On the Eternity of the World: Aristotle, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Kant
This master class is open to current graduate students and uper-level University of Chicago undergraduates. It will take place online via Zoom, in four sessions, over two days. Toward the end of his Physics, Aristotle argued that the motion in the physical world, and with it the world itself, never began and will never cease. Medieval Christian thinkers agreed that this position conflicted with revelation, but they assessed it in a wide variety of ways. In modernity, Kant used the problem of the world’s duration as evidence of the boundaries of mere reason. In this master class, we will go through…
Reason and Beauty in Cambridge Platonism
A webinar lecture with Douglas Hedley (University of Cambridge). Part of our summer webinar series on “Reason and Beauty in Renaissance Christian Thought and Culture,” presented in collaboration with the American Cusanus Society The Cambridge Platonists are the first modern Platonists. They are a group of English philosophers around the University of Cambridge in the seventeenth-century, in the context of reformed theology and the English Civil War. Yet while accepting the New Science of Copernicus and Galileo, they offer a fierce protest against mechanism and naturalism. Their notion of aesthetics and beauty–as historian Ernst Cassirer correctly saw–was one of the sources of…
Richard Hooker’s Sapiential Theology: Reformed Platonism?
An evening webinar lecture with Torrance Kirby (McGill University). Part of our summer webinar series on “Reason and Beauty in Renaissance Christian Thought and Culture,” presented in collaboration with the American Cusanus Society Richard Hooker (1554-1600) was a preeminent theologian and philosopher of the Elizabethan Church. His seminal book, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593), set out a path for Anglican theology that was distinct from both Puritan and Roman Catholic thought. In Book I, Hooker identifies Law with Holy Wisdom and his treatment echoes the sapiential books of Scripture, viz. Proverbs, Job, and the Wisdom of Solomon. Hooker also…
Thinking Inside and Outside the University: Zena Hitz on the Inner Life
Free and open to the public. This event will be held online through Zoom (registration required) and YouTube live-stream. This event is presented by the Lumen Christi Institute Forum on the Church in Higher Education as part of its Liberal Arts Colloquium. This event is cosponsored by The Point magazine, the Saint Benedict Institute, Calvert House Catholic Center, Princeton University Press, and the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage. In a world where efficiency and utility are the standards by which we measure success, how do we appreciate what resists quantification? And at a moment of institutional change and instability for higher education, what…
Master Class on Yves Simon on Natural Law
A FOLLOW UP MASTER CLASS ON PART 2 OF THE BOOK WILL BE HELD ON JANUARY 15. Open to current graduate students. It will take place online on Zoom. Copies of the readings will be provided. Others interested in participating should contact us. Join us for a master class on Yves Simon’s The Tradition of Natural Law: A Philosopher’s Reflections (Fordham University Press, 1999). You can watch Professor Hittinger’s lecture on Part 1 of the book here. ABOUT THE BOOK The tradition of natural law is one of the foundations of Western civilization. At its heart is the conviction that there is an…
A Catholic Life in the Secular University: A Conversation with George Dennis O’Brien
Cosponsored by Commonweal Magazine, and the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University. This event is presented by the Lumen Christi Institute Forum on the Church in Higher Education as part of its Liberal Arts Colloquium. John F. Kennedy once quipped that a Catholic would be president of the United States before a Catholic would be president of Harvard. As the Catholic president of two secular universities, Dennis O’Brien was a trailblazer. In this interview, O’Brien discusses his long career in higher education as a Catholic, a philosopher, and an administrator, with reflections on the past, present, and future of American higher education….
Master Class on Yves Simon on Natural Law, Part 2
Open to current graduate students. It will take place online on Zoom. Copies of the readings will be provided. Others interested in participating should contact us. Join us for a master class on part II of Yves Simon’s The Tradition of Natural Law: A Philosopher’s Reflections (Fordham University Press, 1999). ABOUT THE BOOK The tradition of natural law is one of the foundations of Western civilization. At its heart is the conviction that there is an objective and universal justice which transcends humanity’s particular expressions of justice. It asserts that there are certain ways of behaving which are appropriate to humanity simply by virtue…
Humanism as an Educational Ideal
The ideal of educating the total human person – the project that took on the name “humanism” – became a widespread norm for education in the Christian world of early modern Europe, whence it spread to North and South America. This humanist ideal has competed for influence with other educational ideals, most especially with those pursued by universities. Fr. John O’Malley examines the sources of the humanistic style of learning, the place of that style in Catholic culture, and, more broadly, in the world in which we live. He examines the courses of study that came to characterize it, how humanism…
Fragile Democracy: Technocratic Takeover and Popular Renewal
This event is co-presented with the Nova Forum and co-sponsored by America Media, the Collegium Institute, the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, and the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies. We are experiencing a crisis of democracy more powerful than anything seen in a generation: inequality continues at a galloping pace; policing is increasingly racialized and militarized; political decision-making appears remote and divorced from the lives of ordinary people. This panel discussion—including renowned philosopher Charles Taylor–will consider sources and solutions to the present crisis of democracy by drawing on two recent books: Reconstructing Democracy by Charles Taylor, Patrizia Nanz, and Madeleine Beaubien…
Themes in Catholic Social Thought: Three Necessary Societies
Open to current graduate students. This master class will take place online on Zoom. Copies of the readings will be provided. Others interested in participating should contact us. The modern social magisterium, which emerged during the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), held that the dignity of human society exemplified in three necessary societies. By nature or grace, human beings are domestic (marriage-family), political, and ecclesial animals. Each has an origin in some kind of necessity, but the necessities are paths to human excellence and happiness. In the first master class we will consider the political and documentary history of the teachings…