Sacred and Profane Love

In this episode, I speak with fellow philosopher (and substack writer) Justin E. H. Smith about the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. This is our final episode of 2022! As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation. Justin E. H. Smith is professor of philosophy in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Paris. In 2019-20, he was the John and Constance Birkelund Fell...

In this episode, I am joined by Sam Filby, a graduate student in philosophy at Northwestern University. We discuss JM Coetzee's novel, Elizabeth Costello, which is a fictionalized account of a writer who gives a series of lectures on the ethics of eating animals. We simply try to figure out what is going on in this puzzling novel of bad ideas. Sam Filby is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Northwes...

In this episode, I am joined by the poet and critic Dana Gioia to discuss Charles Baudelaire's famous book of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal, or The Flowers of Evil. We tackle some big questions in this episode, such as whether and how evil can be beautiful, the nature of Catholic art and poetry, original sin, and the poet as a damned figure. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Dana Gioia is an internati...

In this episode, I am joined by Christopher Snyder, professor of history and director of British Studies at Mississippi State University, to discuss J.R.R. Tolkien's fiction and virtue ethics. We discuss Tolkien's background , training, academic work and influences, how to think about his fiction and its enduring value, and what role virtue plays in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Drawing on...

In this episode, I team up again with Karen Swallow Prior, this time to discuss what many people call "the great American novel" Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. We talk about sin, guilt, and repression, and how Hawthorne's story is more complicated and interesting than most people make it out to be. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation. Karen Swallow Prior is Research Professor o...

In this episode, I speak with the poet, critic, and biographer Paul Mariani, professor emeritus at Boston College. We discuss his new book, All that Will be New and his biography of Robert Lowell, The Lost Puritan. We discuss Lowell's life, poetry, and his struggle with the permanent things: religion, marriage, art, family. Given the influence of Hopkins on his early poems, I think this episode pa...

In this episode, I speak with my friends, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP and Fr. Jonah Teller, OP about the relationship between art, truth, and beauty, sacred and profane music, how music might be integral to religious life, and whether the banjo is beautiful. Long time listeners will remember Thomas Joseph from our very first episode on Flannery O'Connor, where we discuss what she meant by calling...

In this episode, I speak to my husband (and fellow philosopher) Chris Frey about Walter M. Miller’s sci-fi novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz.  We both agree that this is a novel about sin, and more specifically, how sin is connected to the myriad ways that our desire for knowledge becomes perverted and disordered.  Along the way, we also talk about memory, Promethean fear, impiety, hope, the Immacul...

On April 26, 2022, The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America hosted a launch event to reveal the new design and website of Sacred and Profane Love. I am pleased to share the audio of that event as episode 50, but you can also watch a video of it here. This event, with Zena Hitz and Chad Wellmon, was titled “Are the Humanities in Crisis” and the two starting points for t...

In this episode, I speak with the writer, editor, and critic, Christopher Beha, about the Danish bildungsroman by Henrik Pontoppidan, Lucky Per. We focus on Per’s struggle to escape from those aspects of his life that are not chosen—family, religion, place—his quest to understand himself, to love other people, and to live a life that is truly happy and free.  Along the way, we discuss reviews of t...

In this episode, I speak with philosopher Thomas Hibbs (Baylor) about Dostoyevsky's famous novel, Crime and Punishment. We discuss how Raskolnikov gets trapped in various philosophical theories he has embraced, and what might help him go from theory to authentic human life again. Along the way, we discuss the limitations of philosophy, the importance of literature as an antidote to modern moral th...

In this episode, I speak with the philosopher, podcaster, and substacker extraordinaire, Justin E.H. Smith about Cormac McCarthy’s fourth novel, Suttree. We were both struck by how different this novel is from McCarthy’s later, more famous works—both in its style and in its literary ambitions. We resist the common temptation to read McCarthy as a nihilist; we puzzle over the beginning and the end...

In this episode, I speak with Katy Carl, who is the editor in chief of Dappled Things and also the author of As Earth Without Water, to discuss Henry James's novella, Washington Square and R.R. Reno's essay, Duty, the Soul of Beauty. After a great deal of back and forth, we come to the conclusion that what the novella shows is that mere duty, in absence of well ordered loves and the habits of atte...

In this episode, I am joined by Professor Roosevelt Montas to discuss his new book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation. Montas, a Dominican born American academic, makes the compelling case that study of the Great Books is potentially transformative, especially for students from working class communities or who are members of historically...

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Kevin Kambo about Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, in light of an essay by Louise Cowan titled "The Tragic Abyss." Cowan argues that tragedy is "a liturgical confrontation of a deep seated dread which, when brought to light, can be borne only through the medium of poetic language." We discuss the nature of the tragic, which always involves a moment of "unmasking" and a pee...

In this episode, I speak with the president of the University of Tulsa, Brad Carson, about Allen Bloom's infamous book, The Closing of the American Mind. Brad and I ultimately decide that while we like some of Bloom's key ideas about what a university is for, we do not love the book itself, which has some serious flaws (though we may differ slightly about what we think those flaws are). As always,...

In this episode, I speak with professor of theology Fritz Bauerschmidt about Graham Greene's novel, The Heart of the Matter. We discuss the moral psychology of sin, and how it is that human beings are able to knowingly act against their own good (in this case: knowingly and deliberatively choose their own eternal damnation). How can someone find what is evil good? The answer in this case is a deft...

I am pleased to share a very special episode of Sacred and Profane, our first episode recorded in front of a live audience, and with the amazing Dr. Cornel West! The context for this episode is that the Classic Learning Test (which has sponsored several episodes this season, and on whose board of academic advisors I happily serve) held its third annual higher education summit in beautiful Annapoli...

Sacred and Profane Love Episode 40: The Tragic Vision of Eugene O'Neill by Sacred and Profane Love

Sacred and Profane Love Episode 39: Gabriel Marcel's Thirst by Sacred and Profane Love

Sacred and Profane Love Episode 38: The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins by Sacred and Profane Love

Bonus Episode: Matthew Mehan on Children's Literature by Sacred and Profane Love

Sacred and Profane Love Episode 37: Boethius and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces by Sacred and Profane Love

Sacred and Profane Love Episode 36: The Realist Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz by Sacred and Profane Love

Sacred and Profane Love Episode 35: Morten Hoi Jensen on Jens Peter Jacobsen by Sacred and Profane Love