STUDY
1956-60 Deerfield Academy (Thomas Mann Award)
(Summer of 1959, courses at Harvard)
1960-64 Harvard College B.A. cum laude.
1964-65 Oxford University (Worcester College).
1965-69 Yale University, M. Phil. (1968); Ph.D. (1971) in English.
TEACHING
1969-75 Dartmouth College, Instructor (‘69-’72); Assistant Professor (‘72-’75) in English.
1976-78 Franklin and Marshall College, Assistant Professor in English.
1978-85 University of Dallas, Assoc. Professor, Literature and Institute of Philosophic Studies.
1986-87 + College of Thomas More (Ft. Worth), again in 1996, and in 2000; remained a Fellow.
1996-97 Southern Virginia College, Professor and Chair of Humanities
1996-2016 George Wythe University (Cedar City and Salt Lake City, Utah),
Prof. of Philosophy, Statesmanship & Literature (annual teaching visits, then from 2006 regular curricular teaching, until GW’s demise in 2016)
2015– Friends of the Republic (weekly seminar with mostly former students,
over the internet, around the country, sometimes the world.
Visiting:
1982-83 Philosophisches Seminar der Universität Heidelberg (during Humboldt Fellowship)
1985-86 Philosophy & Humanities, State University of N. Y. (Geneseo)
1988 Government Department, Dartmouth College (Summer & Fall)
1988-89 Honors Program & Philosophy Department, University of North Texas
1989-90 Literary Studies (January) and then a year in Political Science, Middlebury College
1994 Honors College, University of Houston (Spring)
1994-96 Literature & Philosophy, University of Wyoming
2001 International Theological Institute, Gaming Austria (nihil obstat from Cardinal Schönborn)
2002-03 Baylor University (Honors College, Great Texts, and Political Science)
2006 Institut für Philosophie der Universität Greifswald (Humboldt Fellow)
2007- 08 Greifswald: my Circle of Nietzsche Students
2011 Schreiner College (Faculty Seminar on Rembrandt)
OFFICES
1979-80 Acting Director of the Graduate Program in Literature,
Institute of Philosophic Studies, University of Dallas
1983-86 Chairman of the Nietzsche Society
2015 Founder and Host of Friends of the Republic
FELLOWSHIPS
1965-66 Woodrow Wilson
1966-69 National Defense Title IV
1974 Dartmouth Faculty Fellowship
1975-76 Hastings Center for Biomedical Ethics
1977 N. E. H. Summer Stipend (study with Hans-Georg Gadamer)
1978 American Council of Learned Societies Travel Grant (Vico in Venice)
1980 N. E. H. Summer Seminar (project on Nietzsche)
1980 Arthur Vining Davis Grant (project on Montaigne)
1982-83 Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (work on Nietzsche
with Hans-Georg Gadamer and Reiner Wiehl at Heidelberg)
1987-88 N. E. H. Fellowship (work on Nietzsche)
1989 Earhart Fellowship (work on Shakespeare)
1999 Director’s Fellowship (for study in the Graduate Institute at St. John’s, Santa Fe)
2006 Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship Renewal (work on Nietzsche at Greifswald;
And returned for two more “Sommer” semesters (‘07 and ’08) to a circle of students.
2014 N. E. H. month-long Summer Institute (Medieval Political Philosophy)
at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington
LANGUAGES
German reading, speaking, lecturing knowledge (four years living in German-speaking lands)
French so so reading knowledge
Greek very elementary reading Latin: ancient Old English: old
In nuce: The inquiries I carry forward in teaching, conversing, and writing address three matters chiefly: the rivalry of philosophy and poetry, the relation of reason and revelation, and the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns. Among my many superior companions have been Montaigne, Homer, Rembrandt, Tolstoy, Pascal, Thomas, Tocqueville, and Lincoln, but also the likes of Haydn, Halifax, Manzoni, Keller, and Cather. However, most helpful have been and are Nietzsche, Plato, the Bible, and Shakespeare, Shakespeare for the longest time.
BOOKS
Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare. Salzburg Studies in English Literature. Salzburg: University of Salzburg, 1976. (301 pages).
Reviews: Shakespeare Jahrbuch (West) 1977, p. 195. (Hermann Heuer); Independent Journal of Philosophy, III (1979), pp. 144-46. (John Alvis);
Times Literary Supplement (3 July 1981) listed among the few books that make Shakespeare studies as “inviting and stimulating as the ocean.” (James Cameron)
SECOND EDITION (with added chapters). Lanham: University Press of America, 1983 (336 pages).
Reviews: Will Morrisey, Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy,
XIV (1): January, 1986, pp, 115-133.
Readable at: http://www.willmorriseyreviews.com/shakespeare-and-his-roman-plays/
Shakespeare Jahrbuch (West) 1986, Ina Schabert, “Shakespeare als Politischer Philosoph:
Sein Werk und die Schule von Leo Strauss,” pp. 7-25.
