How to Conquer Tyranny: A Lesson from Plato

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Plato’s Letter VII Plato to Dion’s associates and friends wishes well-doing. You write to me that I must consider your views the same as those of Dion, and you urge me to aid your cause so far as I can…

Art, Metaphor and Epiphany

By David Gosselin The experience of great art is similar to the experience of a great scientific discovery. There is a common sentiment of “epiphany”. It is the strangely familiar feeling of remembering something for the first time, or having our attention fall on something that had been there all along. In both the case…

Tagore’s Religion of Man (a workshop)

Today’s present age is beset by a littleness of thinking that is not disconnected from the profound loss of universality that once animated the cultural standards of healthier past ages. Individuals too often grope moment to moment for either survival or hedonistic pleasure while professionals and technicians who yearn to use their knowledge for the…

A Song

By Gerald Therrien Is it to herald your regal realm,    proclaims this voice serene and bold? For all who hear it are in your care,    from God that right you do uphold! Is it a message sent far and wide,    an envoy to a love unseen? That seeks a mate of the…

Shall We Allow Poets in the Republic? Part Three

By Gerald Therrien At the end of part 2 of ‘Shall We Allow Poets in the Republic’, we came upon the proposition that poets either must be ‘possessed and insane’ and derive their inspiration from some divine influence – like the oracles and prophecies of the priests and priestesses of the gods, or that poets…

Why Shelley Wrote ‘A Defense of Poetry’ and its Relevance for Today

In the wake of the 1815 Congress of Vienna which saw a suffocating cage imposed upon all forms of creative literature, art, and music deemed “insurrectionary” by the oligarchical families then restating their power after two decades of napoleonic wars, it appeared to many that any hopes of a republican spirit in the arts and…