantly — what has humanity lost in doing so?

Today we’ll discuss modernity’s war on beauty, and re-examine the classical understanding of beauty — what it was, why it matters, and why its loss has been so devastating to the human spirit.

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Form Follows Function

Beauty matters, and nowhere is this clearer than in architecture.

Architecture does not just shape our environment, but also our mood, emotions, and even our souls.

Compare the old and new city hall of Boston:

The symmetry of the old city hall is aesthetically pleasing. Its exterior harmony instills a harmony in your spirit.

The new city hall is an example of modern brutalist architecture — a school of thought that rejects classical standards entirely.

You can find many such examples of these modern downgrades on twitter (just search “name a bigger downgrade” for an inexhaustive list), but the destruction of Penn Station for Madison Square Garden (below) is another egregious example:

Why this modern destruction of beautiful architecture?

This new ethos of modern architecture traces back to a 3 word slogan:

“Form follows function”

This was the design principle of architect Louis Sullivan. He embraced this in 1896, stating that a building’s appearance should be based on its functional use, not on aesthetics, like in the bridge below:

The modern vision of architecture has no desire for beauty. What matters most is efficiency and profit. If a civilization models its architecture on utility and profit alone, one wonders what that might do to the spirit of its citizens…

Nonetheless, the “cult of utility” divorced beauty from architecture, particularly in America.

Yet this is only half the picture about the death of beauty in the modern world.

To understand the deeper loss of beauty, we must turn to modern art.

Anything Can Be Art

One of the most common claims today is that beauty is purely subjective.

You hear phrases like:
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
“Anything can be art”

This shift can be traced, in part, to Marcel Duchamp.

Duchamp made waves when he submitted a signed urinal to an art exhibition:

He called such works “readymades”—ordinary objects presented as art.

This set a new precedent: that anything, simply by being declared so, could be art.

Piero Manzoni took this further with Artist’s Shit (1961), which is exactly what it sounds like:

But what in the world is the goal of this ugliness?

Duchamp was blunt in his 1968 interview with the BBC:

“I want to do away with art like man has done with religion.”

Duchamp was driven by contempt of classical art. His aim was not to create beauty, rather to collapse the distinction between beauty and ugliness in its entirety. He published the urinal to claim it was on equal grounds with Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Michelangelo’s David.

He — and his followers — were driven by a contempt of beautiful things, because they rejected the idea that art should uplift the human spirit.

Again, we must ask why? Beauty is natural to the human condition and uplifts your spirit… Why on Earth would you hate it?

To answer this question, we must return to the classical understanding of what beauty actually is.

Remembering Classical Beauty

Philosopher Roger Scruton understood beauty as essential to fulfillment and self-knowledge:

“Through the pursuit of beauty, we shape the world as our home and come to know ourselves as spiritual beings”

Beauty is what makes the world habitable to the human soul, quite literally.

Every year, millions vacation to European cities like Zurich, Switzerland (above), but no one travels to Russia to see USSR soviet bloc apartment buildings (below).

You cannot have a home without beauty. In fact, Plato argued in The Symposium that our soul fundamentally yearns for beauty:

Specifically, he claimed human eros — our erotic passions — are a love for beauty. He believed love of beautiful things was meant to teach you a love for heavenly things.

In other words, if beauty is real, it points beyond itself, and if it points beyond itself, it points to an objective reality.

Christianity would develop this further, claiming that the ultimate form of Beauty is found in God himself, who is the essence of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

We might recall Duchamp’s words:

“I want to do away with art like man has done with religion.”

The rejection of beauty parallels the rejection of truth and goodness.

“Beauty is subjective,” is the same spirit as “morality is subjective.”

It’s the same spirit of Dostoevsky’s villains — like Raskolnikov, Stavrogin, and Pyotr Verkhansky — who commit murder and countless other atrocities as a means to disprove God.

The ugliness of today’s world then, is not just a product of commercialism, but a product of a deeper philosophical shift against God. If beauty is not real, then perhaps nothing is real.

One might even go so far as to say this war against beauty is rooted in envy and hatred for the human spirit, as the beauty of the human spirit also reflects the divine.

Learning from Venus

How might we recapture our love of beauty?

We do so by learning to love beautiful things again. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus actually teaches us how to do this:

You’ll notice Venus’ gaze is contemplative — that she’s in harmony with the world, yet beyond the world. Her gaze is tranquil, and she’s inviting us to join her in desire. This desire is not lustful, rather induced by love. The same love you feel listening to a trickling stream, or summer breeze, or listening to Mozart.

It’s a love of beauty that leads to unity and selfless love.

Love of beauty inspires man to become beautiful, and in becoming beautiful, he creates beauty throughout the world.

And given that beauty is truth, and truth is goodness, it’s a love of beauty that may be predicated on saving the world from falling apart…

Dostoevsky himself said it best, “beauty will save the world.”

Let us aspire then, to fall more deeply in love with beauty, to be made more perfect in the image of love.

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The Leviathan is one of the most infamous symbols in the history of Western civilization.

It inspired Moby-Dick — the greatest American novel ever written.

It’s the namesake to The Leviathan, the magnum opus of Thomas Hobbes, which helped birth liberalism and the modern political order.

And perhaps most famously, The Leviathan is central to the Book of Job in scripture, where God invokes it to confront the problem of evil, suffering, and death itself.

