{"id":56088,"date":"2016-05-02T12:37:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=56088"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:15:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:15:14","slug":"podcast-197-on-the-joys-and-travails-of-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/character\/self-improvement\/podcast-197-on-the-joys-and-travails-of-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast #197: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What does it mean to live a “life of the mind”?<\/p>\n

Why is it important that we make time to ponder and contemplate the heftier ideas of what it means to be a human?<\/p>\n

And if we have the desire to lead a contemplative life, how exactly do we go about doing it?<\/p>\n

Well, my guest today has spent his life pondering and thinking about these questions. His name is Father James Schall<\/a>. He’s a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and the Professor of Political Philosophy at Georgetown University. Father Schall has written on a wide variety of topics, but today on the show we focus on his book The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking<\/a>, <\/em>in which he expounds on ways of approaching thinking so that it delights and edifies us. Today on the show, Fr. Schall and I discuss what it means to take part in the Great Conversation, why the life of the mind has some drudgery to it, and brass-tacks things we can all do to live a more thoughtful and contemplative life.<\/p>\n

Show Highlights<\/h3>\n