“Right Reason”
Co-sponsored by the Ancient Philosophy Workshop and the Practical Philosophy Workshop
“Phenomenology and Naturalism: Attitude and Objectivity”
Edmund Husserl was a philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the philosophical school of phenomenology. Professor Moran will argue that Husserl was correct to see naturalism as the dominant tendency of twentieth-century science and philosophy. Naturalism can be understood in many different senses, but it is typically defined by its commitment to science as the arbiter of what is objective. Husserl took naturalism to be self-refuting. Moran will discuss Husserl’s arguments, and in particular, the manner in which Husserl redefines ‘objectivity’ within his transcendental idealism, which is his alternative to naturalism. Moran’s lecture will be followed by commentary from Professors Jean-Luc…
“Politics as Vocation in Cicero and Burke”
Mary Ann Glendon A.B., J.D., M.C.L., University of Chicago Professor of Law, Harvard University Law School, President, The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences On the occasion of the publication of her book The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt Co-sponsored by the Committee on Social Thought and the University of Chicago Law School About the Book: As Aristotle noted long ago, two very different and sometimes incompatible ways of life; the political and the philosophical exert a powerful pull on the ambitious and talented members of any society. Mary Ann Glendon, who…
“Platonism and Christianity”
“The Identity of Knower and Known in Aquinas”
Lecture Abstract: The claim that knowledge involves an identity of knower and known has its historical roots among the Greeks. This lecture explores this claim as one finds it in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Professor O’Callaghan will explore these issues in critical dialogue with two different papers, one by Wilfrid Sellars titled “Being and Being Known” and the other by John McDowell titled “Sellars’s Thomism.”
“The Grand Design: An Augustinian Reply to Stephen Hawking”
Cosponsored by The Theology Workshop Stephen Hawking has recently declared that philosophy is dead, and that science is the only reasonable method for securing knowledge. In response, Professor Cavadini will argue that philosophy is rooted in man’s wonder about the universe, and that scientific inquiry is only one aspect of true wisdom and should not be privileged over others.
Irony and Humanity: A Dialogue between Jonathan Lear and Alasdair MacIntyre
Presented by the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy. Co-sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute. In his most recent book, A Case for Irony, Jonathan Lear argues that becoming a human being is a difficult task, and that developing a capacity for irony is essential to doing it well. He claims that ironic experience is a form of truthfulness that is constitutive of human flourishing, such that a capacity for irony is a kind of virtue or human excellence. Alasdair MacIntyre will join Lear in a conversation about his book.
“Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil”
Many people find that they cannot reconcile belief in the existence of God with the reality of evil; for if an all powerful and perfectly good God exists, then why is there so much suffering and injustice? Brian Davies, in his most recent book, Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil, argues that Aquinas gives us the proper theoretical framework for dealing with these tensions.
“A Critical Look at Ayn Rand”
The continuing success of the books of Ayn Rand, even among Catholics, reveals the influence of her thought in debates on the role of the individual, community, market, and state in modern societies. At the same time, Rand’s success may have obscured fundamental flaws in her thought. A closer look at her philosophical, moral, political, and economic positions brings into question both the legitimacy of her success as well as the credulity of her disciples and the American public. Is it possible for anyone to be a legitimate philosopher in an age of clever marketing and mass consumption?
“Emotion and Virtue in Thomas Aquinas”
Co-sponsored by the Templeton Foundation and The Philosophy Department Abstract: For Aquinas, ethics is nothing other than the study of human psychology insofar as it flourishes or fails to flourish. Consequently, his thought on emotion is crucial to his account of virtue. This lecture will discuss Aquinas’s theory of the emotions and its implications for his virtue theory.