Astonished at the World: G. K. Chesterton's Philosophy of Wonder – Joe Grabowski

The Thomistic Institute

Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Thomism, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Catholicism, Philosophy, Christianity

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

Joe Grabowski presents Chesterton’s philosophy as a disciplined recovery of wonder, arguing that reality is not exhausted by habit, utility, or material explanation but should be seen with childlike astonishment and gratitude.

This lecture was given on March 30th, 2026, at the University of Kansas.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Joe Grabowski is the Vice-President of Evangelization for the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. He formerly served as executive director for the International Organization for the Family and the World Congress of Families.

Joe has a B.A. in philosophy from Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, and an M.A. in English from Marquette University. Joe’s byline, writing on the subjects of traditional marriage and the family, as well as on Catholic Social Teaching and the legacies of Chesterton and Belloc, has appeared in The Catholic Herald, Our Sunday Visitor, The Stream, Gilbert Magazine, Ethika Politika, The Distributist Review, and elsewhere. He has been interviewed in local and national media as an expert on marriage and family public policy and on G.K. Chesterton and Distributism. He serves on the Board of Advisors of the American Solidarity Party.

Joe lives outside Philadelphia, an avid book collector (and occasional reader) and weekly pub quiz enthusiast.

Keywords: Astonishment, Beauty, Chesterton, Conversion, Gratitude, Imagination, Meaning, Wonder, World, Youth

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast.
0:05.9	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.2	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:18.2	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.7	to mystic institute.org. We'll jump right into our topic for tonight, which is G.K. Chesterton's
0:29.4	astonishment at the world. This is what I call his central philosophical stance or his point of view.
0:39.2	And to get us into that, I'll begin with a quote.
0:43.6	There's a law written in the darkest of the books of life, and it is this.
0:48.2	If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe.
0:52.9	If you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful
0:56.8	danger of seeing it for the first time. Now, with that quotation in mind, I'm going to ask
1:03.8	a question. Have you ever seen a horse? Show of hands, if you've seen a horse. Okay, most of us
1:10.7	have. All of us have.
1:11.7	All of us, probably.
1:14.1	How about a person riding a horse?
1:17.3	Again, most of us.
1:18.4	Actually, if you think about it, depending on where you grew up, that might be the most likely first encounter that you've ever had with a horse in real life.
1:26.7	I know I'm living in the outskirts of
1:28.6	Philadelphia and there were probably a lot of kids downtown who had their first in real life
1:33.4	encounter with a horse at the St. Patrick's Day parade this year watching a policeman on top of
1:39.5	that horse beat away a drunk Irish person. So, you know, that's how we encounter horses.
1:49.4	But do we see them?
	...

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