Reviewed on Amazon, by Will Morrisey:
THIRD EDITION. with additional chapters, esp. on Caesar and Christ, 2021? (ca. 125, 000 words)
Seven Wonders of Shakespeare (accepted by St. Augustine Press, out in 2021 I guess)
CAHIERS: (short books):
Mighty Opposites: Machiavelli and Shakespeare Match Wits
A dialogue, of ca. 35,000 words, in which they discuss the Histories and differ on the depths
(May, 2021 at Amazon)
Dread of Something, Fear of Nothing” (on Hamlet and Lear), early draft at St. Johns’ College, Santa Fe, in the bookstore, as delivered there in 2006; now augmented by 14 weeks of sharing both plays together with my Friends of the Republic. On Amazon sometime in 2021?
Gazing With Rembrandt (including “Rembrandt’s Aristotle Gazing,” “Looking at the Body” (on Dr. Tulp’s Anatomy Lesson), “Looking at Bodies,” and maybe “Would Human Life Be Better Without Death?”
BOOKS in slow Progress:
Mss Shakespeare’s Christian Prince. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, Lexington Books, 2021?
(ca. 120,000 words; in 1982, when entitled Shakespeare’s English Prince, it was accepted by UPA/Rowman;
being a sequel to my Rome and Romans, it might be published together with that book’s third edition, now ready.)
Mss The Declaration of America and the Course of American Events
(close readings of our founding documents, with study questions, esp. for home-schoolers;
ca. 200 pages. 2022 so I hope)
Mss The Teenager and the West: my writings on the novelty of the Teenager—there were none before the 1950s— including “The Myth of the Teenager,” most popular piece ever in Practical Home Schooling, and my “A Different Drummer” (against Rock music); Roger Scruton offered to write a short preface; I should have let him right then, but wanted to finish a chapter on “Spectacles” to pair with the one on music.
ARTICLES and ESSAYS (some can be read on my Friends of the Republic website)
“The Beat Generation,” Deerfield Literary Magazine (Spring 1960) pp. 11-14. (A youth’s consideration
of all some of what was turning other youths into “Teenagers”.)
“The Rape of Lucrece and the Republic for Which It Stands,” The Centennial Review,
XIX (2): Spring 1975, pp. 59-79. (revised and augmented in my Rome and Romans)
“Looking at the Body,” Hastings Center Report, V (2): April 1975, pp. 21-28.
(Dialogue on anatomizing a corpse and looking at Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp)
Reprinted in Death and Dying, ed. Eleanor E. Goldstein, Social Issues Resources Series:
Volume 1, (Boca Raton, Florida: Social Issues Resources, 1980).
“On Correcting in Public and in Private,” College English, XXXVII (l): September 1975, pp. 22-27.
“Writing Journals in Courses,” College English, XXXVII (4): December 1975, pp. 408-411.
“On Asking to Die,” Hastings Center Report, V (6): December 1975, pp. 9-12.
(comments on the plea of a severely burned young man to have treatment halted)
Reprinted in Death and Dying: Opposing Viewpoints, (St. Paul: Greenhaven Press, 1985).
“Interpretation,” Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy, V (1): Autumn 1975, pp. 109-130.
(dialogue on interpretation and friendship)
“Nietzsche on Flaubert and the Powerlessness of his Art,” Centennial Review, XX (3):
Summer 1976, pp. 309-313.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23738373
“Leo Strauss: Three Quarrels, Three Questions,” Newsletter (of the Politics and Literature
Program, University of Dallas),II (2): Winter 1979, pp. 1-6. (incorporated below)
“Looking at Bodies,” The Independent Journal of Philosophy (Vienna), Volume III: (1979), pp. 87-90. (brief chronicle of humanity and dust)
“Falstaff in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy, VIII (1): January 1979, pp. 5-29.
Reprinted, with revisions and additions, in Major Literary Characters: Falstaff ed. and intro. by Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1991), pp. 171-202.
With further revisions and additions to appear in my Shakespeare’s Christian Prince.
“Would Human Life Be Better Without Death?” Soundings, LXIII (3): Fall 1980, pp. 321-338.
(includes comparison of Bacon’s project and Odysseus’ choice to live rather than live forever)
“Aristotle Gazing,” The College: The St. John’s College Review, XXXI (2):
January 1980, pp. 68-74. (on Rembrandt’s “Aristotle with the Bust of Homer”)
(In his summative Rembrandt Studies (1991) Julius S. Held added a “Postscript”
responding to my interpretation, itself earlier indebted to his earlier (1969) interpretation.)
“The Future of Death,” Man and Medicine, V (1): Winter 1980, pp. 1-2.
“Shakespearean Wisdom?” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. John Alvis & Thomas G. West
(Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), pp. 257-276. (on “Sonnet 94”)
Second Edition (Intercollegiate Studies Institute: Wilmington, 2000), pp. 353-379.
“Tradition and the Individual Soul,” Intercollegiate Review, XVII (1): Fall/Winter 1981, pp. 47-51.
“Woman, Nietzsche, and Nature,” Maieutics, No. 2: Winter 1981, pp. 27-42.
