The river of life, the river of death: Thoughts on liberty & bondage from Andrew Kern

This is a great and thoughtful talk: A Contemplation of Liberty by Andrew Kern from CiRCE Institute. It is an audio (not video) recording. So grab a cappuccino (or, if it is evening, a glass of red wine), get your pen and notebook, tell your homeschooled children to quietly practice their Greek declensions, sit back and enjoy.

Some notes…

Mussolini’s quote on relativism:

“Everything I have said and done is these last years is relativism, by intuition. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology, and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories, and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than fascism.”

—Benito Mussolini, Diuturna (1921)

• Grammar
• Rhetoric
• Logic

• Arithmetic: Number in itself
• Geometry: Number in space
• Music, Harmonics, or Tuning Theory: Number in time
• Astronomy or Cosmology: Number in space and time

When all the stairway under us had sped

And we had reached the highest step of all,

Virgil fixed his eyes on me and said,

“My son, now you have seen the temporal and

The eternal fire, and you have reached the place

Where on my own I can discern no further:

“I’ve brought you here with intelligence and art.

Let your own pleasure guide you from now on:

You’re through the steep and through the narrow ways.

“See there the sun that shines upon your brow;

See the young grass, the flowers, and the shrubs,

Which here the earth all by itself produces.

“Until those beautiful, rejoicing eyes

Come, which in tears moved me to come to you,

You can sit down or walk among the flowers.

“Await no more a word or sign from me.

Your will is straightened, free, and whole — and not

To act upon its promptings would be wrong:

“I crown and miter you lord of your self.”