Aristotle’s Great-Souled Man in Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Saint Augustine
This event was co-sponsored by the Undergraduate Program in Religious Studies at the University of Chicago. Augustine famous referred to the classical virtues as “splendid vices”. Although he stood in the tradition that valued virtue, he was concerned that the pursuit of greatness through the life of virtue – a theme dating back to Aristotle’s ideal of the Great-Souled Man – could actually breed a sense of self-righteousness. Yet there is much to the Aristotelian ideal. The pursuit of greatness in the service of God seems preferable to complacent mediocrity that sadly characterizes so much of our life. This lecture,…
Retribution and St. Thomas Aquinas’s Teaching on Justice
Open to current students and faculty. This event is co-sponsored by the St. Thomas More Society at the University of Chicago Law School. Others interested in participating should contact info@lumenchristi.org. This event is in-person only. All registrants will receive pdfs of the selected readings, which should be read in advance of the class. An optional wine and cheese reception will follow. Thomas Aquinas assigns two functions to punishment, retributive and medicinal. He sees the retributive function as the primary one, pertaining to the very idea of punishment, and it will be the focus of this master class. The aim will…
Romano Guardini on Technology and the Liturgy
This lecture was cosponsored by the University of Chicago Divinity School and the In Lumine Network. It was made possible through the support of ‘In Lumine: Supporting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide’ (Grant #62372) from the John Templeton Foundation. Romano Guardini penned his Letters from Lake Como between 1923-1925 in order to think about the new technocratic relationship between nature and culture that was emerging in post-war and post-Enlightenment Europe. Guardini’s reflections on the technocratic paradigm are critical for understanding the relationship of the human person, the dynamics of culture, and our hyperdigitized world today. Guardini’s newly translated Liturgy and…
Letters from Lake Como and Other Approaches: Guardini and Heidegger on Technology
REGISTER HERE Open to current graduate students and faculty. Advanced undergraduates and others interested in participating should contact dstrobach@lumenchristi.org. All registrants will receive a copy of the required reading, which should be read in advance of the class. An optional wine and cheese reception will follow. This master class is made possible through the support of ‘In Lumine: Supporting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide’ (Grant #62372) from the John Templeton Foundation. This masterclass will cover Romano Guardini’s Letters from Lake Como, written between 1923-1925, and will focus on the relationship between technology, human nature, and culture. It will take a special…
Grief, Suffering, and “The Art of Dying” in a Plague: Cyprian’s De Mortalitate
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 selected readings, which should be read in advance of the class. Reception will follow. This event is made possible through the support of ‘In Lumine: Supporting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide’ (Grant #62372) from the John Templeton Foundation. The ancient Stoics rejected grief as a passion. Was it inhuman to grieve? Or was it inhuman to suppress this natural human affect? What about longing for lost loved ones or the fear of death? …
Dante and a Poet’s Journey in Hope
REGISTER HERE This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact dstrobach@lumenchristi.org. A wine and cheese reception will follow. This event is cosponsored by the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Medieval Studies Workshop. Often praised for its evocative treatment of heaven and hell, Dante’s Commedia is a significant work of theology. Denys Turner will explain how Dante accomplishes by means of poetry what the formal theological treatises of the Middle Ages demonstrate through prosaic inference and proof. Poetry, Turner argues, is the most natural language to articulate…
Poetry Being the Body: Theology in Dante
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 pdfs of the selected readings, which should be read in advance of the class. An optional wine and cheese reception will follow. The poet plays a crucial role in the development of a language of the “mystical” that paradoxically gives voice to the insufficiency of human speech in the face of the reality of the divine. The revelation of this insufficiency speaks effectively to theology’s positive, affirming, role. Poetry is a pre-theological anticipation…
Can We Be Good On Our Own? Ancient Pagans and Modern Scientists on Thomistic Moral Virtue
Open to students and faculty. For more information, contact dstrobach@lumenchristi.org. This event is cosponsored by the University of Notre Dame Press and made possible through the support of ‘In Lumine: Supporting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide’ (Grant #62372) from the John Templeton Foundation. Thomas Aquinas, like a good Aristotelian, holds that the moral virtues can be cultivated in human beings by habitual moral action. And like a good Christian, he also holds that God can gift (or ‘infuse’) the moral virtues into a human being. Can humans become good on their own? Or do they require external assistance? …
An Inquiry into the Value of Work: A Discussion of Matt Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft
REGISTER HERE 5:30 Cocktail and Hors d’Oeuvres | 6:30 Opening Remarks | 6:45 Dialogue and Q&A | 7:30 End Through the generosity of LCI’s donors, undergraduate and graduate students are able to attend this event for free. Interested students should email Marial Corona at mcorona@lumenchristi.org to register. This event is cosponsored at The Point Magazine. Published in 2009, Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft became an unexpected best-seller. Written by a University of Chicago PhD and motorcycle mechanic, the book explored the value of craftsmanship and manual work in a world increasingly dominated by technology and abstract thinking. Drawing on his own experiences as…
The Boldness of Belief and Timidity of Technology: A Symposium on Gratitude, Creation, and the Technological Mindset
REGISTER HERE FOR ZOOM LIVESTREAM REGISTER HERE FOR IN-PERSON Open to students and faculty. For more information, contact dstrobach@lumenchristi.org. This event is cosponsored and supported by the University of Chicago John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought. It is also cosponsored by The Point Magazine. This event is made possible through the support of ‘In Lumine: Supporting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide’ (Grant #62372) from the John Templeton Foundation. In his Introduction to Christianity, Joseph Ratzinger saw that at the root of the “technological mindset” was an anxiety about how man can come to know the world. Ratzinger contrasted…