Master Class on Augustine’s City of God
REGISTER HERE Open to current graduate students and faculty. Advanced undergraduates and others interested in participating should contact dstrobach@lumenchristi.org. This event is in-person only. All registrants will receive copies of the […]
Eros, Order, and the Human Person: Dostoevsky and Plato on the Soul
Perhaps the most fundamental themes in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov are the struggle to disclose the truth of human nature and the way in which social life must be rooted in the truth of what it is to be a person. In this master class, we will show that the members of the Karamazov family can be understood as incarnations of the various “parts” of the human soul. Thus, their family drama represents the struggle to unify the desires of the soul in pursuit of truth and the social consequences of succeeding or failing to achieve this unity. By structuring the novel around the mystery of the human person as fundamental for political life, Dostoevsky gives a Christian recapitulation of the deepest themes in Plato’s Gorgias, where Socrates and his triad of interlocutors similarly present the dimensions of human nature and show the individual and social drama inherent in the education of the soul’s eros. Further, by presenting the truth of the human person as the foundation of a healthy society, Dostoevsky anticipates one of the most important themes in the work of Pope St. John Paul II.
Applications Open for the 2025 Summer Seminars
In their seventeenth year, the Lumen Christi Institute Summer Seminars in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition introduce participants to central themes, figures, and texts from the Catholic tradition. Please see the Event Calendar […]
Symposium on Timothy Matovina’s new book, “Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church”
Cosponsored by The American Religious History Workshop and The Center for Latin American Studies Finely researched, engagingly written, and more comprehensive than any other book on the subject, Timothy Matovina’s Latino […]
Solidarity Forever: An Idea and its Roots in Catholic Social Thought
Before “solidarity” became a legal concept and later the name of the Polish labor movement, it developed as an economic, political, social, but most fundamentally a theological idea from which […]
Toward a Moral Economy: Policies and Values for the 21st Century
Keynote Address: Reinhard Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich Presentations: Roger Myerson, University of Chicago, Kevin M. Murphy, University of Chicago, and Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa This event opens the […]
“Religious Freedom in America Today”
As President Clinton observed, “religious freedom is . . . our first freedom.” It was central to the Founders’ vision for the American political community. They did not always agree about […]
“The Dialogue of Economics and Catholic Social Thought”
Cosponsored by the University of Chicago Ethics Club The presence of two Catholic candidates for vice-president have raised questions about Catholic social thought and American free market economics. In this symposium, […]
Pacem in terris After 50 Years
A Public Symposium in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s Encyclical on Establishing Universal Peace on Earth KEYNOTE: Roland Minnerath, Archbishop of Dijon RESPONDENTS: Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law […]
Toward A Moral Economy: Globalization and the Developing World
Part of the Lumen Christi Institute Program in Economics and Catholic Social Thought, a continuing exchange between research economists, bishops, and scholars, this symposium will address poverty and economic development; social, […]