Summer Seminars
St. Thomas Aquinas on Law
University of California, Berkeley S Hall Rd. Berkeley, CA 94720, Berkeley, CANo description available
No description available
APPLY HERE Now in its third consecutive year, this seminar is an intensive five-day course for graduate students on the thought of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman. It will examine Newman’s achievement as theologian, philosopher, educator, preacher, and writer. Remarkably, in each of these areas Newman produced works that have come to be recognized as classics: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, The Idea of a University, The Parochial and Plain Sermons, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This seminar will approach Newman’s thought through a critical engagement with these texts. Format: There will be two 2-hour sessions...
The pursuit and transmission of knowledge in the contemporary academy is highly specialized, secular, and regarded as separable from the social circumstances and beliefs of scientists, scholars, and students. This seminar analyzed the historical and intellectual reasons for the secularization and specialized fragmentation of knowledge characteristic of the contemporary academy. Through reading and discussion of scholarship pertaining to the historical processes through which knowledge was secularized, participants explored ways in which knowledge has been alternatively understood within a unifying philosophical and theological framework, and how such a framework might remain intellectually viable today. In addition to primary sources, this seminar...
In this seminar, students will read, analyze, and discern continuities and discontinuities in Catholic Social Thought from the late 19th century to the present. Lectures, seminar reports, and discussion will focus on original sources (encyclicals and other magisterial documents), beginning with Rerum novarum (1892) and concluding with Caritas in veritate (2009). This intensive course is multi-disciplinary, since this tradition of social thought overlaps several disciplines in the contemporary university including political science, political philosophy, law, economics, theology, and history. This will be the third time Prof. Hittinger has led this seminar. Format: There will be two 2 ½ hour sessions each day. Professor Hittinger will...
APPLY HERE This seminar will be a five-day, intensive discussion of St Thomas Aquinas’ philosophical account of liberum arbitrium and the psychological and metaphysical principles underlying it. The sessions will focus on passages from the Summa theologiae (including ST, I, 19, 59-60, 82-83; ST, I-II, 6, 9, 10, 13) and will refer to other works of Aquinas (such as the De Malo and the Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics) and to pertinent texts from other philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Anscombe. Controversies in the interpretation of St Thomas’s thought will be considered, especially regarding his understanding of the relation between intellect and will, and particular attention will...
APPLY HERE Now in its third consecutive year, this seminar is an intensive five-day course for graduate students on the thought of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman. It will examine Newman’s achievement as theologian, philosopher, educator, preacher, and writer. Remarkably, in each of these areas Newman produced works that have come to be recognized as classics: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, The Idea of a University, The Parochial and Plain Sermons, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This seminar will approach Newman’s thought through a critical engagement with these texts. Format: There will be two 2-hour sessions...
APPLICATION DEADLINE IS NOW FEBRUARY 15 APPLY HERE This seminar is an intensive five-day course in how to read, analyze, and discern the many themes in Augustine’s most ambitious and sprawling work. The City of God tells the history of two societies, and their respective origins, progress, and appointed ends. The story is engaged first from the evidence of profane history (I-XI) and then from the evidence of revelation (XII-XXII). In this seminar, participants will discuss how Augustine reckons with the crisis of the ancient and the human city, and whether it is possible to reconcile truth and authority across the competing domains...
This seminar will be a five-day, intensive discussion of St Thomas Aquinas’s account of the nature of the soul, with particular attention paid to the metaphysical principles on which it rests. The sessions will center on Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 75-77, concerning the soul in itself, its essential relation to the body, and its role as the primary principle of vital activity. Participants will also discuss relevant passages from other works of St. Thomas, as well as his historical influences (such as Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine) and some contemporary literature on the topic. Finally, the seminar will take up related issues,...
APPLY HERE Now in its third consecutive year, this seminar is an intensive five-day course for graduate students on the thought of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman. It will examine Newman’s achievement as theologian, philosopher, educator, preacher, and writer. Remarkably, in each of these areas Newman produced works that have come to be recognized as classics: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, The Idea of a University, The Parochial and Plain Sermons, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This seminar will approach Newman’s thought through a critical engagement with these texts. Format: There will be two 2-hour sessions...
In this seminar, students will read, analyze, and discern continuities and discontinuities in Catholic Social Thought from the late 19th century to the present. Lectures, seminar reports, and discussion will focus on original sources (encyclicals and other magisterial documents), beginning with Rerum novarum (1892) and concluding with Caritas in veritate (2009). This intensive course is multi-disciplinary, since this tradition of social thought overlaps several disciplines in the contemporary university including political science, political philosophy, law, economics, theology, and history. This will be the third time Prof. Hittinger has led this seminar. Format: There will be two 2 ½ hour sessions each day. Professor Hittinger will...
This intensive seminar will discuss St. Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways of proving the existence of a God and the conception that he thinks they yield: that of a God who is at once utterly simple and utterly perfect, and therefore utterly beyond our comprehension. The sessions will center on Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 2-4—especially, of course, q. 2, a. 3, which contains the Five Ways themselves—and on selected texts from qq. 12 & 13. Participants will also discuss relevant passages from other works of St. Thomas, as well as his historical influences and some related contemporary issues.
Now in its fourth consecutive year, this intensive seminar will examine Newman’s achievements as theologian, philosopher, educator, preacher, and writer. Remarkably, in each of these areas Newman produced works that have come to be recognized as classics: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, The Idea of a University, The Parochial and Plain Sermons, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This seminar will approach Newman’s thought through a critical engagement with these texts.
