United by Their Loves: Deciphering Augustine’s Understanding of a People
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This event is cosponsored by America Media. The president in his inaugural address quoted Augustine of Hippo’s definition of a people as “a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.” This surprising event offers us the occasion to consider Augustine’s definition and its implications for our understanding of life in society: what role do our loves play in fashioning us as people? Can disparate loves divide a people? What does Augustine think we should love in order to belong to the people who inhabit the City of God? Join us for a moderated conversation between Profs. Russell Hittinger, Michael…
René Girard, Conversion, and the Present Media Moment
Free and open to the public. This event was held online through Zoom (registration required) and live-streamed to YouTube. This event was co-sponsored by Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and America Media. While social media has become a source of meaning and identity formation for many, its dangers have become clear in recent years, from promoting disinformation to algorithm-aided polarization. Despite these dangers, can social media be a medium for the Gospel? Does a model for discipleship within social media exist? René Girard’s theory of mimesis or imitation provides a powerful diagnostic for analyzing aspects of human behavior and culture that contribute…
Master Class on “The Integralism of Jacques Maritain” Part I
REGISTER HERE THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT. Open to current graduate students and University of Chicago Undergraduates. Others who are interested in participating should contact us. Copies of The Primacy of the Spiritual: On the Things that are not Caesar’s (Cluny Media, 2020) will be provided for registrants. Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was perhaps the most influential Catholic social and political philosopher of the 20th century. He taught at Columbia and Princeton, and was a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he gave the Walgreen Lectures, later published as Man and the State (1951). Appointed the French Ambassador to the Holy See…
Conscience and Human Rights in Thomas Aquinas and Some Predecessors
Free and open to the public. Registration is required. Contact us with any questions. Note the time for this event has been changed from 4:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. In discussions of the history of the philosophy of human rights, typically a distinction is made between theories that understand rights as objective and those that understand them as subjective (or, to use a more contemporary term, more “personalistic”). This talk relates this issue to the history of reflection, especially by Christian thinkers leading up to the thirteenth century, regarding conscience. It argues ultimately that Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of conscience, influenced as…
A Life in Service of the Truth: The Legacy of Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ
Fr. Paul Mankowski (1953 – 2020) was a brilliant essayist, a singular wit, and a devoted son of the Church. Born in South Bend, Indiana, he put himself through the University of Chicago while working summers in a steel mill. Called to a vocation with the Society of Jesus, Fr. Paul entered the novitiate in 1976 before studying Classics at Oxford and Semitic languages at Harvard. Though lacking all instincts for self-promotion, Fr. Paul quickly gained a reputation for his erudition and his razor-sharp intellect. He suffered greatly for his loyalty to the Church before finding a home at the…
Jacques Maritain’s Integral Humanism
THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT. Open to current graduate students and University of Chicago Undergraduates. Others who are interested in participating should contact us. Copies of “Integral Humanism” from The Collected Works of Jacques Maritain XI (Notre Dame Press, 1996) will be provided for registrants. Integral Humanism (1936) is Maritain’s masterwork at mid-career. Having separated himself from the Catholic political integralism in France during the 1920s he needed to put forth his own position – his own integralism, in a manner of speaking. His thesis is that the options of political modernity are shaped by incomplete and reductive humanisms, which need the correction…
Fall Non-Credit Course: “The Living Jesus at the Intersection of History and Faith”
REGISTER HERE 6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject. Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean Jew crucified in a remote corner of the Roman Empire nearly 2,000 years ago, is considered one of the world’s greatest teachers and the founder of its oldest institution. More books and films have been produced about Jesus than any other historical person. This non-credit class will consider both what historical methods can ascertain about Jesus…
POSTPONED: Jacques Maritain’s “Man and the State”
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED. WE WILL ANNOUNCE THE NEW DATE IN THE COMING WEEKS. THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT. Open to current graduate students and University of Chicago Undergraduates. Others who are interested in participating should contact us. Copies of Man and the State (CUA Press, 1998) will be provided for registrants. Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was perhaps the most influential Catholic social and political philosopher of the 20th century. He taught at Columbia and Princeton, and was a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he gave the Walgreen Lectures, later published as Man and the State (1951). Appointed the French…
Conversation on “Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life”
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Undergraduate Program in Religious Studies at the University of Chicago. Copies of the book will be available for sale by the Seminary Co-op Bookstore at the event. This program will be held as a hybrid, in-person and online event. Join us for a conversation on Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton University Press, 2020) with author Zena Hitz. ABOUT THE BOOK In an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others? While…
Winter 2022 Undergraduate Reading Group: “Progress is Dead: Nietzsche’s Indictment of Modern Life in The Genealogy of Morals”
“We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and with good reason.” The modern world tells us—and we tell ourselves—that we are enlightened and free, but it isn’t true. Our claims to knowledge are just another moral prejudice; our ostensible freedom is disguised slavery. So contends Friedrich Nietzsche in his On the Genealogy of Morality, where he punctures the self-satisfaction of socialists, democrats, reformers, the bourgeoisie, philosophers, scientists, and anyone else who claims to have it all figured out. This three-week reading group will discuss the three treatises of the Genealogy and debate the following claims: February 10 Is Democracy Slavery? (First Treatise, “ ‘Good and Evil,’ ‘Good…