The purpose of this class is nothing less less than to seek out and gaze on the immanent glory of Christ the Logos as manifest in the Christian school curriculum. Specifically, we will explore questions, ideas, and practices including

• What is rhetoric and what is its role?
• How do the scriptures agree with and challenge the classical approach to rhetoric?
• What are the necessary elements of the Christian classical curriculum?
• What are the trivium and the quadrivium and where do they fit?
• How does Christ clarify curriculum and pedagogy?
• What happened to Christian classical thought?

The class meets on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays, twice a month with Andrew from 7-8:30pm ET except during Lent when they will meet 8-9:30pm ET. A third colloquy each month will be led by Katerina Kern to discuss the big ideas across all three levels of The Lost Tools of Writing. Each class is recorded.

Participants will read I Corinthians, The Aeneid by Virgil, and The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers, as well as forum discussions led by Andrew and “capulets” that form a class guide by the teacher.

The basic argument of this class is that we have made education too complicated because we have removed Christ from His rightful place as Logos, from which He blesses our teaching and learning and “enlightens every man who comes into the world” (John 1), and that if we restored Him to His place, education would be more effective, less expensive, and healthier for body, mind, soul, and heart.

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"Having been educated in this way, he will welcome the reason when it comes and recognize it easily because of its kinship to himself" (Republic, III.402a).

Plato's Republic is a book on education. And, depending on how you read it, you can see it as a manual for education that leads to a just city. Or, you can see it as a manual for education that leads to a just soul. Or, you may just be able to see it as a manual for education that leads to just souls, souls that live in a city that itself will be just as a result. And so, we find that the answer to the age old debate, whether the Republic is a book on how to organize a city or how to train the soul, is, in fact, yes.

What We Will Do

In this brand new Atrium offering, CiRCE Head Mentor Matt Bianco will lead us through a deep dive and close read of Plato's most influential dialogue, the Republic. We will discover what Plato has to offer about human nature, proper education, the just ordering of the soul, and the just ordering of the city. We will wrestle with ideas and arguments that have both haunted and inspired civilizations for centuries, millennia even. 

We will consider not only how human nature affects the way we educate, but what that means for what we should teach (the content of education, what we often think of as the curriculum), how we should teach (the mode of education, what we often think of as pedagogy or teaching methods), when we should teach (the stages of education), and when we shouldn't teach (the assessment of education). 

How We Will Do It

To really ensure we get to that deep dive and close read, we will spend two meetings on most of the books. We will read and discuss them from two different perspectives: the philosophical (what is Plato/Socrates saying in this book) and the dramatic (how is he saying it). For each book of this magnificent work is simultaneously a philosophical discussion and a play. The characters not only say important things, but they say them while behaving certain ways and responding to other behaviors in a way that is itself a clue to how we should understand the text. 

Who Should Do It

If you are a homeschooling parent or a brick-and-mortar school teacher that is teaching or will be teaching Plato's Republic, this is the perfect course for you. If you are the kind of person that just loves philosophy or the ancient world or Socrates and Plato, then this is the perfect course for you. If you are completely new to the ancients or philosophy or theology and just know that Plato and his Republic are important but don't know why, then this is the perfect course for you. If you're not sure why you are reading this description right now, then this is the perfect course for you.

Bonus

CiRCE Atrium courses do not usually include a writing component, but this one will. It is bonus material, so it is in no way a requirement for you to participate in the program. The writing program will be practicing the common topic of Definition and writing definition essays. By doing this, we will get to learn how to define terms better generally, but we will also learn to define the terms the Socrates himself is using, that we might better understand them.

The Definition Essay writing component is optional. The essays can be submitted, however, and writers will receive feedback from Atrium leader, Matt Bianco.

Join us in the 2021-2022 Atrium year, and together we can try to understand what being educated "in this way" means so that we too can welcome the truth when it comes.

His class will meet on the first and third Tuesdays from 4-5:30 ET (with some shifts for travel needs or holidays, TBD)

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“Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third,” said T. S. Eliot. Dante's Comedy is as complete a Christian vision of Creation, both time and space, as can be imagined, far more even than Shakespeare's dramatic corpus taken all together, because Shakespeare's work comes when Old Western Culture was already beginning to break down, but Dante's comes at the very height of it. It is the Mount Everest of the Western Christian literary tradition.The Comedy is primarily the story of a soul lost and restored, yet it is also the story of all souls and the eternal consequences of their free choices. But in the process of telling the story, Dante uses all of his vast encyclopedic learning to flesh it out, from astronomy, geometry, music, and geography to philosophy, theology, history, and politics – and he does so lightly, with an Everyman touch, and is the most accessible of all the great epic poets. To study Dante, and to try to follow all of his references and allusions, is to have an education in the Christian learning of the height of Old Western Culture, and to learn to wear it humbly. And it is of course a story told as great poetry. The only rival to the Comedy in encyclopedic learning and cosmic vision is Augustine's City of God, and Dante's poem is greater precisely because it is a personal poem for Everyman.

In this series of classes we will read and consider the Comedy as poetry, as a literal story, and as an allegory, which is how he intended it to be read. We will see how Dante draws on the whole tradition of philosophy and Christianity in the Western tradition as he talks about the soul and its ultimate purpose and all the ways it can fall short of that destiny apart from the grace of God. But we will also see the glorious vision Dante has for the soul which achieves, by God's grace, it's final end. We'll take a look at the authors he relies most heavily on, and on his influence in later Western Culture. We'll look at different translations and the original Italian as well to see how Dante's poetry is created. We'll also discuss Dante's medieval Roman Catholic theology and some of the ways in which Christians of other theological traditions, can benefit greatly from his particular theological outlook. 

This series is for everyone; those who want to become more familiar with this very great poem for their own benefit, as well as those who are, or will be, teaching it.

Required texts: The only required books will be Anthony Esolen's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. The three individual volumes of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise are available in paperback and hardback through Amazon and many other sources.

Days and times: The class will meet on the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month, beginning on September 7, from 7:00-8:45pm Eastern time (with a short break in the middle of each class), with of course occasional adjustments for holidays and travel. There will be eighteen sessions total.

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HOMER'S ILIAD

The Iliad is the true beginning of imaginative literature in western civilization and remains unsurpassed in the power of its vision and storytelling. Originating many centuries before Christ and inexpressibly influential on the ancient Greek world, it was enthusiastically embraced by the new Christian world – the Christians of the first centuries taught it as part of the Christian story so effectively that the last pagan emperor, Julian “the Apostate” forbid Christians from using it – and has had an incalculable influence on western culture ever since. In western civilization it has always been an essential element of a classical, humane, liberal education. For most of the history of western civilization, to call oneself educated without having read the Iliad was to invite scorn.

In this course we will study the Iliad closely, looking at the structure and patterns of the story, its methods of storytelling, its unique conventions which set the tradition for epic poems ever after, its themes, and its view of reality – what is man's purpose? What is our relationship to Transcendence? What is honor and glory, and what is the meaning of violence and suffering, and what is the nature of death and what comes after? We will briefly survey theories of its origin, development, and historicity (was there a real Trojan War? Did Achilleus, Agamemnon, Odysseus really exist? Were the gods real?) We will ponder the effect and power of words (rhetoric) in the speeches, something that has drawn particular notice throughout history. We will glance at the influence of the poem on many of the great figures of western civilization, from Alexander the Great to C. S. Lewis. We will see how similar and how different its answers to the above questions are to the historic Christian ones, and we will consider how the Iliad helps us understand more fully what one terrible fundamental need the gospel of the Incarnate God answers.

Who the class is for: This course is for everyone who wants to become familiar with this very great poem for their own benefit, but will also be helpful for anyone who is, or is considering, teaching it.

Required texts: The required books will be 1) the Callihan edition of the Iliad (available from Roman Road Press by late summer 2021); 2) any other translation of the Iliad (there are many translations available free online); 3) The Story of the Iliad, by E. T. Owen (4) War and the Iliad, by Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff (New York Review of Books).

Days and times: The class will meet on the first and third Tuesdays of every month, beginning on September 7, from 7:00-8:45pm Eastern time (with a short break in the middle of each class), with of course occasional adjustments for holidays and travel. There will be eighteen sessions total.

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