Montana Classical College

Here is lecture to kick off a reading group on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. In the first part, I talk about epic poetry and what in particular might make Moby-Dick an epic in a strict sense (for more on what an epic is, see this ). In the second half, Ishmael’s “problem of the universe,” which I take to be the question of whether or not God exists. As far as the reading group is con...

Melville alludes in very direct ways to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in chapters 42 and 52 of Moby-Dick . In an effort to better understand Melville and to understand poetry more broadly, I asked Stephen Pimentel and Byronic Heroine if they would help me understand this mysterious, beautiful, and terrifying poem. The outcome was pretty extraordinary, if I can say so without being...

Here is the second conversation in a series interviewing outstanding educators. I had the great good fortune to speak with Dissident Teacher , who is a veteran public school teacher, currently a classical school teacher, and who writes about K-12 education on her outstanding Substack: The first half of our conversation covered the problems in K-12 education today, focusing on the incentive structu...

It was a delight to talk with Brian Kemple, the founder and executive director of the Lyceum Institute . In the first half, we discussed the structural problem in most universities and the purpose of the Lyceum Institute. In the second half, Brian explained his paradoxical interest in Thomas Aquinas and semiotics; he offers one of the best concise introductions to semiotics and the thought of Char...

In this lecture, I walk through Leo Strauss’s unpublished lecture on Plato’s Euthyphro , as a prelude to offering a careful, line-by-line interpretation of the dialogue which will soon follow. One might object to paying such close attention to an unpublished writing, but Strauss considered including a refurbished version of the lecture, in a proposed, but then rescinded collection that would have...

The painting above, Uccello’s “Hunting in the Forest,” is the image that Mrs. MCC refers to at the beginning of the conversation. Mrs. MCC and I read and discussed the first half of Part Three, “What is Religious.” Mrs. MCC did a lot of digging into some of the peripheral figures that Nietzsche calls our attention to in this dense and difficult section as well as showing how this part of the book...

This time, Mrs. MCC and I finished up part two, The Free Spirits. Mrs. MCC offers some very helpful birds-eye view thoughts on this part in addition to our usual reading and discussion. Nietzsche’s most direct account of will to power is discussed along with the difficulty that the free spirits have in fully grasping this teaching. Their difficulty in understanding the teaching when stated directl...

Before we begin, please be sure to see William’s essay on this book of the Aeneid over on his stack . Last time we heard Aeneas tell the tale of the destruction of Troy and the deaths of both Priam and Aeneas’ wife Creusa—events that Homer did not get to in the Iliad . Today we will read and discuss Aeneas’ “odyssey”. * Thrace and Crete: The Two False Starts To begin with, Aeneas does not know tha...

We made a small change to the format, breaking the reading into three parts and having discussions after each part. My interpretive notes are below. You should go check out William’s stack for his essay on the reading. 1) Lines 1 – 305 To take the horse or not to take the horse? Sinon’s deception and the sea-serpents. Aeneas tells the Carthaginians about Troy’s final hours. In his prefatory remark...

Mrs. MCC and I continue our discussion of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil . Aphorism 30, on esotericism and exotericism, is one of the most important in the book for highlighting Nietzsche’s emphasis on human typology. We see as well in these sections Nietzsche embark on two different miniature genealogies of morality. Previous Discussions : Aphorisms 1 - 9 Aphorisms 10 - 17 Aphorisms 18 - 23 Aph...

Today William and I will begin a series on Virgil’s Aeneid . The basic plan of each session: William will read, both beautifully and elegantly (stopping to add summary remarks), a book of John Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid . Then, as he rests his seared vocal cords, I’ll offer a short interpretive presentation on the book. Finally, we’ll go back and forth about the day’s reading. In this way,...

I discussed Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick with my friends Alejandro and Byronic Heroine . Since links to X / Twitter have been breaking and spaces on the site have been crashing, I downloaded the audio to put here for convenience as well as to outmaneuver the capricious crashes that X spaces have suffered. After some introductory remarks, Alejandro presented on the encyclopedic character of the book...

