Search online for “the meaning of rhetoric,” and you’ll find the word typically defined as speech or writing intended to persuade others. Some sources list as a secondary meaning bombastic or sentimental speech and writing, often deceitful in their attempts at persuasion. “He’s just gaslighting us,” someone might say of a politician’s appearance. “It’s all…

Writers-to-be, unite! Actually, writers-who-already-are, feel free to come along, too. Philip Freeman, who holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in humanities at Pepperdine University, has issued a new and more concise translation of Aristotle’s famous work, “Poetics.” Freeman’s translation is part of Princeton University Press’s ongoing Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers collection, to which the author…

What is the origin of things? Did things come from nothing or from something? Those were just some of the many questions the Ancient Greeks pondered, but it led them to be the first to truly innovate. They saw what was and made them better. Armand D’Angour, professor of classics and a fellow at Jesus…

Let’s say it’s the fall of 2021, and you’re the mother of a 9-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son who attend public school. Your daughter hasn’t seen most of her classmates’ faces in more than a year, and your son daily complains that the mask is smothering him. Along with other parents, you attend a…

Commentary In declaring their independence from Great Britain, Americans famously asserted their unalienable rights. Much less conspicuously, but no less tellingly, they listed 10 moral responsibilities consonant with those rights. In announcing their political separation, they begin by acknowledging a duty to observe “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind” by stating the causes…

“Just think what critical race theory is. It’s a simple thing. They’re saying that accidental features of you … are defining of you. Now, no parent tells the child that. What you tell the child is you should become a good human being. And then you can do anything a human being can do.” I…

“All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge,” Aristotle said.  Since 335 B.C. when the Greek philosopher Aristotle founded the Lyceum, in Athens, Greece, people around the world have ardently studied the many facets of his knowledge: from science, logic, metaphysics, and ethics, to politics.   Aristotle’s influence is explored in…

Commentary We are conspicuously short of guarantees in a world struggling to recover from the pandemic. It is with fingers crossed that global leaders have adopted economic and health measures to curb the spread of COVID and stave off financial collapse. Each country has its own hurdles to recovery, Canada among them. With a critical…

Commentary In a famous passage of his “History of the Peloponnesian War,” the Greek general and historian Thucydides describes the frightful anomie that spread throughout the Hellenic world in the aftermath of the revolution in Corcyra. “To fit in with the change of events,” Thucydides wrote, “words, too, had to change their usual meanings.” Important…