(close reading of “On the Little Old and Young Women,” episode 18 in Zarathustra I)
“Shakespeare’s Apology for Poetry,” in Shakespeare and the Arts: A Collection of Essays from the
Ohio Shakespeare Conference—1981, eds. C. W. Cary and H. S. Limouze
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982), pp. 231-244. (on Tempest 1.1)
“Tragical, Comical, Historical,” in The Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition:
Poetic—Epic—Tragic Analecta Husserliana; Volume XVIII, ed. A-T. Tymieniecka
(Dordrecht: D. Reidel,1984), pp. 379-399. (on Shakespeare)
“Which Secondary Books Should I Read?” Claremont Review of Books, III (4): (Winter, ’84), p. 11.
“The Striving of the West: Goethe’s Faust in 1982,” in Goethe Conference Proceedings,
Hofstra University Cultural and Intercultural Studies (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 163-170.
“Leo Strauss: Three Quarrels, Three Questions, One Life,” in The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective
[Corrected Edition, w. blue cover] eds. Kenneth L. Deutsch & Walter Soffer (
Albany: State Univ. Press of New York, 1987), pp. 17-28. (ca. 1200 errors in uncorrected [purple] edition)
“Technology, Science, and Nature,” World and I, (II, 11), November 1987, pp. 627-631.
(N. B. several errors in text and title introduced without my knowledge)
“What Is the Purpose of Health?” World and I, (II, 11), November 1987, pp. 631-634.
(N.B. several infelicities and errors introduced without my knowledge)
“Nature and The Order of Rank” (according to Nietzsche), Journal of Value Inquiry,
Vol. XXII: 1988, pp. 147-165. (the journal mistakenly substituted “an” for “The” and de-capitalized letters)
“What Does Zarathustra Whisper in Life’s Ear?” Nietzsche Studien, Band XVII:
(Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988) pp. 179-194.
“In the Middle of Montaigne,” in The Order of Montaigne’s Essays ed. Daniel Martin
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts & Hestia Press, 1989), pp. 124-143.
“A Road to Travel By: A Liberal Arts Curriculum for Dartmouth,” Dartmouth Review,
Vol. 10 (Issue 15) 14 Feb. 1990, pp. 8-9. (with Dain Trafton and Carnes Lord, as proposed in 1971)
“Two Roads Diverged in a Wood,” Dartmouth Review, Vol. 10 (Issue 15) 14 Feb. 1990, p. 7.
(report on the first presentation of the proposal, its rejection, and the consequences)
“The Happiness of Willa Cather,” in The Catholic Writer (Proceedings of the Wethersfield Institute, 1989, Vol. II),
ed. Ralph McInerny (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), pp. 129-150.
(several imprecisions, impieties, and infelicities introduced by the editor without my approval or knowledge)
And they persist in this posting on the web: https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/literature/the-happiness-of-willa-cather.html
“Souls Without Longing,” Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy, XVIII, 3, (1991)
pp. 415-465. (thoughts about and parallel to Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind)
(the promised subsequent list of the 20 most distorting errors introduced by the copy-editor
against my protest has never appeared)
Short excerpt reprinted in Measure (Bulletin of the University Centers for Rational Alternatives)
No. 96 (Summer 1991)
Translation by Till Kinzel of most of parts V, VI, & VII, entitled “Amerikanische Erfarhungen mit der Evaluation an Universitäten” in the bulletin of the Bund Freiheit der Wissenschaft (No. 2 June, 2000), pp. 9-14.
“Thomas Aquinas and America,” Crisis (July/August, 1991), pp. 21-25 & 42.
(For this and several others: http://www.crisismagazine.com/author/michael-platt(
“ ‘Elitist!’ ‘Paternalist!’ ‘Eurocentrist!’ ” Measure (Bulletin of the Univ. Centers for Rational Alternatives)
No. 100 (November 1991), pp. 6-8.
“To Emulate or To Be: Hamlet and Aeneas,” in Law and Philosophy: The Practice of Theory
[Essays in Honor of George Anastaplo] ed. William Braithwaite, John Murley, & Robert Stone.
(Athens, Ohio: Ohio University / Swallow Press, 1992), Vol. II., pp. 917-936.
“Will Academe Teach America or America Academe?” Measure No. 112 (January 1993), pp. 1-12.
“Uncle Mel Bradford: a Tribute,” Philadelphia Society March, 1993
“Behold Nietzsche,” Nietzsche Studien, Band XXII:(Berlin and New York:
Walter de Gruyter, 1993), pp. 42-79. (on Ecce Homo)
Reprinted with additions: in Nietzsche: Critical Assessments, ed. Daniel W. Conway,
with Peter S. Groff Vol. III: On Morality and the Order of Rank
(London & New York: Routledge, 1998) pp. 218-255.
“What Do Student Evaluations Teach?” Perspectives on Political Science, Vol. 22, No. 1
(Winter, 1993), pp. 29-40. Later it was printed, free of imposed mistakes,
in The Montana Professor Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 1995), pp. 21-29
“Upright Swiss Liberty,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Vol. XXIII (Spring 1993), pp. 97-109.