Mrs. MCC and I begin Part Two of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil , “The Free Spirit”! Previous Discussions : Aphorisms 1 - 9 Aphorisms 10 - 17 Aphorisms 18 - 23 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit montanaclassicalcollege.substack.com/subscribe

We discussed aphorisms 18 - 23, on psychology as the queen of the sciences! X sadly nuked the conversation on the preface; trying to see if it is possible to recover. Previous discussions : Aphorisms 1 - 9 Aphorisms 10 - 17 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit montanaclassicalcollege.substack.com/subscribe

Today Mrs. MCC and I discussed aphorisms 10 - 17 of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil ! What you have here is the audio of our prepared comments. If you want to hear the live Q and A portion, where our wonderful friend, Ancient Philosophy , asks us a series of pointed and very helpful questions after these remarks, you can find that version here . Our previous conversation on aphorisms 1 - 9 is her...

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College! Today I’m joined by Will Tanner and Big Tuna to discuss the American founders on economics, President McKinley and how he serves as a good example for Trump to follow, and Trump’s plan to introduce tariffs today. Both of these guys really know how to bring history alive in their narrations of it, so I’m really excited have these guys here today. Will...

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College! Today, I am joined again by my friend BigTuna . Today, we are going to discuss C.S Lewis; his essay “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State”, and his books, The Abolition of Man and The Screwtape Letters. * Tuna has big news! He is a launching a podcast, Cast Your Nets , where he will: “invite various guests from around the internet to come discuss one...

Mrs. MCC and I read out loud aphorisms 1 - 9 from Part One of Beyond Good and Evil , “On the Prejudices of the Philosophers” and comment on each. We hope that this will be an ongoing series. We had a previous conversation about the preface to BGE here . We tried to carry over the most important insight from that discussion into to the one you have here. Other MCC Nietzsche materials: Approaching N...

I was joined by my friend Phocaean to discuss The Scarlet Letter. It is nice capstone for MCC’s Introduction to Literature course which features lectures on Ray Bradbury, Jack London, Harper Lee, William Golding, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen. Phocaean and I have also discussed Nietzsche and Aristocratic Christianity Finally, here is a classic essay on The Revolutionary Right from his substack....

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College. Today I am lucky to be joined by my friend Big Tuna . He has a substack called the Crux of the Matter , where you can find his podcasts / essays on politics, the human condition, and Christian ethics. I joined him for a discussion on the Christian Ghetto podcast with our friend Kruptos to talk about two of the most dynamic strains on the Right today,...

Today I am joined by Matt Peterson , the founder of Claremont’s American Mind journal, he’s worked with New Founding, and he is the Editor in Chief at Blaze Media. In my opinion, and I’m not saying this to flatter him because he is here, but I think that Matt has done more to work to help conservatives understand what time it is than almost anyone else. I got online just around when TAM launched a...

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College. Today I’ll be discussing Shakespeare’s The Tempest . This is part of our course, Shakespeare as Political Philosopher . Previously I covered Much Ado about Nothing with King Bolingbroke and then we did a 5 part series on King Lear . He won’t be with me this time, but I did listen to a helpful conversation that he recorded with Athenian Stranger that...

I promised a commentary on the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil but am really only commenting on one aspect of the Preface, namely, Nietzsche’s simultaneous disdain for conservative dogmatism and the democratic Enlightenment. The question of this essay is: How did Nietzsche preserve the high civilizational standards of old European dogmatism while adopting the Enlightenment’s attitude towards diale...

The Division Between Good and Bad Every philosopher produces a division between good and bad. This is what (I think) is meant in Plato’s Republic when Socrates says the Philosopher is compelled to return from the Realm of The Sun to the world of shadows: it’s impossible to speak about what has been made visible by the sun without at the same time designating some type of man as an ideal type. This...

Hello and welcome to Montana Classical College! Today I will be talking to Ancient Gardener. He is an X poster and I heard him on Lance Legion’s podcast when I was preparing for what was fun discussion with him, where Lance made the strongest case possible for why Agamemnon has a case to make for why he should be considered the best of the Achaeans. But I remember you saying some striking things a...