“Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance” — Oscar Wilde, final line in The Invention of Love In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates renounces cultural gravitation to sexual love, arguing that philosophy, an asexual love for wisdom, is the most valuable pursuit. This theory is contradicted by Diotoma, who believed…

A few thousand years isn’t that long. It is common knowledge that the study of humanities has been on a steady decline since the turn of the century. So why read the Classics? To be reminded that we are not special. We are children of the Grecians and Romans; our…

Despite her abduction as the clear causation of the Trojan War (as interpreted by most Classical literature), Helen of Troy is seen only six times throughout the course of Homer’s Iliad. Helen, described as the most beautiful woman of the ancient world, suffers within a cocoon of cheap, inconsequential physicality…

This past year, I took a class on human emotion. The material covered in this class sparked a multitude of thoughts, questions, and interests for me — some grew and faded, some were answered in discussions, some exhausted in the readings. …

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the royal women of Denmark, chiefly Queen Gertrude, are wrongly painted as glacial yet impuissant and libidinous. …

“Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic.” -Philip Zimbardo What is the essence of humanity? Why are we here? What is our purpose? Is there a higher power? One might think, with the volume and frequency of these questions, that the human condition is habitual pondering. And while these questions serve…

“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.” -General George S. Patton Along with encapsulating the eccentric brilliance of one of America’s most gifted Generals, Patton explores the country’s core values, which seem to transcend time — from 1940, to 1970, to today. Simply put, George S. Patton…

“Man is not unique because he does science, and he is not unique because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.” -Jacob Bronowski, Mathematician and Poet A metal tray, a 10-blade, a pair of forceps, the rhythmic beat of a…