But what, exactly, is the Leviathan? Where did it come from, what does it represent, and why does its image impress itself so deeply upon the human mind across history?

Believe it or not, this beast is more than a mythological figure — it’s an archetype marking the limits of human nature. It suggests that the good life requires recognizing and confronting the monsters in your life.

To understand the Leviathan is to learn the wisdom to live well. To neglect it is to spell out ruin, for not just yourself, but even society at large. Here’s why.

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Beast of the Sea

As stated, the Leviathan’s origins begin in the Book of Job.

Recall that Job was an innocent man, and God allowed Satan to torment him as a test of faith. Job loses his family and livestock, and is struck with severe illness. He maintains his faith, but after months of suffering, he cries out to God in anger, demanding an account of his affliction.

God answers Job’s questions with questions:

Where were you when I created the world? The sun? The stars? The oceans of the deep?

And it is here that God invokes Leviathan:

“Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook

or tie down its tongue with a rope?

Can you put a cord through its nose

or pierce its jaw with a hook?”

Leviathan was understood as a vast, serpent-like sea beast. Its origins likely draw from a range of sources — Near Eastern mythologies, and perhaps real encounters with massive sea creatures — but its literal existence is not an essential topic here.

What matters is why God invokes Leviathan as an answer to the problem of evil.

God continues:

“Any hope of subduing it is false;

the mere sight of it is overwhelming.

No one is fierce enough to rouse it.

Who then is able to stand against me?

Who has a claim against me that I must pay?

Everything under heaven belongs to me.”

The point is that man has neither the physical power nor the intellectual capacity to master or comprehend Leviathan.

In other words, Leviathan stands as a symbol of both the forces of nature, and the realities in the universe beyond human control. Man is a finite and temporal creature, created by an infinite being who transcends the cosmos itself.

Such a creature cannot fully grasp the justice, intelligence, or goodness of the infinite. Wisdom, then, consists in recognizing these limits, and entrusting oneself to the Good beyond comprehension.

This is not only wisdom, but the ground of faith — the kind that endures suffering and affirms the grandeur of existence.

Seen in this light, Leviathan is not simply an evil beast, but a symbol of chaos that calls man to humility… but it’s also a warning.

If you do not fear the Leviathan, it will destroy you.

The War on God

If Job represents humility before Leviathan, Captain Ahab represents its opposite.

The novel Moby-Dick follows Captain Ahab’s monomaniacal quest to destroy Moby Dick — the great white whale who took his leg.

This novel is rife with Biblical allusions, and the whale itself represents The Leviathan.

Ahab’s reaction to his first near death experience is not gratitude, but vengeance:

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool!”

Ahab doesn’t see the whale as a force of God’s creation to be respected. Instead it’s an object of hatred. His war on the whale then, is actually a war against nature, reality, and even God itself.

Narrator Ishmael has an interesting musing before Ahab’s ultimate showdown with the whale. His thoughts sound as if he were God warning Job himself about Leviathan:

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”

Just as God told Job he cannot reel in Leviathan, so does Ishmael assert that Ahab cannot slay Moby Dick.

He recognizes the limits of human nature, and learns humility for underneath God.

Captain Ahab does not. His war against Moby Dick becomes an explicit war on God:

“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”

Ahab scoffs at God, because he wants to become his own God. Rather than find harmony in the world order, he wants to create his own world order.

And so Leviathan now emerges as a symbol of self-knowledge — the limits of human nature — which Ahab himself scoffs at. Sadly, history does not look kindly upon men who scoff at their limits, seeking to be like gods…

And yet the significance of the Leviathan does not end there.

Thomas Hobbes looked into the eyes of Leviathan and drew a radically different conclusion.

Essentially, he asked:

What if man was not meant to humble himself before chaos, but conquer it? What if man’s safety required the creation of an earthly god? What if man is not meant to seek Heaven, but create it on Earth?

These are core ideas of Hobbes’s Leviathan — a vision of politics that would redefine human nature, reshape the purpose of government, and lay the foundations of the modern political order we inhabit today.

And yet, if Hobbes is mistaken, then mankind has not tamed the Leviathan, but created a new one.

The Leviathan of old represented unmoored chaos. Hobbes’s Leviathan represents totalitarian order — centralized power and the imposition of order upon mankind.

This New Leviathan is far more dangerous than the old, and risks spelling out the ruin of civilization itself.

Here’s why, and what you can do about it.

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Reading the Great Books is one of the most important things you can do for your soul.

But how can you justify reading in a time of crisis?

How can you read Homer when the world may not last another decade?

Today, the world remains embroiled in major global conflict, trust in institutions continues to collapse, and America in appears to be tearing apart by the seams.

This language may sound alarmist, but I want to steelman the issue:

If we imagined that the threat of nuclear armageddon was around the corner, how could we possibly justify reading Homer, Plato, and Cicero? Why read Aristotle if we all might die?

Shouldn’t we solve the global crises before we turn to literature and leisure?

Such an objection is understandable, but could not be more mistaken.

The belief that the Great Books are meant for leisure, escapism, and peacetime is flat out wrong. In fact, the Great Books are one of the last resources we have at our disposal to save society from outright collapse.

But don’t take my word for it — listen to CS Lewis, who gave an entire lecture on why it’s imperative that you read in times of war.

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Learning in Wartime

CS Lewis addressed this issue in a sermon called “Learning in Wartime,” addressed to university students (but applicable to all).

