Philosophy

The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice

For two thousand years poets, writes Michael Grant, composers and painters have drawn upon the great archetypal myth of Orpheus—one of the myths that will always stir humanity.

The Origin of Religion in Theory and Archaeology

S.G.F. Brandon describes how the earliest representatives of mankind were concerned with three fundamental problems— birth, death and the supply of food—which they attempted to solve by magico-religious means.

Mill and Emerson: Sense and Nonsense

Frank Prochaska has made a remarkable discovery in the personal library of John Stuart Mill. It proves that Mill not only read the works of his American contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, but was surprisingly harsh in his judgement of him. 

St. Thomas Aquinas as a Political Philosopher

Once described as “the first Whig,” the great Christian philosopher of the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas, is here introduced by Maurice Cranston as an exponent of order, justice and government.

The Divine Right of Kings

Although the theory of Divine Right may seem difficult nowadays to take seriously, W.H. Greenleaf describes how it has exerted a profound influence upon the thoughts and lives of many Englishmen.

B.C. and A.D.: The Christian Philosophy of History

After the sack of Rome by the Goths in the year 410, the Roman world experienced some of the unease that afflicts Western civilization today; S.G.F. Brandon describes how the late Roman world found assuagement in the writings of Saint Augustine.