Skip to main content
Spelunking With Plato

Spelunking With Plato

By Spelunking With Plato

“Spelunking with Plato,” the Arts and Sciences podcast of the University of St. Thomas, offers conversations with faculty and friends of the university who can help us see more clearly the truth of things and devote our lives to the pursuit of Wisdom. By drinking deeply through dialogue from the Catholic intellectual and spiritual traditions we hope to order our lives more completely to the truths of reality, so that we can become fully free and come to a vision of the Good.
Available on
Google Podcasts Logo
Pocket Casts Logo
RadioPublic Logo
Spotify Logo
Currently playing episode

Wi-Fi in Plato's Cave (Mirela Oliva)

Spelunking With PlatoFeb 21, 2022

00:00
26:35
Wonder, ‘Ordered Pedagogy,’ Brick Laying, and the Catholic University (Randy Smith)
Jan 22, 202436:55
Bonaventure’s Light:  The Goodness, Order, and End of the University’s Disciplines (Randy Smith)
Nov 28, 202336:13
The Butler of Theology?: Integrating Philosophy, Theology, and the Liberal Arts within the University (Brian Carl)
Oct 17, 202331:14
Mapping the Disciplines: Aquinas and the Order of Knowledge in the University (Brian Carl)
Oct 04, 202334:47
Aristotle Would Have Loved Jiu-Jitsu: Liberal Learning as Embodied Agon (Michael Boler)
Mar 10, 202328:29
Against Efficiency and Jargon: Liberating Students for Wisdom through Dialogue (Michael Boler)
Feb 15, 202330:07
Michael Oakeshott and the Voice of Liberal Learning (Elizabeth Corey)
Nov 29, 202236:11
What Is Liberal Education? (Elizabeth Corey)
Nov 04, 202229:52
Shakespeare and the Play of Liberal Learning (Clint Brand)
Oct 04, 202232:33
Dante and the Liberating Pedagogy of the Divine Comedy (Clint Brand)

Dante and the Liberating Pedagogy of the Divine Comedy (Clint Brand)

In this conversation with Dr. Clint Brand, we explore what we can learn about liberal learning from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Taking Scott Crider’s recent essay on Dante as our point of departure, we explore how we might read the Commedia as “a series of pedagogical encounters.”  What can we discover about the roles of humility, wonder, love, the soul, dialectic, piety, poetry, and “submission to the real” in the growth of metamorphosis of liberal learning?  What lessons from Dante might we as teachers take into our own classrooms?


Links of potential interest:

Scott Crider’s “Saving Pedagogy: Dante as the Poet of Education” at Public Discourse

Dante’s Commedia (Paradiso)

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

C. S. “Men Without Chests,” in The Abolition of Man

Plato’s Seventh Letter

Newman, Rise and Progress of Universities

Jean Leclercq O.S.B, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God

Clint Brand, ed., St. Gregory’s Prayer Book


Sep 15, 202237:00
The Music of the Spheres, Iambic Pentameter, and the Marian Gift of Liberal Learning (Rachel Fulton Brown)
Jul 26, 202222:59
Foolishness to the Greeks: History and Liberal Learning in a Christian Key (Rachel Fulton Brown)
Jun 30, 202227:57
Benedict, Beauty, and the Ethos of Liberal Learning (Margarita Mooney Suarez)
Apr 26, 202230:03
What is Liberal Education? A Conversation with Margarita Mooney Suarez
Apr 20, 202229:08
What is the Meaning of Life? (Mirela Oliva)
Feb 21, 202223:01
Wi-Fi in Plato's Cave (Mirela Oliva)
Feb 21, 202226:35
Friendship, Grace, and the Study of History in the Life of Liberal Learning (Francesca Guerri)
Jan 21, 202234:57
Matilda the “Warrior Countess” and History as a Liberal Art (Francesca Guerri)

Matilda the “Warrior Countess” and History as a Liberal Art (Francesca Guerri)

What is one of the chief motivations for the study of history? Prof. Francesca Guerri suggests that it is “a passion for humanity.” But this is not a passion for abstractions. It is rather a passion for particular people, at particular times, in particular places, ordered to a particular end.

In this conversation, Dr. Guerri introduces us to Matilda of Tuscany and her role in the investiture controversy as well as her own studies of Renaissance mercantile life and the larger (Benedictine) vison of work as potentially sacred.