He gave this speech in the middle of World War 2, at a time when Germans were dropping bombs on London.

Despite the threat of instant death, Lewis exhorted the students to continue studying:

“You will be expected to make yourselves into philosophers, scholars, critics, or historians. At first sight this seems to be an odd thing to do during a great war. What is the use of beginning a task you have so little use of finishing?”

So how do you answer this objection to study?

Lewis first draws our attention to the fact that the “unprecedented times,” of WW2 are really not that unprecedented.

The belief that studying is solely meant for a time of peace is a false illusion due to modern comforts:

“The war creates absolutely no new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent situation…

If men had postponed the knowledge for search and beauty until they were secure, the search would have never begun.”

Lewis’ point is that — though war is tragic — it’s not unnormal. In fact, war is one of the most basic realities of existence.

• The Western Canon begins with the Iliad, a book of war.

• In scripture, Cain and Abel — the first humans of natural birth — is a story of fratricide.

Civilization then, was not built by scholars in times of peace. It was built by brave souls who sought beauty and goodness in times of war.

Yet this is only half the picture.

Not only does Lewis say you’re justified in studying in times of war, he warns that abandonment of that study leads to grave consequences.

Civilization is a Fragile Thing

Lewis next points out that culture is never neutral.

You’re either seeking goodness and beauty — and building a beautiful culture — or sliding into a worse culture by default:

“If you suspend your whole intellectual and aesthetic activity, you only succeed in substituting a worse cultural life for a better:

If you don’t read good books, you will read bad ones.

If you don’t go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally.

If you reject aesthetic satisfactions, you will fall into sensual satisfactions”

To abandon culture for power is to win the war and lose the civilization. To subordinate Truth, Beauty, and Goodness beneath power is to merely mirror the brutalities of a marred, corrupted, and fallen world.

Taking the Offensive

This is not to say that Lewis wants us to ignore politics and war altogether.

This too would be an error. Rather, he stresses that the gap between “reality,” and “the intellectual life,” is a false dichotomy:

“There is no essential quarrel between the spiritual life and the human activities as such.”

His point, to be blunt, is if you were called to the front lines of war, make sure you enter those front lines with a sincere love of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness… or God.

In fact, he suggests the intellectual life is itself a form of resistance:

“To be ignorant and simple now — not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground — would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen…

Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

Culture is most fragile when at war, and therefore, is in most need of literate, well-read, and virtuous souls precisely when life appears at its bleakest.

To insist on truth and beauty in such times is itself a form of spiritual resistance.

No Time Like The Present

And now, at this point, only one objection remains.

What if it’s too late for me?

What if I’m too old? What if I die next week? What difference does it make?

Lewis says, “too late,” is an illusion. The most wise thing you can do, in this moment, is begin (or persevere) in your studies:

“Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly, and works from moment to moment ‘as to the Lord.’

It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”

As such, it’s your obligation to make every moment as True, Beautiful, or Good as can be done. This includes the duties you owe work, friends, and family — and the duties to be ever active in contemplation of God and his glories (including study).

Lewis’ concluding words in his sermon, then, are fitting to share here:

“The life of learning, humbly offered to God,is, in its own small way, one of the appointed approaches to the Divine reality and the Divine beauty which we hope to enjoy hereafter.”

Do not be afraid to make time to study.

God may demand it, just as your soul yearns for it… and you can rest assured that such studies play their part in reshaping your culture, your soul, and the plans of Providence who rules over all.

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Real education is not what you think it is. In fact, most people have never received one.

Today we think of education as a litany of scattered disciplines that you study for careerism and social mobility.

Math is for engineers
Medicine is for doctors
Science is for biologists
Humanities are for poor people (it’s okay, I was an English Major!)

The philosophy of modern education is to pick a discipline, stay in your lane, graduate, and begin your career. But this is not what education is at all… For most of history, education was meant to set you free.

A classical education taught you the seven liberal arts so that your soul could be liberated — freed from confusion and vice, ordered toward wisdom, and capable of living a meaningful life.

So what did that education actually look like?
And how could it make you free?

Today we’ll look to recapture the wisdom of a classical education, and learn how to give ourselves the true education that we never had.

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The 7 Liberal Arts

I’ve written in depth on the 7 liberal arts before, but I’ll briefly recap below.

The seven liberal arts were divided into two groups:

The Trivium — Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric
The Quadrivium — Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, Astronomy

Your education would begin with the Trivium:

Grammar teaches you how to read and speak
Logic teaches you how to think
Rhetoric teaches you how to express truth persuasively

Once you could think, speak, and articulate yourself clearly, you moved to the Quadrivium:

Arithmetic — number in itself
Geometry — number in space
Music — number in time
Astronomy — number in space and time

Why the emphasis on numbers? Because the Quadrivium is about training you to see order in reality itself. You learn that nature has an intelligent design, and that you are connected to it:

You belong in the cosmos.

Despite this outline, however, it’s not yet obvious how this education is distinct from modern education. All of these disciplines, in some form, still exist today.

The difference of a true liberal arts education, however, is not simply what you study, but why you study it.

It’s All Connected

In a nutshell, a classical liberal arts education taught you how to find God.

This doesn’t mean that you have to be strictly religious to receive a true education, but if you make God — the Ultimate, Transcendent Good — the end point of all education, it changes everything.

