Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
In this dialogue between alumnus and mentor, Jay Morris sits down with Dr James Bryson to reflect on the modern predicament of meaning and the role of education in restoring our orientation toward human flourishing. Beginning from the spiritual and psychological consequences of the modern scientific worldview, they explore questions of teleology, embodiment, and transcendence, asking how we might move forward without denying the genuine advancements of modern science or retreating into romantic nostalgia. Drawing on figures such as Plato, Dante, Hegel, and Pascal, Dr Bryson reflects on the experience of intellectual disinheritance and the task of taking up a tradition that is always already shaping us. What emerges is a vision of education not as the transmission of doctrine, but as an initiation into love, humility, and the patient cultivation of attention to what is good, true, and beautiful.
Learn more about Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities at www.ralston.ac/apply
Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Plato
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Blaise Pascal
Dante
Plotinus
Homer
Virgil
Alfred North Whitehead
Arthur O. Lovejoy
Aristotle
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy
An Outline of European Architecture by Nikolaus Pevsner
Dante’s Paradiso
The Ring of Truth by Roger Scruton
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
– Chapters —
00:00 - Is It Harder to Read Plato than Ever Before?
06:15 - Approaching Philosophy with Vitality Rather than Sterility
12:25 - What the Scientific Perspective Fails to Account For
18:00 - Dr Bryson’s Introduction to the Philosophical Tradition
24:57 - What is the Question that Most Possesses You?
33:25 - Broad Sweeps of Historical Context vs Narrow Attention to Minutiae
37:15 - What are the Works that Speak to You Most Deeply?
39:40 - Plato’s Symposium
41:10 - Dante’s Paradiso
43:29 - Scruton’s The Ring of Truth
45:58 - The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
In this dialogue between alumnus and mentor, Jay Morris sits down with Dr James Bryson to reflect on the modern predicament of meaning and the role of education in restoring our orientation toward human flourishing. Beginning from the spiritual and psychological consequences of the modern scientific worldview, they explore questions of teleology, embodiment, and transcendence, asking how we might move forward without denying the genuine advancements of modern science or retreating into romantic nostalgia. Drawing on figures such as Plato, Dante, Hegel, and Pascal, Dr Bryson reflects on the experience of intellectual disinheritance and the task of taking up a tradition that is always already shaping us. What emerges is a vision of education not as the transmission of doctrine, but as an initiation into love, humility, and the patient cultivation of attention to what is good, true, and beautiful.
Learn more about Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities at www.ralston.ac/apply
Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Plato
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Blaise Pascal
Dante
Plotinus
Homer
Virgil
Alfred North Whitehead
Arthur O. Lovejoy
Aristotle
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy
An Outline of European Architecture by Nikolaus Pevsner
Dante’s Paradiso
The Ring of Truth by Roger Scruton
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
– Chapters —
00:00 - Is It Harder to Read Plato than Ever Before?
06:15 - Approaching Philosophy with Vitality Rather than Sterility
12:25 - What the Scientific Perspective Fails to Account For
18:00 - Dr Bryson’s Introduction to the Philosophical Tradition
24:57 - What is the Question that Most Possesses You?
33:25 - Broad Sweeps of Historical Context vs Narrow Attention to Minutiae
37:15 - What are the Works that Speak to You Most Deeply?
39:40 - Plato’s Symposium
41:10 - Dante’s Paradiso
43:29 - Scruton’s The Ring of Truth
45:58 - The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
