Enduring Interest

SPEECH AND CENSORSHIP #1: Kindly Inquisitors with Jonathan Rauch

Enduring Interest is very pleased to launch our series on speech and censorship with this conversation on Jonathan Rauch’s Kindly Inquisitors, first published in 1993 and reissued in 2013 with a new afterword. We discuss Jonathan’s conception of “liberal science,” or the liberal intellectual system’s approach to sorting truth from falsehood. He suggests this is arguably liberalism’s greatest achievement yet seems always under attack from a variety of quarters. We discuss the fundamentalist and humanitarian threats to free speech, focusing most of our attention on the latter. Can speech cause harm? If yes, why should one not limit it? We compare and contrast the threats to free speech as Jonathan saw them back in 1993 with the situation today. We conclude with Jonathan’s recommendations for books and essays that make the case for free speech.

Jonathan Rauch is Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank based in Washington, D.C. He’s the author of eight books and many, many articles on public policy, culture and government. He’s also a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a recipient of the National Magazine Award. His most recent book is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.

LIBERAL EDUCATION #7: Roundtable with Corey, Koganzon, & the Zuckerts

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

This episode concludes our series on liberal education. We have three of our previous guests in the series back to discuss some common themes in the work of Leo Strauss, Michael Oakeshott and Hannah Arendt. We have Michael and Catherine Zuckert, Rita Koganzon, and Elizabeth Corey all returning to the podcast for the discussion. Topics include the place of reverence and tradition in liberal education, the authority of the teacher, and the purpose or purposes of liberal education. See our previous episodes for the bios of these guests.

LIBERAL EDUCATION #6: Henry Bugbee, “Education and the Style of our Lives” with Joseph M. Keegin

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

In this episode we discuss a short essay by the philosopher Henry Bugbee, “Education and the Style of our Lives.” Bugbee taught for a number of years at the University of Montana. This short, beautiful and thought-provoking essay was occasioned by a report that a commission presented to the Montana legislature. In just over nine pages, Bugbee lays out the core of education as seen from the standpoint of both teacher and student. He seeks the revitalization of a dialogue that brings text and world together—experience is illuminated and meaning is discovered. The piece was published in Profiles, the magazine of the University of Montana in May of 1974.

Our guest is Joseph M. Keegin. Joseph talks about Bugbee’s insistence that both teacher and student must be capable of self-risk. We discuss Bugbee’s reflections on the relationship between liberal learning and experience and how Bugbee’s appeal to experience is quite different from the way people appeal to “lived experience” today. We end by thinking about Bugbee’s appeal to the duty to bring the past to bear on the present. Joseph makes a plea for people to find a copy of Bugbee’s only published book, The Inward Morning, which is a “philosophical exercise conducted through fifteen months of journal entries.”

You can find Joseph’s essay on Bugbee here and his blog is www.fxxfy.net. Joseph is an editor at Athwart and The Point, and a PhD student in philosophy at Tulane University. He has also written articles for Plough, First Things, Tablet, and The New Atlantis.

LIBERAL EDUCATION #5: Zena Hitz, Jonathan Marks, and Roosevelt Montás on Liberal Education

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

This month we are pleased to bring you a special episode that departs from our normal path. For the past several months, we’ve been looking at forgotten or neglected books and essays on liberal education. We’re very excited to bring you this conversation with three authors who’ve all written recently published books on liberal education.

We have Zena Hitz, author of LOST IN THOUGHT: THE HIDDEN PLEASURES OF AN INTELLECTUAL LIFE;

Jonathan Marks, author of LET’S BE REASONABLE: A CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR LIBERAL EDUCATION;

and Roosevelt Montás, author of RESCUING SOCRATES: HOW THE GREAT BOOKS CHANGED MY LIFE AND WHY THEY MATTER FOR A NEW GENERATION.

All three books provide a defense of liberal education rooted in the great books, but they do so in strikingly different ways.

We discuss desire, shame, and the how the encounter with great authors can shape your soul. Each author talks about the importance and difficulties of the teacher-student relationship. And we discuss the various threats and challenges to liberal education today.

Zena Hitz is a Tutor at St. John’s College and the founder of the Catherine Project. Jonathan Marks in Professor of Politics and chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Ursinus College. Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University. He is the Director of the American Studies’ Freedom and Citizenship Program.

Here are some links to reviews:

Zena on Jonathan

Jonathan on Zena

Jonathan on Roosevelt

Roosevelt on Zena

Flagg on Zena

LIBERAL EDUCATION #4: Elizabeth Corey on Michael Oakeshott’s ”A Place of Learning” and ”Learning and Teaching”

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

This month our subject is Michael Oakeshott. We discuss two essays in particular: “A Place of Learning” and “Learning and Teaching.” Both essays can be found in the volume The Voice of Liberal Learning. Our guest is Elizabeth Corey of Baylor University. Elizabeth begins by providing a brief intellectual biography of Oakeshott. The bulk of our conversation takes up Oakeshott’s conception of liberal learning. He argues it is neither the acquisition of cultural knowledge or information nor the improvement of the mind. It is rather “learning to recognize some specific invitations to encounter particular adventures in human self-understanding.” Elizabeth and I discuss the distinctiveness of Oakeshott’s vision as well as his understanding of the primary challenges to liberal learning. We unpack Oakeshott’s meditation of the teacher-student relationship and end with a discussion of Oakeshott’s conservatism.

Elizabeth is an associate professor of Political Science at Baylor University, in Waco, Texas. Her writing has appeared in a variety of popular and scholarly journals, including First Things, National Affairs and The Wall Street Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She received a bachelor’s in Classics from Oberlin College, and master’s and doctoral degrees in Art History and Political Science from Louisiana State University. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, publisher of First Things. She is also an American Enterprise Faith and Public Life Visiting Professor during the year 2022.

LIBERAL EDUCATION #3: Pavlos Papadopoulos on Eva Brann’s Paradoxes of Education in a Republic

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

This month we’re pleased to present a conversation on Eva Brann’s book Paradoxes of Education in a Republic. Brann serves as a tutor at St. John’s College—she’s the author of many books and Paradoxes was published in 1979. Our guest is Pavlos Papadopoulos—himself a graduate of St. John’s and now an assistant professor of humanities at Wyoming Catholic College. Brann’s vision of education is a bibliocentric one, rooted in reading the great books. Such an education’s purpose, as Pavlos articulates Brann’s vision, is to take up and read the worlds of knowledge, nature and art.

Brann’s book is a philosophical and historical inquiry into education. In thinking through the prospects for liberal education in a republic, she appeals to and quotes from a vast range of texts stretching back to ancient Greece, although her chief interlocutor is Thomas Jefferson. She examines three paradoxes (defined as a “dilemma inherent in the thing itself”): utility, tradition and rationality. It’s a short, penetrating and charming book that deserves a very wide audience.

Pavlos Papadopoulos teaches Great Books seminars on politics, literature, and history. He received his MA and PhD in Politics from the University of Dallas. Pavlos has a long-standing interest in the history of liberal arts education, especially the revival of liberal education in America that began in the early 20th century. It was while pursuing this interest that he first read, and later taught, Eva Brann's Paradoxes of Education in a Republic. Pavlos's writing has appeared in Interpretation, First Things, Law & Liberty, The American Mind, and The American Conservative.

LIBERAL EDUCATION #2: Rita Koganzon on Hannah Arendt

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

In this episode Rita Koganzon and I discuss two essays by the philosopher Hannah Arendt: “Crisis in Education” and “Reflections on Little Rock.” The former was first published in Partisan Review in 1958 and the latter in Dissent in 1959. Rita gives an account of the context for the two essays and how they are related. We discuss Arendt’s critique of a number of progressive educational reforms including learning as doing and emancipating children from the authority of adults. Rita explains Arendt’s concept of natality and her understanding of the relationship between knowledge and authority. We discuss Arendt’s reasons for pessimism as far as school integration as an educational enterprise and why the Little Rock essay generated such controversy. We also discuss the relevance of Arendt’s reflections on education to our own time.

Rita Koganzon is the associate director of the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy and Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the themes of education, childhood, authority, and the family in historical and contemporary political thought. Her first book, Liberal States, Authoritarian Families: Childhood and Education in Early Modern Thought (Oxford, 2021) examines the justifications for authority over children from Jean Bodin to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Her research and essays have been published in the American Political Science Review and the Review of Politics, as well as in the Hedgehog Review, National Affairs, The Point, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. She received her PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her BA in History from the University of Chicago. Check out Rita’s essay “A Tale of Two Educational Traditions.”

“Crisis in Education” can be found in Between Past and Future and “Reflections on Little Rock” in Responsibility and Judgment.

LIBERAL EDUCATION #1: Michael and Catherine Zuckert on Leo Strauss’s “What is Liberal Education?” and “Liberal Education and Responsibility”

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

With this episode Enduring Interest moves into a new series on the subject of education. In the coming months we will be hearing from guests on authors including Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Eva Brann, Michael Oakshott, and others.