If your education is grounded in God, then the entirety of your education serves the same end: Goodness itself.

In other words, your education is no longer a set of scattered, independent disciplines. Instead, it becomes a deeply interconnected moral pursuit, teaching you to be attuned with truth, beauty, and goodness.

This interconnectedness is why the 7 liberal arts are presented as a wheel.

A true education is an encyclopedia, which literally means, “a circle of learning.”

Such an education assumes three key ideas:

Knowledge is ordered toward unity
The mind must be formed to perceive that unity
Learning is a returning motion — you circle back to older ideas, seeing more deeply each time

So in totality, education is about learning to be in harmony with reality — and more than that, it’s about transforming your soul itself.

This might sound strange, but let’s turn to symbolism to explain.

Have you noticed that the symbol of the 7 liberal arts looks strikingly similar to the rose windows of Gothic cathedrals?

That’s not a coincidence. Rose windows are a symbol of Heaven. This implies reality is designed off their pattern… and this same circular pattern is the symbol of classical education in the liberal arts.

The implication is that the liberal arts liberate your soul by forming you according to the pattern of heaven itself.

Education, then, is preparation for eternity.

But how do you actually see this? How do you study in such a way that you’re not just learning knowledge, but learning to mirror the structure of Paradise itself?

Dante Alighieri answers that question in the Paradiso.

He reveals the connection between the liberal arts, the rose, and the final destiny of the human soul:

A life brought into perfect alignment with the divine, and how you can reach it yourself.

Read more

Hemingway was the first great writer to diagnose the spiritual destruction of the Lost Generation.

As a World War I veteran himself, he knew firsthand how trench warfare murdered and traumatized millions, gutting the heart and soul of modern European civilization. The result was the abandonment of God, morality, and meaning.

Hemingway captures this bleak reality in his debut novel The Sun Also Rises. Through protagonist Jake Barnes, he reveals the spiritual malaise of modernity — and why men, in particular, have remained dejected, abandoned, and restless to this day.

Here’s what the story reveals about the Lost Generation, manhood, and what a path back to virtue might look like.

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Broken-Hearted

On the surface, the Sun Also Rises is a story of romance between Jake and his love interest Lady Brett Ashley.

They share a mutual affection, but there’s two problems hindering their romance:

1. Jake is made impotent from the war

2. Lady Brett Ashley lost her first love at war, and heartbroken, now refuses to settle with any man

The plot itself seems insignificant — it follows Jake, Brett, and their friends who aimlessly wander Europe, drinking and partying without purpose. Yet what first seems to be a superficial story of failed romance, actually becomes a brilliant social commentary on a closer read.

As “shallow” as the plot may appear, it’s not a celebration of party life. In fact, it becomes clear that every character we encounter is heartbroken, numbing an unbearable pain they do not understand.

Jake, for instance, spends most nights alone, in tears over Brett, longing for her comfort.

Brett, meanwhile, spends no nights alone — unable to bear solitude, silence, or even herself.

Yet while both Jake and Brett are miserable in solitude, we soon realize that—contrary to popular tales—romance is not the answer. They suffer from a deeper illness that not even marriage can cure.

A Reluctant Soul

Throughout Jake’s many nights of drinking, a strange motif emerges in the novel:

His lukewarm Catholicism.

There are no substantive theological discussions, but Jake often laments in passing that he’s a lousy Catholic — yet a Catholic nonetheless.

In his own words:

“The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling people. Good advice, anyway. Oh it was swell advice. [I should] try and take it sometime.”

This pattern — admiring Catholicism while failing to practice it — reveals that Jake’s true illness is not romantic loneliness, but spiritual malaise.

Jake’s physical “impotence,” which prevents his romance with Brett, is a sign of a deeper spiritual impotence — one that prevents him from a true union with God (Christians are, after all, the “bride of Christ”).

In this sense, The Sun Also Rises is a profound lie — if we take it to be a story about romance between Jake and Brett. Jake believes Brett is his path to a happy, meaningful life, but in truth, it doesn’t matter whether they marry or not:

Brett cannot make Jake happy. Jake cannot make Brett happy. Man needs more than marriage to find eternal meaning.

Jake and Brett’s misery is but the misery of modern man divorced from the divine, with no transcendent force to create true unity between man. While God lamented that “it’s not good for man to be alone,” both Jake and Brett alike are testimony to the fact that modern independence, in totality, amounts to nothing more than a living hell…

And yet, futile as Jake’s prospects for happiness remain, his misery is not the whole story.

Hemingway never fully answers the crisis of modern meaning, but he does understand the first step out. That step runs through all his great works, and is captured in one famous sentence.

Fighting the Good Fight

The aforementioned sentence appears in a separate novel, For Whom The Bell Tolls. Protagonist Robert Jordan, suffering in the midst of war, asserts:

“This world is a fine place and worth fighting for, and I hate very much to leave it.”

This idea underlies the heart of Hemingway’s works. In a sense, most all of his protagonists seem to suggest:

Life may be meaningless, but it is meaningful to fight and strive for meaning nonetheless.

You even see Jake Barnes himself fight for meaning, briefly, in The Sun Also Rises. His fight is spiritual — far more subtle, but poignant nonetheless.

Consider his visit to a Cathedral:

“At the end of the street I saw the cathedral and walked up toward it. The first time I ever saw it I thought the facade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself…

I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think of how I would make it…

I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time.”

