Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages: Umberto Eco Graduate Reading Group
REGISTER HERE Open to current graduate students at the University of Chicago. Participants can come to whichever sessions they choose. Others interested in participating should contact Aidan Valente at valenteaidan@uchicago.edu. Books and drinks […]
Reason & Regensburg: Pope Benedict and the Dialogue of Cultures
To bridge the cultural rift between Islam and the West, there is an urgent need to reestablish the mutually reinforcing dialogue between faith and reason in the West, and to […]
Thomas Aquinas, Scientist: How Might He Approach 21st Century Biotechnology
Despite flaws in his biology, Aquinas’ writings offer us guidance in our approach to 21st century biotechnology. Aquinas’ notion of a Just War provides us with a way for thinking […]
Sketch of a Phenomenological Concept of Sacrifice
In this lecture, Jean-Luc Marion advances a phenomenological notion of sacrifice that is distinct from the notion of sacrifice typically discussed in Sociology or even Religious Studies. He argues that […]
Faith, Reason and the Eucharist
Between doubts about “natural theology” and post-modern polemics against “modernity”, an older view that the existence of God can be known “by the natural light of reason” gets little hearing. […]
From Curiosity to Studiousness: Catechizing the Appetite for Knowledge
It’s a good thing, almost everyone would say, to want to know things; that view is certainly bone-deep in our universities and colleges, as well as in the church. But […]
Representation vs. Direct Realism in Modern Philosophy
Gyula Klima (Fordham University)
Spiritual Exercises and the Contemporary Academy
The work of Pierre Hadot and, in his later years, Michel Foucault on the ancient pagan and Christian practices of askesis, or “spiritual exercise,” has proven to be of interest […]
“Knowledge, Metaphysics, and the Information Explosion”
Benedict Ashley, OP (Aquinas Institute of Theology, Emeritus) Herman Sinaiko (University of Chicago, Emeritus) To some, in the information age, we seem to know more things, to communicate more effectively, […]
“Eriugena: The Medieval Irish Genius Between Augustine and Aquinas”
The Carolingian thinker Johannes Scottus Eriugena (810-877CE) is the author of numerous philosophical and theological works. Most famous among them is the Periphyseon or On Natures (864-866CE), a metaphysical dialogue drawing on the Greek and Latin […]