The Classical Mind Newsletter for February 24, 2023

An Introduction to Virtue, Bodying Forth the Classics, Allegory of Virtues and Vices, Controlling Book Piles, Soren Kierkegaard on Courage, and Virtuous Reading

An Introduction to Virtue

Bodying Forth the Classics

At the Church Life Journal from the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institue, Jessica Hooten Wilson, scholar in residence at the University of Dallas’ Humanities and Classical Education program, discusses the purpose of learning in her piece “Bodying Forth the Classics: A Manifesto.” The goal of education, according to Wilson, is not rebellion against authority, assertion of opinion, or mere knowledge acquisition. The purpose of education, she surmises, is in the application of truth. “We assess the truth of whether the permanent things matter by how they can be lived, how we see them lived in the lives of our teachers.” Education is an act of mimesis where students, whether they realize it or not, model their teachers. “If teachers become what they teach, then they never have to fear about creating their own disciples. Rather, students will follow what they are taught—the Bible, Homer, Dante, Dostoyevsky.”

Allegory of Virtues and Vices by Lorenzo Lotto (1505 AD)

This painting by Lorenzo Lotto was painted to be a creative cover of Bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi, Lotto’s patron. It is the Bishop’s coat of arms on the shield leaning against the tree in the center of the painting. Notice the bipolarity of the painting. The tree stands at the center, its right side is green and verdant while its right side with cut off and dry. The left is much brighter than the right. In the waters on the right is a ship sinking. Also, notice that the ground in the background on the left side is clear with a path running through it while the right side is cluttered with a forest. The character on the left is a putto, a cherub, with books, flutes, geometric tools, etc. in front of him. These stand for the Liberal Arts: grammar, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, and music. The figure on the right side is a drunk silenus, typically understood in Greek mythology as a friend of Dionysus, the wine god. The point is that virtue brings light and shows us a clear path while vice shrouds us in darkness. It reminds me of St. Thomas Aquinas’ prayer before study: “Take from us the double darkness into which we have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance.”

Controlling Book Piles

Speaking of virtues, temperance, also called self-control, is an important one. One thing A.G. Sertillanges points out is that it’s possible for us to try to read too much. This is a lack of temperance; it’s the vice of curiosity. At her Substack,

Better Book Clubs

, Kathy Czepiel describes the struggle of owning books that “take up space. Which leads to piles. Which leads to the day when you realize that books, like dust bunnies and cardboard shipping boxes, may be taking over your house.”