University of Chicago

Name: Spiritual Exercises and the Contemporary Academy
Start: 2010-10-13T16:30:00-05:00
End: 2010-10-13T16:30:00-05:00
Location: University of Chicago

5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637
Hyde Park, IL Get Directions

Events at this venue

January 2016
January 28th, 2016 @ 8:00 pm

Aquinas: Poet and Contemplative

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

Cosponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop and the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop “The well-known is what we have yet to learn.” T.S. Eliot What do we know of the prayer-life of St Thomas Aquinas? This lecture will be directly concerned with this question, and the answer may well come as a surprise to many people. Aquinas is still today almost exclusively regarded as an outstanding scholastic philosopher and theologian. But what is little known is that he was also a master of the spiritual life and a very considerable poet, perhaps even the greatest Latin poet of the Middle...
January 14th, 2016 @ 5:30 pm

Love Your Enemies: Retribution and Forgiveness

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

Regina M. Schwartz (Northwestern University) cosponsored by the Department of English The law presumes not only the right but the duty to punish: it does not ask whether it should punish, but how much, who, when, and how. In contrast, Christianity offers a different response to wrongdoing: Jesus engaged in a polemical attack on “the reciprocity code,” the assumption that good should be reciprocated with good and evil with evil. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28). How are we to begin to comprehend...
May 2015
May 6th, 2015 @ 4:30 pm

On a Possible Epistemology of Revelation

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

Jean-Luc Marion (University of Chicago) cosponsored by the Philosophy Department How is it possible to admit a rational truth that at the same moment could not be achieved by mere rationality? This implies a revision of the definition of knowing, and of the relation between will and understanding. Saint Augustine and Pascal – with some others – may give a clue.
April 2015
April 15th, 2015 @ 4:30 pm

The Emergence of the Church’s Culture of Biblical Interpretation and Theology: Rhetoric, Philology, and Gnosticism in the 2nd Century

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

Lewis Ayres (University of Durham) To understand the exegetical culture that nurtured and formed classical Patristic exegesis, we must attend to some understudied features of the generation of Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria. This generation, in response to the exegetical cultures of ‘Gnostic’ thinkers, developed the exegetical practice that became fundamental for all later Christian doctrinal disputes and for Christian speculative thought. Bringing this historical moment into clearer focus helps us think about the character of Christian thought today.
April 9th, 2015 @ 7:00 pm

Science and Religion: The Myth of Conflict

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

In many ways, the supposed conflict between science and religion is really a conflict between “scientific materialism” and religion. The lecture will review the story of the relation between Christianity and science, discuss several discoveries of the twentieth century (primarily in physics), and argue that these are more consonant with the traditional Judeo-Christian view of the cosmos and of human beings than with scientific materialism.
May 2014
May 8th, 2014 @ 4:30 pm

David Dancing Before the Ark: The Liturgical Theology Implicit in 2 Samuel 6

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

Fr. Robert Barron (Rector of Mundelein Seminary/University of Saint Mary of the Lake; founder of Word on Fire) David danced before the Ark as an image of humanity dancing with the Lord, recovering the effortless harmony of Eden. In this lecture, Robert Barron will explore the role of King David as a new Adam and cite the solemn protection God extends to the Ark of the Covenant as an example of the importance of proper worship. Throughout the Scriptures, God attempts to “Eden-ize” man — that is, to return him to harmony with Himself, his fellow men and women, and...
August 2013
August 31st, 2013 @ 4:30 pm

The Divine is Everywhere

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

Read the Chicago Maroon article about Dana Gioia’s visit to the University of Chicago HERE. Dana Gioia—award-winning poet (American Book Award, 2002; Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal Recipient, 2010) and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts—takes the faith seriously. During his career as a businessman and later when living in Washington D.C., he drew strength from rereading Augustine’s City of God, helping him resist the lust for wealth, power, and status that tempts many who find themselves in corporate America and the nation’s capital. Gioia eschews an understanding of the faith that is glib and glossy, that doesn’t explore the...
July 2013
July 22nd, 2013 @ 10:00 am - July 26th, 2013 @ 7:00 pm

Christianity, The Unity of Knowledge, and the Secularized Academy

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

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...
Seminar

July 21st, 2013 @ 11:00 pm - July 25th, 2013 @ 11:00 pm

Christianity, The Unity of Knowledge, and the Secularized Academy

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

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...
August 2011
Seminar

August 6th, 2011 @ 11:00 pm - August 11th, 2011 @ 11:00 pm

Aquinas and Contemporary Ethical Theory

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

June 2011: Professor Mark Murphy (Georgetown University) led a seminar on “Aquinas and Contemporary Ethical Theory” in Chicago, IL.
October 2010
October 19th, 2010 @ 5:00 pm

How the University of Chicago Opened My American Mind

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

Fr. Benedict Ashley’s life at the University of Chicago in the 1930’s included Trotskyite activism and participation in the first Great Books Seminar led by President Robert Maynard Hutchins. His lecture will consider liberal education in light of this history and the life of scholarship and inquiry it inspired.
October 13th, 2010 @ 4:30 pm

Spiritual Exercises and the Contemporary Academy

University of Chicago 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL

The work of Pierre Hadot and, in his later years, Michel Foucault on the ancient pagan and Christian practices of askesis, or “spiritual exercise,” has proven to be of interest not only to scholars of the late classical and early Christian era, but to a much broader range of humanists working across a variety of disciplines. One reason for this interest is the possibility that religious and non-religious contemporary academics might be able to incorporate the techniques and aims of spiritual exercise into their own scholarly work, thus imbuing their academic teaching and writing with an ethical, if not religious,...