By Philip Valenti “He is appreciated, not because he is ‘really like an American,’ but because he is truly Chinese. He has even caused us to question our own dramatic forms and our manners. And he has led many of us to respect the Chinese and their civilization in a way no amount of…
Tag: Aesthetical Education
Re-discovering the Odyssey of Homer. Was it History or a Myth (Updated Edition)
By Gerald Therrien With all the hoopla about a new movie on Homer’s Odyssey, I decided it was time to correct certain errors in my presentation of Homer’s Odyssey first presented to The Rising Tide Foundation in 2022. In that earlier location, I had attempted to sort out all the different questions about whether or…
Beyond the Lines: Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
By Adam Sedia Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is one of his shortest works, but also one of his best known, anthologized to the point of ubiquity. But it deserves every bit of the reputation it has gained. Short, yet powerful and descriptive, it illustrates the sonnet at its best. And it is one of the…
Beyond the Lines: Keats’ “Ode on Indolence”
By David Gosselin The question has been raised by many critics, academics, scientists, and artists, “What is Creativity?” In the spring of 1819, the poet John Keats experienced one of the greatest bursts of creativity in the history of art and science. When fully considered, the astounding poetic achievements of the spring of 1819 parallel…
Prometheus and Atlantis
By Gerald Therrien In Part 1 of my recently published Trilogy on the School of Athens (The Pre-Socratic Philosophers Explored), we read that, ‘Prometheus therefore, being at a loss to provide any means of salvation for man, stole from Hephaestus and Athena the gift of skill in the arts, together with fire, and bestowed it…
Why Must Aesthetics Govern A Society Worthy Of Political Freedom? Ask the CIA
By Matthew Ehret In the mid-1990s, a series of exposés featured on the London Independent and elsewhere brought a dark secret to light. Many were startled by the revelation that the entire evolution of 20th century modern art was directed in large measure by the CIA! This not only included the direct financing of abstract painters like Jackson Pollock…
The World Needs a Renaissance, Not an Enlightenment
Both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment are gravely misunderstood in the popular imagination. The Renaissance was the culmination of a millennium of thwarted attempts to revive not just classical arts, but the classical worldview. The Renaissance achieved this with the added benefit of Christianity, which emphasized the human being as both rational and creative. To…
Geoffrey Chaucer and the Last Knight in England
Gerald Therrien sheds light on the real Geoffrey Chaucer as an epistemological warrior who used the power of the pen to shape entire kingdoms, subvert the growth of the Feudal Norman Barons and corrupting romanticism while also forming the english language. Watch Gerald Therrien’s accompanying lectures here: In Defense of King Arthur • In Defence of King Arthur [Gerald Therrien… Marlowe vs….
Insights into the Human Heart, Tragedy and Wisdom with Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida
On Sunday March 1, 2026, The Rising Tide Foundation hosted the poet, philosopher, lawyer and essayist Carey Jobe in an examination of Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy ‘Troilus and Cresida’. Written in the early 1600s, at roughly the same time as Hamlet and King Lear, Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespeare’s most challenging plays. It is…
The Pursuit of Happiness – From Dante and Erasmus to Leibniz and Ben Franklin
This Sunday February 1, 2026, historian Uwe Alschner (author at The Benefit of the Other) presented the Rising Tide Foundation lecture of the week followed by a robust Q and A session with everyone in the live audience. What are the principled ideas that have positively shaped the long arc of human history and liberated…