Leo Strauss once wrote, “I own that education is in a sense the subject matter of my teaching and my research.” Yet, as Michael and Catherine Zuckert note, Strauss wrote very little directly on this subject. “What is Liberal Education” was first given as a commencement address at the Basic Program of Liberal Education at the University of Chicago in the late 1950s—it was subsequently published in 1961. The second essay was prepared for a conference sponsored by the Fund for Adult Education—the organizers asked Strauss to elaborate on some lines from the first address. “Liberal Education and Responsibility” was then published in 1962. These two essays can be found in An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss or in Liberalism Ancient and Modern.

Michael and Catherine Zuckert are both Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. They are currently visiting professors at Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. In addition to their voluminous, independent scholarly work, together they are the co-authors of The Truth about Leo Strauss and Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy. Listeners can find their reflections on the two essays under discussion here in chapter 11 of this latter volume.

The Zuckerts and I discuss Strauss’s understanding of education as the cultivation of the mind and the capacity to see human greatness. Although both essays ultimately point to liberal education as the study of what Strauss calls the great books, we explore the differences in these two essays. Strauss emphasizes different threats to liberal education—consumerism and mass democracy on the one hand and scientism and technocracy on the other. We also discuss Strauss’s biography and how he conducted himself in the classroom over the course of a long teaching career.

Strauss points to liberal education as something to be pursued for its own sake—a liberation from vulgarity. “The Greeks had a beautiful word for ‘vulgarity,’” notes Strauss, “they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience of things beautiful.” As the Zuckerts emphasize in our conversation, Strauss also suggests liberal education is necessary for the civic goods it can yield. Liberal education might produce the moderation that “will protect us against the twin dangers of visionary expectations of politics and unmanly contempt for politics…It is in this way that the liberally educated may again receive a hearing even in the market place.”

We hope you enjoy the episode and don’t forget to rate Enduring Interest on iTunes and other places where you might get your podcasts. Follow us on Twitter: @theEIpod. We are sponsored by the Zephyr Institute.

TOTALITARIANISM AND IDEOLOGY #7: Roundtable with Cavanagh, Howland, Link & Pontuso

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

In this episode I speak with four previous guests on the podcast (Clare Cavanagh, Jacob Howland, Perry Link, and James Pontuso) and take up the question of the relationship between art and totalitarianism. We consider the fate of artistic inquiry and expression under totalitarian regimes both past and present. Why and how have totalitarian regimes sought to control all forms of art. How successful were and are such regimes in this effort? How have artists both past and present managed to elude their totalitarian masters and produce enduring works of art? In answering these and other questions, my guests draw on a range of examples from regimes such as the Soviet Union, Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the People’s Republic of China. We conclude with some recommendations for authors and books—especially for those who might be taking up this subject for the first time.

TOTALITARIANISM AND IDEOLOGY #6: Nathan Pinkoski on François Furet’s The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism of the Twentieth Century

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

Nathan Pinkoski, Research Fellow and Academic Director at the Zephyr Institute, and I discuss François Furet’s terrific book The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism of the Twentieth Century—first published in English in 1999. We talk a bit about Furet’s biography—he’s regarded as one of the greatest historians of the French Revolution. Like many French intellectuals who came of age in the years after the Second World War, Furet became a communist during that period and then became disillusioned shortly thereafter. The book is not a straightforward history of communism, but an account of the communist idea and how it managed to attract so many disparate figures into its fold. This gives Passing an Illusion a very distinctive character—it’s by turns philosophical, political, and historical and includes wonderful miniature biographical sketches.

Nathan and I examine Furet’s account of the revolutionary passions that provided the fuel for the grand ideological movements of the twentieth century: bourgeois hatred and bourgeois self-hatred. We turn next to Furet’s account of ideologies and ideological governments which he argues are novel, twentieth century political phenomena. Nathan suggests that Furet roots the unprecedented character of these movements in their prioritization of action over thought. We also spend some time discussing the crucial role that anti-fascist discourse played in raising the world-wide reputation of communism to its greatest height.

We end with some thoughts of the continuing relevance of Furet’s book. In the final chapter of the book, Furet notes, “The end of the Soviet world in no way alters the democratic call for another society, and for that very reason we have every reason to believe that the massive failure of Communism will continue to enjoy attenuating circumstances in world opinion, and perhaps even renewed admiration.” Listeners should be sure to check out Nathan’s essay “The Strange Rise of Bourgeois Bolshevism” (indebted to many aspects of Furet’s analysis) which appeared as the lead essay in Law & Liberty’s Forum series in May of 2020.