Had I encountered the classics as a student, I imagine that I would have grasped the relativism of our own worldview. I mean, I would have been a lot more questioning and skeptical of the worldview we receive from the supposedly wise men and women of our own time and place. We suffer from what I call chronological parochialism -- that is, the idea that we, being modern, know better than everybody who came before us. If the past is an undiscovered country, our modern prejudices tell us that we don't have anything to learn from the people who live there. But Homer knew the human heart better than most contemporaries, and Dante knew the human soul more penetratingly than many of us do.
Words of Wisdom: Rod Dreher on Reading The Odyssey for the First Time. CiRCE Institute http://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/words-wisdom-rod-dreher-reading-odyssey-first-time
My good friend, Eric Nelson, introduced me many months ago to the writing and insightful commentary of Rod Dreher. My wife introduced me to the valuable resources from CiRCE a couple years ago, and especially after attending the CiRCE conference last summer. Put these two influences together, and there is a powerful synergy!
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