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REGISTER HERE Open to current students and faculty. Copies of Philosophy of Democratic Government (University of Notre Dame Press, 1993) will be provided for registrants. The Charles R. Walgreen Foundation for the Study of American Institutions was established in June 1937 to foster greater appreciation of American life and values among University of Chicago students.  An important work of the Foundation was the Walgreen Lectures.  After the Second World War these lectures were published with a Foreward from the Foundation. Twice during the first half of the twentieth-century, totalitarian systems have challenged the concept of democracy…. Democracy has been on...

What are the liberal arts? Is there more than one tradition of humanistic liberal learning, and what's the connection between them the UChicago core curriculum? Professor Jared Ortiz (an undergrad alum of UChicago) hosted a lunchtime conversation about the tradition of liberal education, its reception in Catholic thought, and the question of what an education is for. Part I of the Winter 2020 Great Books and the Christian Tradition seminar series. --- Great Books and the Christian Tradition From the School of Alexandria and the reading of Scripture in the Monasteries, through the re-formulation of the Liberal Arts in the...

REGISTER HERE What is achievement? What is success?  Does the human desire for achievement or success have a natural end, or is it restless and never-satisfied?  In other words, what do we understand human fulfillment to be, and how does our university education contribute to that fulfillment? In this lunch time discussion, Elizabeth Corey, professor of political philosophy and director of the Honors Program at Baylor University, will suggest two ways of being human in the world: the culture of achievement and the culture of love.  Guided by insights drawn from sources as wide as the Odyssey, the Nichomachean Ethics, Dorothy Sayers, and...

What could be wrong with curiosity? "Long live curiosity," proclaims the Museum of Science and Industry, and modernity unanimously praises it as the beginning of intellectual discovery. But, surprisingly, Augustine of Hippo criticizes “curiositas” in his Confessions. Is Augustine’s notion out-moded? Is the pursuit of knowledge adverse to Christian faith? Or could Augustine’s concern about the proper use and the abuse of intellectual pursuits inform ideas of liberal education? Over dinner on Saturday evening, E. John Ellison (University of Chicago) will lead a discussion on the modern notion of curiosity and Augustine’s critique on curiositas especially in Confessions, Book 10.35. Open to undergraduate students. No prior reading required. Dinner will...