That final line is the most revealing — Jake lamenting that Catholicism is a grand religion, yearning to feel religious, yet unable to love God.

In a nutshell, the question becomes:

How can man fall in love with a God he has lost faith in?

This is not just Jake’s plight, but modern man’s in totality.

Jake’s Catholicism can be understood as the “old order” the Lost Generation inherited and, in many ways, rejected — Christianity itself, along with the conceptions of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness that accompany it.

The answer, traditionally speaking, begins with the fight itself.

When Hemingway says the world is a fine place and worth fighting for, Christianity reminds you that such a fight entails carrying a cross. It entails long suffering, fortitude, and humility — and such a fight precedes formation of soul. One might advise Jake Barnes:

If you wish to feel religious, you must first act religious.

His life is spent drinking, idling, and longing for Brett. Little time is given to prayer, the sacraments, or the command to love God and neighbor.

The answer for Jake, then, is the same for modern man.

The life of faith — the faith the Lost Generation rejected, yet longed for nonetheless — is not one of mere intellectual assent, but one lived through sacrifice.

Hemingway shows us what went wrong, and he teaches us how to strive, such that we don’t despair. Yet to move beyond Jake’s silent desperation requires more than fighting. It requires love, a love of the world, a love of neighbor… a love of God.

We are not called to wish the world were good, but called to love Goodness itself.

Hence the lives of modern man ought not reflect the times of modernity. He is called to reflect the Good, and if one’s life is in harmony with the Good, then in totality, all shall be good.

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What does it mean to be a hero?

What first appears as a simple question is much harder to answer in reality.

From the beginnings of antiquity—and the Western literary tradition—writers have turned to heroism to ask: how do you live well in the face of death?

Given that man must die, he must learn how to live meaningfully—and heroism became the path to do so. To be a hero was to live with adventure, and ideally, to die with contentment, or at least with the hope of an immortal name.

Yet from Homer, to Virgil, Augustine of Hippo, and even up to Friedrich Nietzsche, we are given different visions of what heroism looks like.

And though there is vast disagreement, there is also a growing wisdom as this dialogue passes from thinker to thinker.

Today then, we will trace what heroism looks like through the literary tradition—to understand what it meant to be a hero in different ages, and ultimately, to discover what the apotheosis of a heroic life actually looks like.

To follow this thread is not just to learn heroism in the abstract, but to discover how you can be the hero of your own life’s story.

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Sing Muses!

The beginning of the Western literary tradition begins with Homer’s Iliad.

More interestingly, the Iliad itself begins with an exhortation to sing of the poem’s great hero:

“Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,

murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,

hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,

great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,

feasts for the dogs and birds,

and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end”

Remember the Iliad is about the Trojan War, and Achilles is famous for his rage. He’s the greatest hero of the war, and also the greatest killer of men.

To modern eyes, this conception of heroism sounds bleak and brutal — and perhaps it is — but there’s deep wisdom in understanding why Achilles was celebrated.

Recall that to live in the Bronze Age of Ancient Greece was no fun time. City-states were constantly warring, and men suffered and died without explanation, with no hope for life after death.

One of the most pressing concerns then, was, how can you live meaningfully in light of such a cruel destiny?

The answer was glory. Men found meaning by seeking glory on the battlefield, hoping to have an immortal name that endured after death.

In this case, Achilles was the most glorious and most famous hero — not because he was morally exemplar — but because he gave men a reason to strive, endure, and seek meaning in a hostile world.

Yet modern readers would be fair to critique that Achilles is not a great hero by today’s standards. We need further developments in the tradition to refine what heroism looks like.

Now, we jump ahead 800 years in history.

Roman Piety

After Homer, the Roman poet Virgil takes the next great leap in explaining heroism to mankind. He does so in his poem The Aeneid, which is like a sequel to Homer’s Iliad.

The plot follows Aeneas, a survivor of the Trojan War, who escapes Troy after his city gets sacked. He’s called by the gods to travel to the distant land of his ancestors where he shall found a legendary new city (the Roman Empire).

Whereas Homer’s Achilles is celebrated for his martial prowess, Virgil’s Aeneas is celebrated for a different virtue — piety.

His nickname is “Pious Aeneas,” as he surrenders his will, destiny, and desires to the decrees of the gods.

Virgil doesn’t strictly reject Homer’s conceptions of heroism — Aeneas is still a fierce warrior like Achilles, and a longsuffering leader like Odysseus — but he adds piety as a new and more foundational virtue to his Roman hero.

In other words, Virgil’s hero is a maturation of Homer.

If Homer tells us that a hero ought to be strong, brave, and formidable like Achilles, Virgil says, “yes, but he must be pious too. He must respect the gods, his city, and his family more than his own life.”

So Roman heroism is about loving family, civilization, and the gods. It’s about becoming a man of self-sacrificial duty for the harmony and well-being of your fellow man.

We see then, how Virgil proves a giant leap forward into heroism — including morality and religiosity as important features to becoming a hero — and yet, even now the full picture is not completed.

Some issues still remain, namely Aeneas’ life — while noble — isn’t joyous. Some critics argue his piety is too severe, and imperfect, that it destroys his own life, agency, and soul… an imperfect sacrifice.