(on Gottfried Keller’s Banner of the Upright Seven)
“Shakespeare’s Richard III: Can There Be a Christian Tyrant?” Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy, (18,000 words, accepted, set in type for XXI,3, (1993), yet to appear)
But to appear, with augmentation, in my Shakespeare’s Christian Prince.
“Shakespeare’s Richard II: Can There Be a Christian King?” Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy, (18,000 words, accepted, set in type for XXI,3, (1993), yet to appear)
But to appear, with augmentation, in my Shakespeare’s Christian Prince.
A bit of my research on Nietzsche’s Nachlass and his last lucid year appeared, with acknowledgment, in Bernd Magnus “Nietzsche’s Philosophy in 1888: The Will-to-Power and the Übermensch,” Journal of the History of Philosophy (Vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 79-99); see his later version in Chapter 1 of his Nietzsche’s Case (London: Routledge, 1993), with acknowledgment in footnote 71.
“Only Christianity,” Saints, Sovereigns, & Scholars: Essays Presented to Frederick D. Wilhelmsen
ed. Fr. James Lehrberger, Robert Herrera, & Mel Bradford (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 211-230.
“ ‘A Teenager — I’m So Sorry’,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride
Vol. I, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 19-21.
(several substitutions, and title “Myth of the Teenager,” fitting her audience, made by Mrs. Pride)
Reproduced frequently by Home-School and Church groups; on their web sites.
http://www.home-school.com/Articles/myth-of-the-teenager.php
Always reprinted as appendix to Mary Pride’s Big Book of Home Learning Vol. III (Crossways)
My account reported by Mrs. Holly Pierlot at http://ncregister.com/site/article/15487/
“A Long Day West,” Concho River Review Vol. VIII, No. 1, (Spring 1994) pp. 61-69.
Reprinted, abridged, without permission, in The Mesquite No. 5(Winter/ Spring 1995-6) pp.18-23.
“The Life of Calvin Coolidge,” Modern Age Vol. XXXVI, No. 4 (Summer 1994), pp. 351-358.
Once reprinted on the George Wythe College website, but the first page tampered with,
and the second half delayed six months.
“The 1000 Good Books,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride, Vol. II, No. 1
(Summer, 1994) pp. 21-23. (my title: How To Tell A Good Story)
“Coolidge’s Teacher, Throughout Life, Garman of Amherst,” Continuity: Journal of History, No. 18 (Fall 1994), pp. 1-23. (forward & afterword to a Garman pamphlet for Coolidge’s Amherst class)
“Go West, Young Boy, Young Girl,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride, Vol. III, No. 2
(Spring, 1995) pp. 37-38.
“Teaching from Afar, Learning at a Distance,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride, Vol. III,
No. 2 (Spring, 1995) pp. 39-40.
“School Masters,” Modern Age, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 Summer 1995 pp. 344-351.
(on the Boydens of Deerfield Academy and Jack Pidgeon of the Kiski School)
“Christmas Recommendation” (of Willa Cather) Crisis XII. 11 (December 1995) p.45.
“Academe Without Groves: The Home College,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride,
Vol. III, No. 4 (Winter, 1996) pp. 26-30.
“Shakespeare By Phone,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride, Vol. III, No. 4
(Winter, 1996) pp. 28-29. (excerpt from my Shakespeare class conducted by phone)
“A Different Drummer,” Fidelity ed. E. Michael Jones pp. 20-37.
(title changed to “Physics Without Ethics: the Brutality of Rock n’ Roll,” footnotes dropped, errors introduced, and a sensational cover—all without my approval or prior knowledge
and later passed to EWTN’s web site, again without my consent)
Lauded in The Evidential Power of Beauty by Thomas Dubay, S. M.
Part of the required curriculum at Wyoming Catholic College.
“The Whole of Shakespeare,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride, Vol. IV, No. 3 (Fall 1996)
“Shane by Jack Schaefer,” American Enterprise Magazine, Spring 1998
“Montaigne, Of Friendship, and On Tyranny,” in Freedom Above Servitude: Montaigne,
La Boétie, and “On Voluntary Servitude, ed. David Schaefer, with essays by D. Schaefer,
Randall Runion & Daniel Martin, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998), pp. 31-85. (ca.29,000 words)
“Memorize the Declaration,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride, (Fall, 1998)
“The Declaration, Part Two,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride, (Spring, 1999)
“The Young, The Good, and The West,” in America, The West, and the Liberal Arts
ed. Ralph Hancock (Savage: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) pp. 83-143.
(essays by, inter alia, Allan Bloom, Stanley Rosen, Harvey Mansfield; mine includes Wister’s The Virginian)
sections V and VI reprinted by the Lyceum School (Cleveland) in its Newsletter
“The Good, the Great, and the Small,” Faith and Reason Vol. XXIII, nos.3-4 (1997-98), pp. 323-354.
