Dietrich Von Hildebrand wrote that the primary function of the intellect is what he called “participation in being.” What Hildebrand meant by that intriguing phrase, I think, means we allow reality to become genuinely present to us and we enter into an appropriate personal relation with it, first through knowledge, and then, where the object warrants it, through affective, volitional, contemplative, or loving response. This is what knowledge and learning should do for us, and

JOSEPH HOROWITZ: ANTON SEIDL, WAGNER, AND THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION Wagner Society of New York, October 15, 2026 Speaker: Joseph Horowitz, cultural historian and novelist Principal book discussed: The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale of the Gilded Age (2026) I attended my first remote lecture with the Wagner Society of New York this week. They brought the novelist, music critic and cultural historian Joseph Horowitz in to discuss his novel, The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale of the

Daxos from Arcadia, who is not a perioikoi As I've mentioned, I am the King of Rabbit Holes, and following them down. I enjoy digging into unfamiliar terms like hoplites and triremes. I ran across two terms in this week's reading in Thucydides that I hadn't noticed before in section 4.8: perioikoi and stades. I later realized one of those terms had occurred previously in the text without my noticing, and the other term was lost in translation. Perioikoi The perioikoi (Greek: