St. John's College Meem Library, 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM (2026)

05/21/2026

Photo from the Meem Library Archives, Commencement 1993

Phaedrus: ... But let's be off, since the heat has died down a bit.
Socrates: Shouldn't we offer a prayer to the gods here before we leave?
Phaedrus: Of course.
Socrates: O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.
--Do we need anything else, Phaedrus? I believe my prayer is enough for me.
Phaedrus: Make it a prayer for me as well. Friends have everything in common.
Socrates: Let's be off.

From Plato's Phaedrus, translated by Nehamas and Woodruff, Hackett Publishing

04/28/2026

Indeed, if these questions about our genuine experience in any way resonate with you—if, for example, the deepest experiences of your lives have been concern for your friends or love of someone else or the heartfelt belief that one must be courageous or honest and you feel somewhere inside that these experiences are real, and not conventional—then it seems to me that we might begin to see a reason, and even a need, for a St. John’s education. For the St. John’s education begins by considering the works of the ancient and medieval philosophers and poets. And these authors began, unlike Locke, by taking our political and religious beginning point seriously. That is, they began not from a hypothetical view of where society comes from, though they surely considered such hypothetical views, but rather from the world in which we genuinely find ourselves, that is, a world in which we feel deep obligations to our country, our friends, and our family; they began by taking seriously the fact that human beings begin within a political life and may very well be political beings. And because they begin here, they are able to think deeply about the questions that arise in the midst of that life, questions that touch upon those things that I think, at any rate, matter most deeply to our minds and hearts, questions raised directly or indirectly by authors such as Plato and Aristotle and even Homer, questions such as, “what is justice?,” “what is friendship?,” “what is beauty?,” “what is courage?,” “what is a citizen?,” and so on. Furthermore, because they begin from within political life, from within political and religious communities that did have a “summum bonum,” they are also able to raise, and raise seriously, the question that, along with the others that I have just cited, Locke and his heirs, beginning from the view that human beings are fundamentally selfish and free, have made less accessible to us, namely, the question of what the best life might be.

From “Freedom, the Liberal Arts, and St. John’s College,” lecture delivered by Matthew K. Davis, August 28, 2015