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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
June 2011: Professor Mark Murphy (Georgetown University) led a seminar on “Aquinas and Contemporary Ethical Theory” in Chicago, 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.
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 […]