Also, famously, this poem too ends in bloodshed that echoes the hells of the Iliad, implying that Aeneas’ heroism is not enough to conquer death and the agonies of existence…

But where can heroism go from here?

We see that Aeneas perfects duty, but not yet love.

And because of that, his heroism — however noble — still ends in death.

But in Book VI, Virgil leaves behind something unexpected:
a descent into the underworld that quietly points beyond pagan heroism altogether.

It is here that we begin to see what true, perfected heroism actually looks like.

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One of the greatest warnings of the Western tradition is simply this: do not be lukewarm.

It’s the haunting warning among the closing words of the Bible itself, yet we hear this warning echoed across countless thinkers in the great literary tradition.

But what does it actually mean to be lukewarm?

How do you know whether you’re living a lukewarm life, and how do you guard against slipping into one?

Today, we’ll look at some of the most famous examples of lukewarm souls throughout the Western tradition to understand this sin, the true gravity of its crime, and what the antidote to lukewarm living looks like.

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Origins

As a reminder, the infamous warning against lukewarmness comes in Revelation 3:16:

“So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

This is the great warning to all souls in light of the judgment to come.

Instinctively, we understand lukewarmness to mean indecision — but what does that indecision actually look like?

To first give a concrete explanation:

Lukewarmness is not just indecision, but a refusal to commit oneself to the highest good.

So it’s an apathy that is an implicit — or even explicit — rebellion against the Good.

But of course, to better demonstrate this, let’s look to the greatest teachers of our literary tradition for clear examples.

Lotus Eaters

One of the clearest examples of lukewarmness, surprisingly, comes from Homer’s Odyssey.

This might seem strange — invoking pagan literature to explain a Biblical ideal — but tradition has long held that pagan myths grasp partial truths that are fully revealed in Scripture.

Here, the lukewarm appear on the island of the Lotus-Eaters.

Odysseus and his men are striving to return home to Ithaca, but they have incurred the wrath of Poseidon and must endure trial after trial.

One of those trials is the fruit of the Lotus-Eaters. Specifically, those who eat it become apathetic. In this case, Odysseus’ men who eat the fruit abandon his quest and choose instead to remain in passive forgetfulness on the island.

It’s worth noting that this is not a life of leisure, nor fear, nor even indulgence in pleasure… it’s simply passive neglect.

So in Homer, we reconcile lukewarmness as a loss of telos, but pay careful attention to how he loses it — by being softened into comfort and complacency.

They do not reject the journey, they simply lose the will to continue it.

It’s abandoning one’s purpose and potential in life in order to settle into what is easy.

So Homer exhorts you to strive, yet his warning is actually just the surface of understanding the full scope of the evils of lukewarmness.

Dante will emphasize the true gravity of such a crime, and how it threatens to ravage your soul.

Blank Banners

In Dante’s Inferno, the first souls he encounters are not actually inside Hell, but just outside of it.

These are the lukewarm sinners, who are stung by wasps for eternity, while they endlessly march and carry a blank banner. Virgil explains that even Hell rejects them for their passivity.

Dante’s point is this:

The lukewarm do not merely live in apathy, but in a form of apathy so contemptible that not even evil desires them.

C.S. Lewis shares this idea in The Screwtape Letters. In the epilogue, the demons celebrate receiving souls in record numbers, but they lament that these souls taste bland; they’re lukewarm souls, who didn’t commit great evils nor even pursue abject pleasures. Simply put, they were just checked out of life.

What Dante and Lewis reveal is this: lukewarmness is an apathy despised by both good and evil alike.

Do you notice how the gravity of this crime has developed from Homer?

Lukewarmness is no longer “living without purpose,” but living without purpose with conscious knowledge — and neglect — of the good. To recognize life is a spiritual battle between good and evil, and refusing to cast one’s hand in either direction.

Ironically, then, the lukewarm are not even granted the dignity of great sinners. Dante has them cast out “lest Hell should glory over them.”

So true lukewarmness is a moral failing that ravages the soul, and yet still, we haven’t comprehended the fullness of its perils.

That’s because the fullness of the lukewarm requires one more piece of understanding — an insight that we’ll find in one of the greatest philosophers of the modern world.

The Aesthetic Man

Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th-century philosopher, argued that man lives in one of three modes:

1. Aesthetic

2. Ethical

3. Religious

Put simply:

1. The aesthetic man lives for himself.

2. The ethical man lives for others.

3. The religious man lives for God.

Kierkegaard insists that only the religious life leads to true fulfillment, but observes that most men remain trapped in the aesthetic life.

This life is merely defined by pleasure, distraction, and avoidance. Man fills his life with trivialities to escape the deeper questions of death, truth, and life’s ultimate meaning.

In other words, he becomes lukewarm.

And yet, the aesthetic man is the gravest and fullest understanding of the perils of lukewarmness.

Why is that?

Because the aesthetic man intentionally deceives himself. Whereas Dante condemns the lukewarm for refusing to choose between good and evil, Kierkegaard warns that modern man — in masses — is actively hiding himself from the reality of good and evil altogether.

For Dante, the lukewarm says, “I will not choose.”

For Kierkegaard, modern man says, “What do you mean choose? Choose what?”

To make it concrete, we can consider the state of most moderns — who live for pleasure and comfort alone, with no concern for Truth, meaning, justice, or questions of eternity.

