The Road to Character

This German philosopher, who lived from 1724-1804, influenced Age of Enlightenment moral thought and has left a lasting impact on present-day Western philosophical discourse. He pioneered the doctrine of Transcendental Idealism, in which the human mind structures and shapes all experience. Brooks’ use of the term “crooked timber” emerges from a famous Kant quote: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

This American sociologist and workers’ rights advocate lived from 1880-1965. Born to a well-off Boston family and educated at Mount Holyoke College, Perkins spent her early days as a young society woman in New York City. It was a gathering amidst these social circles that placed her as a direct eyewitness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which was the galvanizing event in her life. She became a determined and tireless workers’ rights advocate; she served as the US Secretary of Labor from 1933-1945 under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She also taught at Cornell University in her later years.

Ida (1862-1946), despite being orphaned at the age of 11 and educated largely on her own initiative before marrying David Eisenhower and enduring abject poverty for the early years of their marriage, grew into a religious woman of warm, loving character and moderate temperament. With David, she raised five sons, one of whom, Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969), went on to serve in a distinguished military career before being elected as 34th President of the United States. Despite Eisenhower’s character flaws—particularly coldness toward the women in his life—he is remembered for the moderation and steady temperament his mother instilled in him, as well as courage under intense scrutiny and life-or-death circumstances during his WWII service.

Journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert, Day (1897-1980) founded a newspaper called The Catholic Worker and the Catholic Workers’ movement. She devoted her later years to battling social injustice, activities which were intimately connected to her yearning for God and eventual alliance with the Catholic faith. She did all of this while caring for her daughter, Tamar, as a single mother. She wrote a memoir, The Long Loneliness, which continues to be an influential work of literature and activist thought.

Although he was never a brilliant student, Marshall (1880-1959) attended Virginia Military Institute despite great personal adversity and proved himself both a loyal team player and a precociously dedicated organizer. His service in the US military during WWI was largely unremarkable save for his acts of logistical brilliance when it came to moving men and supplies. His service during WWII saw him installed at home, in a series of increasingly important domestic roles alongside several US Presidents. He never turned down an assignment and served with discipline, to the point that he eventually became Secretary of State and engineered Europe’s recovery in the wake of WWII. He was so admired that, upon his death, many world leaders paid respects.

Randolph (1889-1979) was an influential labor organizer and social activist whose lifelong insistence upon dignity, nonviolence, and persistence led to great strides in workers’ rights and civil rights for Black Americans. He led the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters and convinced President Harry Truman to issue Order 9981 in 1948, which ended segregation in the US Armed Forces. He was present, alongside his protégé and fellow activist Rustin (1912-1987), as head of the March on Washington in 1963, where Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Born Mary Ann Evans, Eliot (1819-1880) was a British writer and translator whose works stand out as some of the most notable of the Victorian era. She wrote under a pen name to be free of scrutiny while writing as a woman, as well as to permit her fictional works to be judged separately from her reputation as a critic. This might also have been a key factor in shielding her from scandal, as her relationship with George Lewes, who was married, had already tarnished her real-name reputation. Her novel Middlemarch is still considered one of the most insightful works of fiction in English.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430), more widely known as St. Augustine due to his canonization by the Catholic Church, was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings went on to influence both Western philosophy and all of Western Christianity. After converting to Christianity in the year 386, Augustine went on to develop the concepts of Grace and Original Sin and made significant contributions to Just War Theory. He is recognized as a saint not just by Catholicism, but also in the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican traditions. He influenced the Protestant Reformation.

Johnson (1709-1784) rose from his humble beginnings as the son of a failed bookseller father and an uneducated mother to become one of the preeminent multi-genre writers and literary critics in all of English literary history. After attending Oxford for a year and running out of money, he moved to London, becoming a teacher and journalist. After a decade of work, his Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. Until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary, Johnson’s dictionary was considered the standard reference book on the English language.