Who We Are & What We Do
Why read old books?
The historical present is a fancy-schmancy grammatical way to describe what we do when we talk about the writings or ideas of a person who lived in the past as if they were alive and with us in our contemporary moment—to use the present tense of a verb to discuss actions taken by someone in the past. When teaching courses in the history of political thought, we would do this all the time, asking our students questions like “What is Plato doing here?” or “Why would Locke be telling us to think this way?” As a rhetorical device, it worked because it made the ideas of those sometimes very-very unfamiliar in time and place seem more approachable and even (dare we say) relevant to our students of all ages.
The thing is, when it comes to “serious” texts, nobody wants to read something that doesn’t seem “relevant” to them—to either who they are or who they are in the process of becoming.
We happen to believe that this is more than merely a rhetorical device—that it represents something true about the ability immutability of human nature, despite differences of time or cultural setting. Even more importantly, following the principle that “all truth is God’s truth,” we believe using the historical present makes it easier for God to use these texts to speak to us immediately, despite the fact that they were actually written long ago.
Brian A. Smith and Sarah A. Morgan Smith
Co-Founders
Welcome.
We’re Brian and Sarah, scholars trained in the great books tradition who fell in love and are now sharing our passion for the history of ideas with our three spunky kiddos. Not into dad jokes, but somehow managing to combine time for the most deeply serious things with moments of pure silliness in our family.
Together, we have over thirty years of experience teaching folks of all ages to read the great texts of the past and think about their implications for our lives in the present.
We founded Historical Present to provide resources that would help other homeschooling families encounter the most important texts in the Western tradition together. Our process is simple:
Read. We provide curated selections from major works in the history of ideas, broken into daily readings that are short enough to be accessible but engaging enough to linger over.
Reflect. Each reading plan includes questions suitable for both personal reflection and discussion with others.
Revive. At the end of each plan, we provide prayer prompts designed to help seek wisdom and guidance for living in light of whatever truths the texts might have revealed.
We invite you to read with us!
Read with us.