Kierkegaard stresses that all mankind feels the pressure of these obligations implicitly — but most actively refuse — living as if to eliminate a reminder that these realities exist. Tragically, it hearkens back to the lamentation of the ancient poet Hesiod, who said “most men live lives fit for cattle.”

Only worse yet, Kierkegaard might lament that “most men yearn to live like cattle.”

As such, the fullness of lukewarmness is not just living without purpose, nor moral failure, but a corruption of spirit that leads man to desire to be like the Edenic “beasts of the field,” rather than the one called to rule and subdue the Earth.

Such are the Times

If the tradition offers a severe indictment of lukewarmness, it also offers hope.

In an age marked by apathy and a lack of zeal for virtue, those who seek the Good have never had a greater opportunity to stand apart.

To live well — to love the Good — is to pursue a form of beauty that makes life itself beautiful. The pursuit of God is, in this sense, the making of one’s life into a work of art. And today, such a life shines all the more brightly against the dullness of lukewarmness.

At the same time, a love of Truth becomes the greatest rebellion against the age, and the surest path to meaning.

The real danger then, is not that we become great sinners, but that we become nothing at all. And in the end, not even Hell desires such a soul.

As Augustine reminds us: there are no good times or bad times — only how we live within them.

To reconcile our duty to live well is to make the times well, and to care for that duty is to ensure not only do we avoid the evils of lukewarmness, but become beacons for our fellow man to follow.

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Dante’s Inferno is the most famous poem of the Divine Comedy, but Purgatorio shines if you want to transform your life.

The sequel follows Dante’s escape from Hell as he climbs Mt. Purgatory in pursuit of Paradise. To do so, he must confront and conquer the seven deadly sins of his soul, scattered across seven terraces on the mountain.

The story is entertaining, but it’s also deeply pedagogical:

Dante is giving you a personal map to conquer evil, embrace virtue, and live a life so ordered that you may be deemed worthy of Paradise. Christians and classicists alike have called this book the “greatest self-help manual of all time” for its timeless wisdom.

Today, we’ll take a deep dive into the core message of Dante’s Purgatorio—to learn what it reveals about the human condition, and how to live so that your soul may ascend to Paradise.

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The 7 Deadly Sins

First, let’s recap the structure of Mount Purgatory.

The 7 terraces of the mountain actually divide onto 3 main sub-sections of Purgatory.

Here’s their order, from bottom to top:

1. Lower Purgatory, consisting of Pride, Envy, and Wrath. These are sins of perverted love.

2. Middle Purgatory, consisting of Sloth. This is the sin of deficient love.

3. Upper Purgatory, consisting of Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust. These are sins of excessive love.

In each terrace, repentant sinners undergo “contrapassos,” or punishments that fit their unique crimes on Earth. These punishments are efficacious — they purge the soul of evil and teach a corresponding virtue.

For instance, in the terrace of Pride, sinners must carry heavy boulders while hunched over, which teaches them humility.

This also leads us to an important question:

Why does Mt. Purgatory begin with pride?

This is considered the deadliest sin, and the hardest one to tackle… shouldn’t it come last?

Here is where we see Dante’s genius shine.

The Burden is Light

Dante himself converses with sinners in this circle, and by the time he exists this terrace, he notices that he too is transformed:

“Teacher, as I climb I feel almost no strain!

Tell me what heavy thing I’ve been relieved of now.”

Dante’s guide, Virgil, replies:

“Your feet will be so conquered by good will,

Not only will they feel no strain—they’ll take

Delight in being urged up on the hill”

Pride is the most fundamental evil in the soul — and the hardest to conquer — but this is precisely why it must come first. If you want to live well, find redemption, and reach Paradise, it is the first battle you must fight.

In other words, it is impossible to live the good life without humility.

But it gets better. When you learn humility as Dante does, the climb gets easier. Virgil himself says you’ll find “delight,” in being urged up the hill.

In other words, a humble heart with a proper aim at The Good, or God, draws from a grace that conquers transforms suffering. Just as Purgatory’s punishments become a kind of delight to the humble, so too earthly suffering can become a source of joy as you persevere along the path of virtue and human flourishing.

What’s remarkable is, after all this wisdom, we’re still only at the first terrace!

There’s far more wisdom, and far deeper transformation, to come.

In fact, the real turning point doesn’t begin until Dante conquers the third terrace, which is wrath.

Blinded by Rage

The punishment for wrath is its inhabitants must walk in a blinding smoke. It mirrors the experience of blind rage — which can be an intoxicating pleasure (perverted love) — and forces the inhabitants to learn meekness, restraint, and desire for God.

Dante himself is blinded in this smoke. He’s just as lost as the repentant sinners ascending here.

In this blindness, he meets a fellow sinner named Mark the Lombard. They enter into a philosophical conversation where Dante asks Mark to explain the origins of evil in the universe. Mark will give a surprising answer, which will perhaps be Dante’s biggest breakthrough in the entire Divine Comedy:

“Living men attribute to the sky

The causes of all things, as if they moved

Ever and only by necessity.

That would destroy the freedom of your will,

Nor would it then be just to deal out joy

For doing well, or woe for doing ill…

You men lie subject to God who made

You free, a greater force, a better nature,

Who formed your minds without the planets’ aid.

Thus if this present world has gone askew,

Look to yourselves, in yourselves lies the cause”

Mark tells him that evil is to be blamed on man’s free will. This references the Fall, but more importantly, it references every individual too. If Dante is to recognize the cause of evil, he must recognize that “in yourselves lies the cause.”

