Philosophy and Martyrdom: Tertullian and Justin Martyr
Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Philosophy of Religions Club During the first two centuries of Christianity believers were led to confess their faith before a pagan world and endure persecution and trial, often leading to martyrdom. One might expect from them the posture and tactics of an irrational and “prophetic” theology. But in fact they chose to make arguments for the consistency and rationality of faith under the literary genre of the apology. They even claimed that this rational confession of faith deserves the title of philosophy. This paradox sheds light on our contemporary situation.
“The Careful Rationality of Monotheism: Thomas Aquinas on Analogical Knowledge of God”
Co-sponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop How can philosophers speak about God in a reasonable fashion? Does speech about God exceed the capacities of human reason? In responding to these questions, Thomas Aquinas develops a path between the extremes of apophaticism (rejecting the applicability of human language to God) and rationalistic optimism. This lecture will argue for the validity of Thomist doctrine of divine naming and its relevance to contemporary debates in analytic theism and to Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology (the theology of being).
The Spiritual Nature of Man
“The Spiritual Nature of Man” Anselm Muller, University of Trier Cosponsored by the Department of Philosophy Are human beings essentially spiritual creatures or can human life be explained entirely by material principles? The great twentieth century philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe, suggests that we are essentially spiritual beings because we are naturally and consciously oriented beyond our material life toward transcendent norms of truth and goodness. This is the ground of our dignity and value over other, non-spiritual animals.
Christianity, The Unity of Knowledge, and the Secularized Academy
The pursuit and transmission of knowledge in the contemporary academy is highly specialized, secular, and regarded as separable from the social circumstances and beliefs of scientists, scholars, and students. This seminar analyzed the historical and intellectual reasons for the secularization and specialized fragmentation of knowledge characteristic of the contemporary academy. Through reading and discussion of scholarship pertaining to the historical processes through which knowledge was secularized, participants explored ways in which knowledge has been alternatively understood within a unifying philosophical and theological framework, and how such a framework might remain intellectually viable today. In addition to primary sources, this seminar…
The Human Person, Economics & Catholic Social Thought
“The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person!” – Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium The human person is a contested terrain. Within the fields of Economics and Catholic Social Thought, each maintain distinct conceptions of and emphases on the human person that impact their respective diagnoses of contemporary crises and proposed solutions. Drawing together economists, bishops and scholars, this symposium will explore fundamental convergences and divergences in the conception of the human person in Economics and Catholic Social Thought. This program is part…
Symposium on The Sacredness of the Person
Michael Geyer (University of Chicago), Moderator Hans Joas (University of Chicago) John D. Kelly (University of Chicago) Ben Laurence (University of Chicago) William Schweiker (University of Chicago) cosponsored by the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago REGISTER HERE This symposium will discuss The Sacredness of the Person, a recent book by Professor Hans Joas. What are the origins of the idea of human rights and universal human dignity? How can we most fully understand—and realize—these rights going into the future? In The Sacredness of the Person, internationally renowned sociologist and social theorist Hans Joas tells a story that differs from conventional narratives…
Aquinas’ Third Way of Proving a God: Logic or Love?
Cosponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop Thomas Aquinas’ famous five ways of proving the existence of a God continue to intrigue and perplex his readers. The most troublesome is perhaps the third—the one based on the possible and the necessary—to which all sorts of objections can be heard: logical, scientific, theological, phenomenological, even Thomistic. Contrary to the usual assumption, however, the kind of possibility and necessity that the third way regards does not seem to be the logical kind. In a sense, it has more to do with love than with logic. This reading puts the problems that the third way faces, and also the…
Is the Human Mind Reducible to Physics?
a luncheon discussion with Stephen M. Barr (University of Delaware) REGISTER HERE This event is open to University of Chicago students. Lunch will be served. Others interested in attending, please contactinfo@lumenchrisit.org. Materialism or “physicalism” holds that all things, including human beings, are completely explicable in physical terms. While ancient and medieval thinkers expressed this view, it gained a new power with the success of Newtonian physics, whose laws were universal and deterministic, giving rise to the belief that the entire physical universe is a closed system of cause and effect. Does this reduction of human beings to purely physical factors…
Sacred Violence: The Legacy of René Girard
A panel discussion with William Cavanaugh (DePaul University), Jean-Luc Marion (University of Chicago), and James B. Murphy (Dartmouth College) at the University of Chicago on April 7, 2016. René Girard (1923-2015) has been described as the Darwin of the human sciences for his theories of the origin of violence and religion and the imitative character of human behavior (mimesis). His books, among them Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, span the fields of Literary Criticism, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, History, Biblical Hermeneutics and Theology. While his theories have attracted many devoted disciples, Girard has…
Symposium on Heidegger’s Confessions
Cosponsored by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop and the Theology & Religious Ethics Workshop Although Martin Heidegger is nearly as notorious as Friedrich Nietzsche for embracing the death of God, the philosopher himself acknowledged that Christianity accompanied him at every stage of his career. In Heidegger’s Confessions, Ryan Coyne isolates a crucially important player in this story: Saint Augustine. Uncovering the significance of Saint Augustine in Heidegger’s philosophy, he details the complex and conflicted ways in which Heidegger paradoxically sought to define himself against the Christian tradition while at the same time making use of its resources.