Front Porch Republic
A Place to Stand: The Aims of Teaching, The Good of the Canon, and The Great Gatsby at 100
The real work of judgment makes possible stability and repair, a work worth even one’s death, or, what may prove more difficult, a lifetime of obscure fidelity.
Brad Littlejohn on Freedom and Big Tech
Brad Littlejohn’s recent book offers wise guidance for navigating our way through these times of rapid change.
Rights Without Responsibilities?
Many are quick to posit that we have a wide range of rights, yet we are almost tongue-tied about our responsibilities.
The Monster and the Mirage
Technology may assist the surgeon, illuminate the astronomer’s field, or console a mother in her sorrow. Yet it cannot give the soul the perfection it longs for.
Following Dante
At its best, Krause’s writing reminds us that poetry is not a luxury but a vital mode of human knowing, one that can re-enchant our disenchanted age and direct us…
News, Notes, & Podcasts
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McGuane, MAHA, and DoorDash
Charles McNamara wrestles with how we might regain the virtues needed for real education.
Don’t the Last Time Come Too Soon?: Break-Up Songs
Inspired by absolutely nothing in my personal life, we’re listening to break-up songs this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs. I’ll try not to make it too depressing! Send…
Populism, Substack, and Education
In a searing essay, Alvaro M. Bedoya, a former FTC commissioner, describes how he came to embrace populism.
A Hammer Needs a Nail: Songs About Work
In conjunction with the most recent issue of Local Culture and with FPR’s fall conference, we’re listening to songs about work on this week’s Symposium of Popular Songs.
More Articles
Education in a Different Story
We must begin to see and name how deeply the modern higher education industry subverts the very nature of embodied, placed, limited humans.
The Commons in a Cardboard Box
A box by a door. A hand that picks up. A name that calls an object to account.
Relics of the Fleeting Past
A room once filled with my son and his belongings was mostly empty. It wasn’t the absence of his stuff that hurt; it was his absence. But as I ran my fingers over his bookshelf, still full with the books…
ChatGPT Can Code. But It Cannot Discern.
Colleges and universities should focus on forming the uniquely human attributes that AI cannot replicate.
Inside a Web of Love: Thoughts on Gurney Norman
As Gurney’s family and friends wrestle with the loss of their friend, I hope they—or more accurately we—will lean into being lonely inside a web of love.
Poetic Responses to Turmoil
Smith's poem has returned to my mind several times, especially in moments, like our current one, of cultural and political turmoil.
Learning the Glad Game with Shemaiah Gonzalez’s Undaunted Joy
Her essays feel like invitations to look for joy.
The Many Lives of Milton’s Paradise Lost
For anyone who endeavors to read or teach "Paradise Lost" for the first time, I could hardly imagine a better single-volume guide to the work’s author, context, themes, and significance.
From the Archive
Spiritual Secession: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth
" None of your readers need me to tell them that the useful work is practical, particular, small and careful: to get away from screens as much as we can, get…
The Road Taken
Sometimes an important change becomes evident only in retrospect - not while it’s happening across quiet broken days alone in a house while autumn succumbs to shadow and cold.
Where Is Our Freedom to Exercise Sympathy?
The same things that happened to the family farms, and to farmers like my father, are now happening to the colleges, and to faculty like me.
The Art of Living an Examined Life
If human beings flourish from their inner core rather than in the realm of impact and results, then the inner work of learning is fundamental to human happiness, as far…
Cultivating the Skills that Freedom Requires in Matthew Crawford’s Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
Human driving requires unending mutual predictions and constant accommodations for each other. It is in such experiences that we end up with something meaningful for life in the physical world…