Ironically, the same free will that led to the Fall is also the path to redemption and the good life.

Dante’s revelation is that the proper use of free will is the path to ascent — that the way “upward” is, in fact, a turn “inward.”

But this raises a deeper question:

How do you actually use your freedom to ascend?

The next terrace gives Dante the answer — and shows exactly how a soul begins to rise toward Paradise.

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Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is one of the most unexpected success stories in literary history.

Today we recognize it as a classic that has sold millions and launched a multi-media empire, but no one would have expected it to succeed when it was first published.

At the time, Tolkien was an obscure professor, writing fantasy in an age when fantasy had no literary merit.

Worse still, Europe had been traumatized by two world wars that ushered in modernity and the lost generation. The prevailing sentiment was that life was meaningless, and redemption was futile. As such, a story about hobbits, good vs. evil, and “happily ever afters” had no business resonating with modern audiences… yet it did.

Lord of the Rings is now one of the greatest-selling novels in human history. Its glories transcend generations, nationalities, and cultures, and has won the hearts of modern man — who struggles to believe in anything.

How did it succeed? And why has virtually no fantasy novel replicated its success since?

Tolkien shared the secret in an obscure essay titled On Fairy Stories.

The essay explains how to write good fantasy — but more importantly, why reading and writing fantasy may be among the greatest gifts you can give your soul.

Today, then, we’ll explore the key insights of On Fairy Stories — to help you appreciate fantasy, learn from Tolkien’s wisdom, and understand the truths good fantasy writing can reveal to you about your soul.

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Defining Faërie

First, Tolkien begins by defining what a fairy story is.

You’ll notice his definition is unique from most fantasy writers:

“The definition of a fairy-story—what it is, or what it should be—does not, then, depend on any definition or historical account of elf or fairy, but upon the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country.

I will not attempt to define that, nor to describe it directly. It cannot be done. Faërie cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible.”

So a true fairy-story transcends definition. It cannot be explained, only experienced. A fairy story must create a world, and the reader must be immersed in it. You’ll notice that Lord of the Rings does this wonderfully, creating an entire mythology and immersive world.

But how did Tolkien bring Middle Earth to life?

What did he know about humanity, storytelling, and myth-making that created such a vibrant universe?

The answer, surprisingly, has to do with his sharp and refined understanding of the human soul.

Perfecting Human Desire

Tolkien continues to explain how to cultivate “Faerie,” or the authentic nature of fantasy:

“The magic of Faerie is not an end in itself, its virtue is in its operations: among these are the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires. One of these desires is to survey the depths of space and time.

Another is (as will be seen) to hold communion with other living things.

A story may thus deal with the satisfaction of these desires, with or without the operation of either machine or magic, and in proportion as it succeeds it will approach the quality and have the flavour of fairy-story.”

So true fairy stories don’t require magic, dragons, witches, etc. rather they must satisfy primordial human desires. A fantasy world feels authentic — as real as reality — when it satisfies universal yearnings like the desire to explore the cosmos and hold communion with nature, man, and living things.

In fact, Tolkien suggests that fairy-stories are not about escapism, rather they actually help you perceive reality more clearly:

“Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity.

On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make.”

Good fantasy perfects reason. True fantasy stories cohere with rational truths about human nature and the cosmos, but are dramatized in narrative form.

Let’s give an example.

You can tell a young boy, “you must be courageous.” He might agree, but the command alone won’t turn a coward to a warrior.

However, if that young boy reads about Aragorn’s valor at the battle of Helms Deep — and spends the next day fighting imaginary orcs in his backyard — that boy has implicitly embraced courage without thought. His soul has conformed closer to the Good.

At this point, we recognize that good stories satisfy primordial human desires — that they teach yout about the world and your soul — but Tolkien says true fairy stories go even deeper.

He says they actually satisfy the deepest desire that all human beings crave from the moment they become conscious.

Here’s what it is.

Conquering Death

What is this “oldest and deepest desire?”

Tolkien continues:

“Lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this—which might be called the genuine escapist, or (I would say) fugitive spirit.”

Tolkien stresses that all stories, ultimately, are about death, and the human yearning to conquer it. He says fairy-stories are far better at conquering death than most other stories:

“The ‘consolation’ of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires.

Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story.

Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.”

This is one of Tolkien’s most famous inventions, the term “eucatastrophe,” or the sudden joyous turn that leads to a happy ending.

He continues:

“[Eucatastrophe] denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world…

The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a ‘consolation’ for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, ‘Is it true?’

The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.”

In other words, eucastrophe satisfies the deepest desire and most prescient Truth of the world:

That life is good, and worth fighting for, despite its sufferings and evils.

In the end, a joy can be attained that conquers death and ushers you towards everlasting life, if you handle your burdens nobly.

Tolkien concludes his essay with a nod towards Christianity — noting that it reads as a fairy story, but one that took place in real human history.

Thus, we are left with the striking conclusion that fairy stories may be more real than “real life.”

For reality itself, in its fullness, has the structure of a fairy story — one that moves toward a final eucatastrophe.

Though we remain in a valley of pain and tears, there is good news to come — and perhaps an unperishable fire blazing beyond death.

I offer private mentorship in the Great Books for those seeking clarity of vision and depth of soul. Inquire here.

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