Dr. Guerri also takes up the question of the nature of liberal learning by considering a statement that Dante gives to Ulysses in the Inferno: “Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” Is this an accurate description of liberal learning and its aims? What does it mean that Ulysses uses this statement to exhort his men to transgress divine bounds, leading ultimately to their death and his own damnation? (Are there dangers lurking with liberal education that is unmoored from a divine and regulative vision?)

Along the way, Dr. Guerri also considers the virtues—including patience and studiositas—that should animate the life of the historian and the discipline’s relationship to the other liberal arts, especially rhetoric as it is understood in of the works of Cicero, St. Augustine, and Dante.

Links of Potential Interest:

Dr. Guerri’s website: https://www.francescaguerri.com/

Crossroads Cultural Center:  http://www.crossroadsculturalcenter.org/

Christopher Dawson:  http://www.christopherdawson.org.uk/

St. Augustine, The City of God:  https://www.newcitypress.com/the-city-of-god-11-22-library-edition.html

Dante’s Inferno: https://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Divine-Comedy-Dante/dp/034548357X. 

A popular introduction to Matilda of Tuscany:  https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/matilda-of-tuscany-the-warrior-countess

Dec 08, 202132:55
Learning from Elvis and the Pagans: St. Basil, Pythagoras and the Perils of a Great Books Education (Stuart Squires)
Nov 17, 202132:48
Pelagius and Tertullian at the University: Culture, Grace, the Sources of Liberal Education (Stuart Squires)
Nov 03, 202131:20
Snark in the Faculty Lounge: Galileo and the Contemporary University (Jim Clarage)
Oct 06, 202135:32
Liquid Fire: On American Politics, the Liberalism Wars, Natural Law, and Whether America is Still “Cool” (Christopher James Wolfe)
Sep 14, 202129:22
Tattoo Lights, Harmonics, and Quantum Mechanics: Is Physics the Queen of the Sciences? (Jim Clarage)
Sep 09, 202133:08
Politics, Plato, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Liberal Education (Christopher James Wolfe)
Aug 25, 202131:02
Renewing a University’s Core: Tradition, Community, and the Sources of Liberal Learning (Andrew Hayes)

Renewing a University’s Core: Tradition, Community, and the Sources of Liberal Learning (Andrew Hayes)

In this conversation, Prof. Andrew Hayes accomplishes two tasks. First, he introduces us to the sources that have animated his leadership of the renewal of a university's core curriculum—including St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Basil the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Newman, Josef Pieper, and Alasdair Macintyre. Second, he gives a detailed account of the principal elements and purposes that give form to the unfolding of this renewal. Here he touches upon the importance of establishing a community of Core Fellows, the cultivation of wonder in our students, the perennial questions that will animate and give unity to the students' experience of the core, the core’s common texts, and the fundamental unity of knowledge. Finally, he offers insightful observations about liberal education understood as an unfolding conversation, the role of faculty members as custodians of tradition, how we should define “liberal education,”  and how should distinguish introductory courses that typically constitute general education at most institutions from “cognate” courses that should constitute a core properly ordered to liberal learning.

Details about UST's renewal of its Core, including goals, courses, and course sequences

Lecture by Dr. Andrew Hayes: "A Theology of Wonder: An Introduction to the Poetry of Ephrem the Syrian"

Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture (with an introduction by T.S. Eliot)

Alasdair Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Saint John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University and Rise and Progress of Universities


Jun 07, 202134:46
Awakening to Wonder and Wisdom: The Architecture and Telos of Liberal Learning (Andrew Hayes)

Awakening to Wonder and Wisdom: The Architecture and Telos of Liberal Learning (Andrew Hayes)

In this episode, Dr. Andrew Hayes, a theologian who also serves as the Dean of the Division of Liberal Studies, introduces us to the principles and process guiding the university’s renewal of its core curriculum. He takes up the nature of the human person, the role of wonder in liberal learning, and the purpose of a core oriented to human flourishing in this life and the next. Affirming that there is “truth to be known” and a “life of the mind” to be lived—all unfolding from conception to the beatific vision—Prof. Hayes compares the renewal of the core to the history of monastic renewals that have been undertaken during the life of the Church. By returning to the original charism “we are recommitting to the principles and sources of liberal learning” and opening ourselves to the joyful unpredictability of a community devoted to Wisdom. Prof. Hayes clarifies how the university, guided by three fundamental goals, will renew the core in order to create a common experience for students that will be coherent, ordered to a common purpose, and pass on a common patrimony across generations.

