Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, and the Moral Imagination

Description

First used in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, the term “moral imagination” is an essential concept in modern conservative thought. This phrase, which originated with Burke, was later developed by Irving Babbitt and popularized by Russell Kirk. The “moral imagination,” wrote Kirk, is “the power of ethical perception which strides beyond the barriers of private experience and events of the moment—especially the higher form of this power exercised in poetry and art.”

This course explores the idea of the “moral imagination” through the essays, fiction, and poetry of Russell Kirk and T.S. Eliot. Required readings include T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, The Four Quartets, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, and other selections, as well as excerpts from Russell Kirk’s  Ancestral Shadows, The Essential Russell Kirk, and more. Students will explore the importance of tradition in creating and analyzing great works of literature. They will consider the perennial importance of conserving and renewing what Kirk and Eliot called the Permanent Things.

This course is available to Certificate students only.