(on the first precept of the natural law, Summa Theologiae, I-II, Q 94, a. 2, c.)
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2701
“Natural Right, Conventional Right, and Setting Things Aright,”
in The Moral of the Story: Literature & Public Ethics ed. Hank Edmundson
(Lexington Books, 2000) pp. 177-192. (à propos Conrad’s “Secret Sharer”)
“The Declaration, Part Three,” Practical Home-Schooling ed. Mary Pride, (2001)
“Shakespeare for Life,” on the Claremont Institute for Statesmanship web site (since 2001)
(with remarks on Lincoln’s reading of Shakespeare) 10,000 words; now here:
“Eulogy for Thomas Silver,” Coolidge Memorial Foundation Newsletter (Spring 2002) p. 3.
Photograph of Seth Benardete in Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete
ed. Ronna Burger (Chicago Univ. Press, 2003) p. 116.
“A Road to Travel By: A Liberal Arts Curriculum for Dartmouth,” Dartmouth Review,
Vol. 25 # 14 (2 June 2005) (with Dain Trafton and Carnes Lord, as proposed in 1971)
“Two Roads Ever Diverge in a Wood,” Dartmouth Review, Vol. 25 # 14 (2 June 2005)
(report on the first presentation of my liberal arts proposal, its rejection, and the consequences)
“Go East Young Student,” Claremont Review Vol. 5 {new series]
(a recommendation of guides and studies when first heading for Europe; invited by the Review, in 2007,
lauded as “wise and charming,” and not yet published)
“Words, Words, Words,” Thomas Aquinas Review (2013?)
(ca. 15,000 words, on Shakespeare’s words, accepted by editor Ron MacArthur)
“René Girard and Nietzsche Struggling,” Proceedings of the Nietzsche Congress of 2006,
ed. Clemens Pornschlegel & Martin Stingelin (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009) pp. 351-375.
Interview in a film on Calvin Coolidge, directed by John Karol
(Apertura Films, date of appearance not determined)
“Allan Bloom: 1930-1992,” in Encyclopedia of the American Right, ed. Gregory Wolfe,
(Garland Publishing, date of publication to be determined ) 750 words
Interview, at Nietzsche’s grave in Röcken, by MDR Television, 25 August 2006
“The Freest, The Strongest, Soul on Earth” Fruits of Friendship: Seven Essays in Honor of
Laurence Berns ed. Joseph P. Cohen (Free State Press: Annapolis, 2011), pp. 91-108
(on Montaigne’s Essais I.1)
“Shakespeare Good and Great” Crisis Magazine March 1, 2012
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/shakespeare-good-and-great
reprinted: Catholic Education Resource Center:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0468.htm
“All Happy Trails Lead West,” Crisis Magazine (on line), Spring 2012
(first of four promised parts on the “good books,” in John Senior’s sense, of the American West)
“Two Roads Still Diverge in a Wood,” Dartmouth Review, (March 2012) Vol. 31, Issue 10, pp. 6-9
(why great books rouse the young and disturb the old; with our proposal of 1970)
http://dartreview.com/storage/issue-pdfs/2011-2020/2012/winter/3-9-12/3-9-12.pdf
“All Happy Trails Lead West: Part Two,” Crisis Magazine (on line), Winter 2013
(second of four parts on the “good books,” in John Senior’s sense, of the American West)
“The Book Pope Francis Loves and We Should Too,” New Oxford Review (vol. LXXXI, no 4, May 2014, p 4-6
[ca. 1000 words on Manzoni’s The Betrothed]
“Shakespeare, Humble, and Ardent,” Touchstone Nov/Dec 2014 (27.6) pp. 40-44;
“Richard III’s Darkness,” Touchstone Sept/Oct 2015 p.7.
“The Abuse and Use of our Elector Shakespeare,” (my title) in the Imaginative Conservative
for 17 February 2017 (ca. 3500 words) http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/02/abuse-use-shakespeare-michael-platt.html?mc_cid=b3b6eb0871&mc_eid=30a02d8cb9
“Allan Bloom on American Nihilism and its Degrading Vocabulary” posted on The Public Concern (4 May 2017) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/05/19063/ For remarks on the middle and most philosophic part of The Closing of the American Mind, decapitated and courtesies expunged by the upright but pedestrian editors, visit Friends of the Republic, for “Bloom, Thou Livest Still” (my title).
“Love in Time of Plague” (recommendation of Manzoni’s Betrothed) Imaginative Conservative, 24 April 2020
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/author/michael-platt
“Truth in Academe” in Academic Questions (Summer of 2020 Vol 33, No.2) Link: https://rdcu.be/b9g7M
REVIEWS
Ronald Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life (Oxford University Press, 1980)
in The Review of Metaphysics Vol. 36 (September 1982), pp. 163-165.
Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche: Volume Four Nihilism, trans. by David F. Krell
(Harper & Row, 1982) in The Review of Metaphysics Vol. 38 (March 1984), pp. 637-639.
David Schaefer, The Political Philosophy of Montaigne (Ithaca: Cornell U. P. 1990)
in American Political Science Review Vol. 86, no.2, (June 1992) pp. 514-515.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Unmodern Observations [the four Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen
and “Wir Philologen”] ed., trans., & intro. William Arrowsmith et al (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1990) in The Review of Metaphysics Vol. 46 (Sept. 1992), pp. 171-73.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Unmodern Observations [the four Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen
and “Wir Philologen”] ed., trans, & intro. William Arrowsmith et al (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1990)
in Philosophy and Literature Vol. 16/2, (Fall 1992), pp. 425-26. (as if it were still 1876)
Harry Neumann, Liberalism [Claremont Statesmanship Series] (Durham: Carolina Academic, 1991)
in The Review of Politics Vol. 56, no. 12, (Spring 1994) pp. 375-78. (title “A Living Nihilist”)
Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (Simon & Schuster: New York, 1993)
in The Review of Metaphysics Vol. 49, no. 4 (June 1996), pp. 913-915.
(several solecisms and infelicities introduced without my knowledge)
(See also my long essay “Souls Without Longing,” Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy,
XVIII, 3, (1991) pp. 415-465 (about and parallel to Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind)
Cameron Wybrow, ed. Creation, Nature, and the Political Order in the Philosophy of
Michael Foster, 1903-1959 (Edwin Mellen: Lewiston, 1993)
in The Review of Metaphysics Vol. 51, no. 3 (March, 1998), pp. 726-28.
Robert Carlson’s Truth on Trial: Liberal Education Be Hanged (Crisis Press: Notre Dame, 1995)
in Modern Age Vol. 41, no. 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 84-90. (entitled: “Truth Untried”)
(book recounts the fate of the Liberal Arts Program at the University of Kansas led by John Senior)
Nietzsche, Friedrich On the Future of Our Educational Institutions [Über die Zukunft unserer
Bildunsanstalten] Trans. Michael W. Grenke (South Bend: St. Augustine Press, 2004)
in The Review of Metaphysics March 2006: Volume 59.3, (Issue 235)
Charles Natoli, Fire in the Dark: Essays on Pascal’s Pensées and Provinciales (Univ. of
Rochester Press, 2005) in The Review of Metaphysics (September 2006) Vol. 60, No.1
Theodore Dalrymple Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005) in Society September 2006
Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice (Encounter Books, 2007) in Society sometime in 2009
Robert Pippin, Nietzsche, Psychology, & First Philosophy (Univ. of Chicago, 2010)
in The Review of Metaphysics Vol LXIV No.4 (June 2011)
Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism and The Danger of False Hope (Oxford, 2010)
in Society (2012) 49:389–392
William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite &
the Way to a Meaningful Life (Free Press, 2014) inSociety, 53(1), 103-106
Charles Krauthammer, Things that Matter in Society Vol. 55, No. 5, Sept/Oct 2018. Pp. 471-74
Possibly Forthcoming:
Angelo M. Codevilla, Peace Among Ourselves in Society
Atul Gawande, Being Mortal in Society
Michael Murray, Jacques Barzun: Portrait of a Mind (Beil: Savannah, 2011) and
A Jacques Barzun Reader (Harper Collins, 2002), ed. by Michael Murray in Modern Age
PUBLIC, Visits, Events, Appearances: (complete lists in Vita Supplement)
Lectures: ten score and more; here and abroad, especially in Germany, a few in German;
on topics in literature (especially Shakespeare), philosophy (especially Nietzsche), art (especially Rembrandt), political science, American government (especially the Declaration and Constitution), on music and art, on biomedical ethics, on theology (especially Thomas), and on learning and teaching.
At conventions (American Political Science Association; American Academy of Religion; Society for Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy); at conferences (Shakespeare Society); congresses (Vico in Venice; Nietzsche and the French); civic institutes (Dallas); high schools, meetings of home-schoolers, local and national; mainly on visits to colleges (e.g. St. John’s [Annapolis and Santa Fe], Dartmouth, Williams, Thomas Aquinas, Smith; Hillsdale, Thomas More, Amherst, Marlboro; Steubenville, etc.) and visits to universities (e.g. Harvard, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Stuttgart, München, Princeton, Catholic, Claremont, Yale, UT-Austin, Brigham Young, etc.); but also on visits to the International Theological Institute (Gaming, Austria) and to the Sacred Heart Seminary (Detroit). Complete list in vita supplement.
Organized: seventeen panels, eight conferences; extended visits by Allan Bloom, Eva T. H. Brann, E. D. Hirsch, David Lachterman, Erich Heller, Seth Benardete, Theodore Redpath, Richard Ferrier, Eric Salem, William Braithwaite, Harry Wu, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Attended 37 Liberty Fund Colloquia; proposed, organized, and conducted eight: on Montaigne, Pascal, Coolidge (“best one I’ve been to these five years” Bill Dennis LF representative); Tocqueville, Barzun, & three on Solzhenitsyn (“that last one was the intellectual highlight of my life” George Martin, then President of Liberty Fund); and moderated ones on Machiavelli and on Sophocles.
