John Cuddeback

John Cuddeback
101 POSTS34 COMMENTS
John A. Cuddeback is a professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America under the direction of F. Russell Hittinger. He has lectured on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, friendship, and household. His book Friendship: The Art of Happiness was republished in 2010 as True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. His writings have appeared in Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, and The Review of Metaphysics, as well as in several volumes published by the American Maritain Association. Though raised in what he calls an ‘archetypical suburb,’ Columbia, Maryland, he and his wife Sofia consider themselves blessed to be raising their six children in the shadow of the Blue Ridge on the banks of the Shenandoah. At the material center of their homesteading projects are heritage breed pigs, which like the pigs of Eumaeus are fattened on acorns, yielding a bacon that too few people ever enjoy. His website dedicated to the philosophy of family and household is baconfromacorns.com.

Recent Essays

Nothing Incomplete, Nothing in Vain

“Now nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain…” Aristotle, Politics Sometimes we might wonder about Aristotle. Was he observing the same world we are? One...

Throwing Nothing Away

“Nature like a good householder throws away nothing of which anything useful can be made.” Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals It is delightful to...

Rising at Night

“…and when anything needs doing it ought not to be left undone, whether it be day or night. There are occasions when a householder...

Care for a Wife’s Health

“Seeing, then, that such care is lavished on the body’s food, surely every care should be taken on behalf of our own children’s mother...

What Will Make Me Grateful?

“The greatest benefits will not bind the ungrateful.” Aesop’s Fables The farmer, finding a frozen snake, pitied him and placed him in his bosom to thaw....

Learning from the Bees

“Passing their lives under exalted laws, Alone they recognize a fatherland And the sanctity of a home, and provident For coming winter set to work in summer And...

The Best Manure

“We must observe what parts of the land must be manured, how the manure is to be applied, and the best kind to use;...

Playing the Right Games

“But when children play the right games from the beginning and absorb lawfulness from music and poetry, it follows them in everything and fosters...

The Mother of All Arts

“Whoever it was who said that agriculture is the mother and nurse of all other arts was right, because when agriculture is faring well,...

A Happy Thought

The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings. Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child’s Garden...

Trying to Be Like Them

“It is for you to try to be like them.” Pericles’ Funeral Oration I have to admit a problem that I’ve had with Memorial Day. I’ve...

When Your Way of Life is Out of Date

“…your whole way of life is out of date when compared with theirs. And it is just as true in politics as it is...