Liberal arts and the importance of truth

Related reading and listening

1. Treating Truth with sovereign respect — Henri de Lubac on the urgency of intellectual activity
2. Goodness, truth, and conscience — David Crawford examines Karol Wojtyła’s thought on the relationship between conscience and truth. (37 minutes)
3. Virgil and purposeful history — In this lecture from June 2019, classical educator Louis Markos examines Book II of The Aeneid to argue that Virgil had an eschatological view of history. (68 minutes)
4. From shadows to the light of reality — FROM VOL. 153 Louis Markos argues that Plato needs to be recognized for his unique and serendipitous role in preparing the world for Christ. (24 minutes)
5. When language is weaponized — FROM VOL. 52 Jeffrey Meyers explains George Orwell‘s understanding of how language can be used as a weapon in totalitarian movements and regimes. (10 minutes)
6. Multi-leveled language and active spiritual engagement — FROM VOL. 95 Eugene Peterson talks about how Jesus spent most of his time speaking normally and conversationally, and how the Spirit infused this normal speech. (14 minutes)
7. Bearing well the burdens of the past, present, and future — Louis Markos shows how great literature like the Iliad links us to the human story and strengthens us to live fully and well. (65 minutes)
8. Torrential winds of doctrine — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the “dictatorship of relativism”
9. Why liberalism tends toward absolutism — In this lecture, Michael Hanby examines what causes liberalism to become dictatorial in thought and practice. (49 minutes)
10. Personhood, limits, and academic vocation — FROM VOL. 39 Marion Montgomery (1934–2002) offers a deep critique of the relationship of the academy to its community in an effort to diagnose how higher education has lost its way. (13 minutes)
11. What higher education forgot — FROM VOL. 84 Harry L. Lewis discusses higher education’s amnesia about its purposes, and how that shortchanges students. (19 minutes)
12. The history of Christianity and higher education — FROM VOL. 50 In tracing Christianity’s relationship to the academy, Arthur F. Holmes points to Augustine as one of the first to embrace higher learning, believing God’s ordered creation to be open to study by the rational mind of man. (9 minutes)
13. No neutral view of the cosmos — Ken Myers argues that Christians need to recover a “whole-earth discipleship” that enables them to think Christianly about all areas of life, including public life. (50 minutes)
14. On wonder, wisdom, worship, and work — Classical educator Ravi Jain dives deeply into the nature, purpose, and interconnectedness of the liberal, common, and fine arts. (43 minutes)
15. The unintended consequences of the Reformation — FROM VOL. 114 Historian Brad Gregory discusses the unintended consequences of the Reformation, consequences which continue to trouble us. (26 minutes)
16. The loss of hierarchy and humility in the academy — In interviews from 1999, literature professors Alvin Kernan and Marion Montgomery discuss how culture of the academy — its hyper-democratic posture and its loathing of limits — derails the pursuit of truth. (25 minutes)
17. Blest be the ties of language that bind us — Marion Montgomery on the precious gift of words
18. The academy’s deconstruction of both person and community — Marion Montgomery on cultivating “a deportment of intellect governed by a continuing concern for the truth of things”
19. From university to multiversity to demoversity — Alvin Kernan on tectonic shifts in higher education since the 1960s
20. Markos, Louis — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Louis Markos, Professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities.
21. 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.”
22. Sustaining a heritage of wisdom — Louise Cowan (1916–2015) explains how the classics reach the deep core of our imagination and teach us to order our loves according to the wholeness of reality. (16 minutes)
23. Sources of wisdom (and of doubt) — Roger Lundin shares what he has appreciated about Mars Hill Audio conversations, and he discusses what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (32 minutes)
24. Recovering natural philosophy — Science teacher Ravi Scott Jain discusses natural philosophy, the “love of wisdom in the realm of nature,” as the overarching discipline in the sciences. (21 minutes)
25. Is irrational freedom truly freedom? — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argues that freedom must be understood in the context of interplay of reason and the will
26. Is religious belief really true? — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger asks if Christian faith is just lovely subjective consolation, a kind of make-believe world side by side with the real world
27. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 153 — FEATURED GUESTS: Charles C. Camosy, O. Carter Snead, Matt Feeney, Margarita A. Mooney, Louis Markos, and Alan Jacobs
28. Unreason destroys freedom — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the relationship between freedom and truth
29. What is really true? Why does beauty matter? — Bishop Robert Barron talks about the necessity of persuading people that theological claims are about things that are objectively true, not just personally meaningful. (14 minutes)
30. On the re-enchantment of education — Stratford Caldecott on teaching in light of cosmic harmony
31. Justice and gender, round 2 — Margaret Harper McCarthy, one of the authors of a brief on gender submitted to the Supreme Court, discusses the philosophical and practical implications of fashionable notions of the meaning of gender. (33 minutes)
32. The Liberal Arts tradition, II — context and extension — Kevin Clark explains how the book he co-authored defines a framework in which the Trivium and the Quadrivium are the core of a curriculum that includes piety, gymnastics, music, philosophy, and theology. (20 minutes)
33. The Liberal Arts tradition, I — science and harmony — Ravi Scott Jain discusses the place of the Quadrivium — the four mathematical arts — within the larger framework of the classical approach to education. (21 minutes)
34. On the meaning of gender and the truth of human nature — Margaret Harper McCarthy, one of the authors of a brief on gender submitted to the Supreme Court, discusses the philosophical and practical implications of fashionable notions of the meaning of gender. (29 minutes)
35. The missional mandate of truth — Joseph Ratzinger on the partnership of faith and reason in the coherence of love and truth
36. Skepticism and totalitarian drift — John Paul II on how a loss of confidence in the reality of truth accentuates the will to power
37. Love and truth precede justice — James Matthew Wilson on the relationship between truth and love in Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate
38. The witness of goodness and beauty to truth — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the apologetic necessity of holiness and great art
39. The reasonableness of love — Terry Eagleton on the myth of the disinterested pursuit of truth
40. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 117 — FEATURED GUESTS: Matthew Dickerson, Jennifer Woodruff Tait, Jeffry Davis, Philip Ryken, and Robert P. George
41. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 102 — FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lew Daly, Adam K. Webb, Stratford Caldecott, James Matthew Wilson, and Thomas Hibbs
42. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 94 — FEATURED GUESTS: Maggie Jackson, Mark Bauerlein, Tim Clydesdale, Andy Crouch, and Jeremy Begbie