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For our inaugural episode of Koinos Cast, we discuss T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” a brief meditation on the relationship we as individuals have to history, specifically the historical tradition that we are a part of. Eliot’s main focus is on the poetic tradition in which a writer is situated, but it is a theme we believe to have far-reaching implications for us as human beings.
This is really the animating question of Koinos Project as a whole: what ought our relationship to the past be—and likewise, the future?
In this episode, we invite back our friend Jordan Klein who had joined us on our seminar on Henry Bugbee’s The Inward Morning. One of the reasons I thought this piece would be good to discuss with him is that, like us, he too has escaped the countercultural trappings of his youth in search of something more—in search of some sort of order bigger than ourselves that connects us with others and the world. While this journey began during our time at St. John’s College, it will continue for the rest of our lives: either through conversations such as this one, or what we pass down through the families we have created, or in the communities we build.
In the wake of World War I, Eliot could already sense the coming dissolution that we all now feel. Perhaps, like ourselves, you too shall find some of his suggestions useful as you attempt to find your place amongst our present chaos.