LEARNED SOCIETIES
Modern Language Association; English Institute; Renaissance Society of America; Shakespeare Association of America; Bible and Literature Study Project (headed by Martin Buss at Emory); Boston Area Conference on Political Philosophy; Dartmouth Bio-Medical Ethics Faculty Seminar; Franklin and Marshall Faculty Seminar on Evolutionary Thought; Hastings Center for Bio-Medical Ethics (Associate Member); Society for Health and Human Value; Philadelphia Political Philosophy Seminar; Liberal Arts Institute (Queens College); International Association for Philosophy and Literature; Society for Values in Higher Education; American Political Science Association; Claremont Institute for Political Philosophy and Statesmanship; Columbia University Seminar on Moral Values; North American Nietzsche Society; Nietzsche Society; Nietzsche Gesellschaft; Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy; Voegelin Society; National Association of Scholars; International Churchill Society; and the Coolidge Society. Nietzsche Society (Naumburg, Germany). Since 2008 founding President of the International Esteem Templeton Society; National Association of Scholars.
OFFICES
1983-86 Nietzsche Society, Chairman
1983-86 Nietzsche Society, Program Committee (1983-86, Chairman)
EDITORIAL Associate Editor, Independent Journal of Philosophy (Vienna) 1977-78 (gathered the board and found patron for Vol. II; patron continued ’til death, board & journal to 1990). Sometime referee for American Political Science Review, Interpretation, Man and Medicine, Polity; Peter Lang, University of Missouri Press; and University of Kentucky Press (Journal of the History of Philosophy book series). Sometime columnist, Mary Pride’s Practical Home Schooling; and a bit of copy-editing for Scientific American.
PUBLIC SERVICE and Other Experiences
1974 A bit of anatomy, with Dr. Layton & Dr. Marin-Padilla of the Dartmouth Medical School
1975-76 Observer, Veteran’s Hospital (White River Junction)
1976 Valve job on an old Mercedes (under learned supervision of Lee Gohlike, WRJ, VT)
1977-78 Volunteer, St. Joseph’s Hospital (Lancaster, Pennsylvania)
1994-5 Mock Trial Juror, Wes Reaves Law Firm, Casper, Wyoming
1996-97 Virginia Examination Board (state exams for all high schoolers, kept classics in)
1998 Sang in Vermont Messiah (subsequent retirement an even greater public benefit)
1997- 2000 Advisory Board, Ethan Allen Institute (Vermont)
2000 Fandangle (annual pioneer musical chronicle), Albany Texas (as buffalo, with family)
2002 Easter Fires Pageant, Fredericksburg Texas
2002 Fandangle, Albany Texas (as Shaman being buffalo, with family)
2008- Lyceum Society of New England
2013 Student, horse and rider gentling by Chris Irwin, Snowslip Farm, Lake Placid NY
2013- Shakespeare on Mainstreet (Theatre Company in Vermont), distant Board Member
Travel: Four years living in German-speaking lands, Freiburg im Breisgau, Stauffen, Heidelberg, Neckergemund, Berlin, Greifswald, and Gaming (Austria); with trips to Nietzsche Haus in Sils Maria, a Schützenfest and Landsgemeinde in Canton Glarus (Switzerland), Checkpoint Charlie, and the Oberammergau Passion Play (2000); a year in Oxford, England (visits to London, Blenheim, White Horse of Uffington); through the years, travels in Ireland, Scotland (Edinburgh Festival), Benelux, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands (esp. Amsterdam), Switzerland (Basel, Zurich, Sils Maria), France (Paris, Chartres, and Provence), Italy (Florence, Rome, Turin, Milan, Padua, Urbino, Venice, etc.; Yugoslavia (Dubrovnik); Czech Republic (Prague and Chesky Krumlov), Poland (Krakow and Auschwitz), and Greece (Athens, Delphi, Thermopylae, Nauplion); in America, inter alia: Mesa Verde, Acoma, Independence Hall, Albany (Texas), Cumberland Gap, Red Cloud, Independence Rock, South Pass, Gettysburg; Grand, Zion, and Bryce Canyons, and the like. Brief border crossing to Mexico; several visits to Montreal and Toronto (Canada); Reykjavik and Thingvellir (Iceland).
WORKS AND DEEDS
In 1971 at Dartmouth, together with two friends, Cary Lord and Dain Trafton, I proposed a twelve-term liberal arts program and, with support from President John Kemeny, soon tested it in a pilot course, entitled “The Origins of Modernity”; the program, together with reflections on the experience, has been regularly reprinted by The Dartmouth Review, most recently in March of 2012); in his history of the college, The Hollow Men (Washington: Regnery, 1990), Charles Sykes calls it “Dartmouth’s last chance”; a version of the program was, with support from NEH, instituted at Queens College by my friend Hilail Gildin in 1971 and continues to this day.
In 1996-7 I sketched a comprehensive “great books” curriculum for Southern Virginia College, brought teachers from colleges with such curricula to speak, instituted an Epic writing program, found fellowship help for any faculty eager to prepare themselves to teach such a curriculum (none were), and drafted the mission statement of the college.