Details about UST's renewal of its Core, including goals, courses, and course sequences

Lecture by Dr. Andrew Hayes: "A Theology of Wonder: An Introduction to the Poetry of Ephrem the Syrian"

Josef Pieper, What Does 'Academic' Mean?

Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


May 25, 202132:47
A Twelfth-Century Map for a Contemporary Catholic University: The Wisdom of Hugh of St. Victor (Chris Evans)

A Twelfth-Century Map for a Contemporary Catholic University: The Wisdom of Hugh of St. Victor (Chris Evans)

In this conversation, Chris Evans, the VPAA of the University of Saint Thomas, introduces us to the world and thought of Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096--1141). Focusing on the “map” of study proposed in his "Didascalicon," we discover the integration of the theoretical and practical disciplines with mechanical skills, and the weaving together of the seven liberal arts both with ethical and political formation, and the acquisition of the necessary skills for life (which at the time including hunting and armor making).  Complementing this in Hugh’s vision is a devotion to prayer, the liturgy, and the sacraments. And all of these—studies in the classroom and formation outside of the classroom—are oriented to Wisdom, the second person of the Trinity.

Hugh of St. Victor’s soteriological orientation of education would also become the normative vision for Catholic education to this day: Catholic education ultimately aims at human salvation, “the restoration of the likeness of God in humanity.”

In the second half of the conversation, we take up the question, “Why the Core?,” the role of theology in liberal learning, and how we can form faculty and administrators for the unique mission of Catholic liberal education.

Links of Potential Interest:

The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts

Josef Pieper, What Does "Academic" Mean?

"UST Renews Core Curriculum"

St. Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences

Pope Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio

Pope Benedict, "Address to Catholic Educators"

Apr 22, 202135:19
The “Indelible Mark” of Liberal Learning: Renewing a Catholic Liberal Arts Core (Chris Evans)

The “Indelible Mark” of Liberal Learning: Renewing a Catholic Liberal Arts Core (Chris Evans)

Apr 20, 202133:57
Dante and the Odyssey of Liberal Education (Dominic Aquila)
Jan 08, 202132:23
Dawson, Lukacs, and MacIntyre: History, Historicism, and Liberal Learning (Dominic Aquila)
Jan 07, 202135:47
On Lying for a Living and the Ontology of Arithmetic (Tom Harmon)
Jan 07, 202132:24
St. Augustine: Embodiment and Critic of Liberal Learning (Tom Harmon)
Dec 16, 202035:50
Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II: Competing Views of Education? (John Hittinger)

Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II: Competing Views of Education? (John Hittinger)

A thought experiment: Imagine that both John Paul II and Thomas Aquinas are alive today. They have been commissioned to establish independent universities in different cities according to their respective visions of education. How would the universities differ? How would they be similar? Is it possible that they establish identical universities? In this conversation, Dr. John Hittinger takes up these questions while also offering insights that illuminate the role of culture, philosophical anthropology, freedom, and conscience in the well-ordered human life of learning. Hittinger also reflects on how he—as a life-long Thomist—has developed his own thinking as a result of his work on the thought of John Paul II.

Links of potential interest:

John Paul II Institute

George Weigel’s John Paul II Trilogy:

Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II

The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II--The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy

Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II

Pope Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (“Faith and Reason”)

Pope Saint John Paul II, Ex corde ecclesiae (On Catholic Universities/From the Heart of the Church)

Pope Saint John Paul II, “Letter to Artists”

Karol Wojtyła (Pope Saint John Paul II) The Jeweler's Shop: A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony Passing on Occasion Into a Drama

Henryk Górecki, “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”

Pope Saint John Paul II, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium

George Weigel, “Two Ideas of Freedom”


Dec 04, 202032:31
The Paradoxes of Liberal Learning or "How to Think Like Shakespeare" (Clint Brand)
Dec 04, 202031:42
The Classroom as Sacrament(al)? (Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P.)
Dec 04, 202030:42
St. Albert the Great, A Tweeting Public Intellectual? (Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P.)
Dec 02, 202029:51
John Paul II’s Vision of Education: A Conversation with John Hittinger
Nov 19, 202031:58
The Role of Literature and the Imagination in Liberal Education (Clint Brand)
Oct 29, 202028:23