“A society of friends at work”

Related reading and listening

• Constructing your Favorites List — Ken Myers describes the new ecosystem of Mars Hill Audio’s membership/partnership program and shares clips from five recent lectures released as Bonus Features. (26 minutes)
• The political wisdom of Edmund Burke — FROM VOL. 28 Daniel Ritchie discusses the enduring political wisdom of British statesman and political thinker Edmund Burke (1729–1797). (13 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 162 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, R. Jared Staudt, Paul Weston, William C. Hackett, Hans Boersma, and David Paul Baird
• Prudence in politics — FROM VOL. 146 Henry T. Edmondson, III talks about Flannery O’Connor’s understanding of political life, which was influenced by a range of thinkers including Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Eric Voegelin, and Russell Kirk. (19 minutes)
• The artist’s commitment to truth — Fr. Damian Ference, author of Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist, explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy. (18 minutes)
• Flannery O’Connor and Thomistic philosophy — Fr. Damian Ference explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy, as evidenced by her reading habits, letters, prayer journal, and, of course, essays and fiction. (48 minutes)
• What does it mean to be a creature? — Canon-theologian Simon Oliver explains how and why the doctrine of Creation is cardinal and must frame all theology. (62 minutes)
• Friendship and life together — In a lecture at Providence College, Ken Myers explores how the concept of friendship, which used to be central to political philosophy, was banished from considerations of public life as the state was exalted over society. (53 minutes)
• Political community and the good — D. C. Schindler on why political life is inevitably “a particular interpretation of the highest human good”
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 160 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jessica Hooten Wilson, Kyle Hughes, Gil Bailie, D. C. Schindler, Paul Tyson, and Holly Ordway
• The aboriginal Vicar of Christ, the voice of God in the heart of Man — Reinhard Hütter on John Henry Newman’s insistence that conscience — rightly formed — bears witness to the law of God
• Conscience and its counterfeits — A 2014 lecture by theologian Reinhard Hütter examines “Freedom of Conscience as Freedom in the Truth: Conscience according to Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman.” (64 minutes)
• Why kings are compelling — Historian Francis Oakley describes how the modern idea of “secular” politics is a striking departure in human history. (32 minutes)
• Put not your trust in tyrants — Andrew Willard Jones contrasts the pre-modern understanding of political power with the modern view. (46 minutes)
• Justice and truth — Joseph Ratzinger: “Plato’s philosophy is utterly misconceived when he is presented as an individualistic, dualistic thinker who negates what is earthly and advocates a flight into the beyond.”
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 158 — FEATURED GUESTS: David Setran, Vigen Guroian, Michael Dominic Taylor, Thomas Pfau, Jason Paone, and Matthew Levering
• Challenging the “gospel of democracy” — Robert Kraynak argues that assumptions many modern Christians hold about liberal democracy are rooted in some false ideas about the nature and purpose of civil government. (46 minutes)
• Before Church and State — Andrew Willard Jones challenges some of the conventional paradigms of thinking about political order, arguing that modern assumptions of the relationship between Church and state color how we understand history. (54 minutes
• The light shines in the darkness — Physicist David Park explores the physical, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of light, considering the phenomenon of light in profound ways, from spiritual meanings embedded in our culture to the challenging questions put forth by great scientists and philosophers. (17 minutes)
• The problem of a degenerate electorate — Aquinas, Augustine, and Aristotle on good government, as summarized by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 147 — FEATURED GUESTS: R. Jared Staudt, Jason Peters, D. C. Schindler, Craig Gay, Mary Hirschfeld, and Patrick Samway
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 144 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jonathan Mcintosh, Kevin Vost, Malcolm Guite, R. David Cox, Grant Brodrecht, and Peter Bouteneff
• St. Thomas and the wisdom of Creation — Christopher Thompson offers a renewed vision of “the human person [as] an embodied, spiritual creature dwelling in a cosmos of created natures, intelligently ordered by God and capable of being intelligibly grasped by human reason.” (16 minutes)
• Questioning the “sacred-secular” division — With the stage set by Michael Sandel, Jean Bethke Elshtain, David L. Schindler, and John Milbank, Andrew Willard Jones examines a medieval alternative to the modern liberal paradigm. (61 minutes)
• Fr. James V. Schall, R.I.P. — Fr. James V. Schall explains how, like contemplation, play engages us in something beyond ourselves and is a delight in itself. (9 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 130 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jacob Silverman, Carson Holloway, Joseph Atkinson, Greg Peters, Antonio López, and Julian Johnson
• The problem with patriotism in secular democracies — Alasdair MacIntyre on the systematic rejection of the tradition of the virtues in modern political institutions
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 97 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, Stanley Fish, James Peters, Scott Moore, and Makoto Fujimura
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 91 — FEATURED GUESTS: John Witte, Jr., Hugh Brogan, Daniel Ritchie, Daniel Walker Howe, George McKenna, and Patrick Deneen
• Richard Sherlock: “The Secret of Straussianism” — Richard Sherlock explores the significance of political philosopher Leo Strauss’s methodology, focusing on how he understood the communication of ideas in classical and modern thought about political order. (36 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 82 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stephen Gardner, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Wilfred McClay, David Wells, James K. A. Smith, and Robert Littlejohn
• Hillbilly Thomist: Flannery O’Connor and the Truth of Things — Susan Srigley and Ralph Wood examine Flannery O’Connor‘s sacramental fiction and her understanding of the wisdom of limits. (60 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 71 — FEATURED GUESTS: Peter Augustine Lawler, David Koyzis, Roger Lundin, Craig Gay, Steven Rhoads, and R. Larry Todd