From 2010 to 2012, I together with our president Dr. Shane Schulthies instituted a great books curriculum, serious games (such as Pat Coby’s), and required writing, at George Wythe College (Cedar City, and later in Salt Lake City, Utah).
During that same period, my praise of such serious games as Pat Coby’s Reformation Parliament of Henry VIII (and like “Recovering the Past” games), led Schreiner College (Kerrville Texas) to institute them for all Freshmen.
TEACHING (for course list, see Supplement)
To freshmen, majors, home-schoolers, alumni, adults, seminarians, and graduate students; in lecture, discussion, seminar and tutorial; and at meals, over coffee, and with beer; and here in America and in German-speaking lands. In Literature: writing, creative writing, most of the great English authors, especially Renaissance (poetry, prose and drama, from More to Swift) and Shakespeare (yearly); in Humanities and Comparative Literature: Classical Epic, the Continental Renaissance (Montaigne to Pascal, Machiavelli to Vico), Modern Epic, Russian Novel, and German Literature (Goethe to Rilke); in Art: Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, and Munch; in Science: Biomedical Ethics and Biology (high school), and the Modern Scientific Project (Bacon, Descartes, etc.); in Theology: Augustine, Thomas, Pascal, and The Bible; in Political Philosophy: most of the ancients and moderns, from Plato and Aristotle, to Machiavelli and Weber; in American Government: the Founding, Federalist, Lincoln, Civil War, and Texas Government; in Statesmanship (esp. Churchill, Lincoln, and DeGaulle); in Comparative Government: Family and Regime (Solzhenitsyn and Tocqueville); and in Philosophy: Aesthetics, Hermeneutics, Education, Ethics, and Politics, especially Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Nietzsche; Graduate courses: mainly in Shakespeare and Nietzsche; three Ph.D. theses directed (all on Shakespeare); one subsequently published. In the University of Dallas Alumni Journal, John Randall ‘84, Esq. wrote, “We all felt that we were a part of something extraordinary. No experience has matched those classes in scope or lasting effect upon myself as a student of the world.”
Referees: (for more, and lists of students, see Vita Supplement)
Fr. James Lehrberger (Philosophy, University of Dallas)
Martin Yaffe (Philosophy and Religion, North Texas State)
Robert Eden (Government, Hillsdale College, Emiritus)
Will Morrisey (Government, Hillsdale College)
Hadley Arkes (Political Science, Amherst, now James Wilson Center)
Ralph Hancock (Political Science, Brigham Young University)
Eric Salem (Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis)
Richard Ferrier (Tutor, Thomas Aquinas College)
Shane Schulthies (President, George Wythe University, Utah)
Michael Waldstein (President, International Theological Institute, Austria
` now professor of Theology, Steubenville)
Jay Thompson (Vice President, Internat’l Theological Institute, Austria
Now professor of philosophy and humanities
and dean, Thomas More College NH)
David Levine (Tutor and Dean, St. John’s Santa Fe)
Jeffrey Wallin (President Emeritus, American Academy for Liberal Education)
Roger Masters (Government, Dartmouth College)
Adam Zagajewski (for a time, Committee on Social Thought, Chicago)
George Nash (Biographer of President Hoover)
Peter Wood (President, National Association of Scholars)
Russell Muirhead (Chair, Government Dept. Dartmouth College)
Walter Nicgorski (Emeritus, Politics, Notre Dame)
Christopher Ricks (Tutor, Worcester College, Oxford, when I was there)
Now on the Blessed Isles:
*Louise Cowan (Founder and Prof. of Literature, Univ. of Dallas)
*Erich Heller (German, Northwestern University)
*Theodore Redpath (Trinity College, Cambridge)
*Maynard Mack (English, Yale University)
*Al Kernan (English, Yale University)
*Hans-Georg Gadamer (Philosophisches Seminar, Universität Heidelberg)
*Richard Kennington (Philosophy, Catholic University, emeritus; St. John’s College)
*Seth Benardete (Classics, NYU; and Philosophy, New School)
*Stanley Rosen (Philosophy Emeritus, Boston University)
*David Lachterman (Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University) and Boston University)
*Leo Strauss (then at St. John’s, Annapolis)
*Charles Paul Segal (Classics, Harvard University)
*Paul Tillich (University Professor, Harvard)
*Hannah Arendt (Philosophy, New School)
*John Senior (Founder, Pearson College, at Kansas State)
*Paul Ramsey (Paine Prof. of Religion, Princeton University)
*Glenn Thurow (Politics, and Provost, University of Dallas)
*Jacques Barzun (Chancellor and Professor, Columbia University)
*Heribert Boeder (Philosophisches Seminar, Universität Osnabrück)
*Hilail Gildin (Queens College and founder of Interpretation)
* Robert G. Hunter (Emeritus, Literature, Dartmouth and later Southern Methodist)
* Roger Scruton (author)
Friends Of The Republic 