The Thomistic Institute

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St. Thomas Aquinas' Pursuit of Wisdom and Friendship with God | Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P. Jan 28, 2022

Show notes

This homily by Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P. was given on Thursday, Jan. 27 in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for the Catholic University of America's annual University Mass in honor of the school's patron, St. Thomas Aquinas. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., is the Director of the Thomistic Institute and an Assistant Professor in systematic theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.L. from the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2001 and was ordained a priest in 2007. He practiced law for several years as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice before becoming a Dominican.

How to Die Well | Dr. Farr Curlin Jan 25, 2022

Show notes

This lecture was given on November 2, 2021 at Yale University. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Farr Curlin is the Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities and Co-Director of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative (TMC) at Duke University. Dr. Curlin’s ethics scholarship takes up moral questions that are raised by religion-associated differences in physicians’ practices. He is an active palliative medicine physician and holds appointments in both the School of Medicine and the Divinity School, where he is working with colleagues to develop a new interdisciplinary community of scholarship and training focused on the intersection of theology, medicine, and culture.

The Human Soul and Neuroscience: Is Belief in the Soul Obsolete? | Prof. Marie George Jan 24, 2022

Show notes

This lecture was given at University of Alabama, Birmingham on November 1, 2021. For more events and info visit thomisticinstitute.org/events-1. Marie George has been a member of the Philosophy Department since 1988. Professor George is an Aristotelian-Thomist whose interests lie primarily in the areas of philosophy of nature and philosophy of science. She has received several awards from the John Templeton foundation for her work in science and religion, and in 2007 she received a grant from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) for an interdisciplinary project entitled: “The Evolution of Sympathy and Morality.” Professor George has authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles and two books: Christianity and Extraterrestrials? A Catholic Perspective (2005) and Stewardship of Creation (2009). She is currently working on Aquinas’s “Fifth Way,” and also on a variety of questions concerning living things (self-motion, consciousness, evolution, etc.). Professor George is a member of ten philosophical societies, including the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, and more.

The Intellectual Life of The Blessed Virgin Mary | Dr. Zena Hitz Jan 20, 2022

Show notes

This lecture was given at University of California, Berkeley on November 16, 2021. For more events and info visit thomisticinstitute.org/events-1. Zena Hitz is a Tutor at St. John's College where she teaches across the liberal arts. She is interested in defending intellectual activity for its own sake, as against its use for economic or political goals. Her forthcoming book, Intellectual Life, is rooted in essays that have appeared in First Things, Modern Age, and The Washington Post. Her scholarly work has focused on the political thought of Plato and Aristotle, especially the question of how law cultivates or fails to cultivate human excellence. She received an MPhil in Classics from Cambridge and studied Social Thought and Philosophy at the University of Chicago before finishing her PhD in Philosophy at Princeton.

How Is My iPhone Changing Me? Neuroscience and Thomistic Psychology | Prof. Joshua Hochschild Jan 17, 2022

Show notes

This lecture was given at West Virginia University on November 5, 2021. For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Joshua Hochschild is the Monsignor Robert R. Kline Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he’s been elected to serve as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

God and Suffering: How Could God Allow Evil? | Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P. Jul 30, 2021

Show notes

This lecture was delivered for the University of Texas, El Paso Chapter on 4/28/2021.

For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the Speaker:

Father Thomas Petri, O.P. is the Vice President and Dean of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies, where he also serves as an assistant professor of moral theology and pastoral studies. Ordained a priest in 2009, he holds a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from The Catholic University of America.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien: Faith and Reason in a World under Siege | Prof. Carol Zaleski Mar 12, 2021

Show notes

This lecture was given to the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Santa Barbara on February 24, 2021.

For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:

Carol Zaleski is the Professor of World Religions at Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts, where she has been teaching philosophy of religion, world religions, religion and literature, and Catholic thought since 1989. She is the author of Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of NearDeath Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford University Press) and The Life of the World to Come: NearDeath Experience and Christian Hope (Oxford University Press); and she is coauthor with Philip Zaleski of Prayer: A History (Houghton Mifflin), The Book of Heaven (Oxford University Press), and The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

On Distributism | Prof. Andrew Abela Mar 10, 2021

Show notes

This lecture was given to the University of Virginia on February 11, 2021.

For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:

Andrew Abela is the founding dean of the Busch School of Business and at The Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. His research on the integrity of the marketing process, including marketing ethics, Catholic Social Doctrine, and internal communication, has been published in several academic journals, including the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Business Ethics, and the Journal of Markets & Morality, and in two books. He is the co-editor of A Catechism for Business, from Catholic University Press, and winner of the 2009 Novak Award, a $10,000 prize given by the Acton Institute for “significant contributions to the study of the relationship between religion and economic liberty.”Dr. Abela also provides consulting and training in internal communications; recent clients of his include Microsoft Corporation, JPMorganChase, and the Corporate Executive Board. Prior to his academic career, he spent several years in industry as brand manager at Procter & Gamble, management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and Managing Director of the Marketing Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board. He holds a B.Sc. from the University of Toronto, an MBA from the Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland, and a Ph.D. in Marketing and Ethics from the Darden Business School at the University of Virginia. He and his wife, Kathleen, live in Great Falls, Virginia with their six children.

Physics and Philosophy: Does Thomas Aquinas Have Anything to Offer? | Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P. Mar 08, 2021

Show notes

This lecture was given to UC Berkeley on February 8, 2021.

For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the Speaker:

Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P. is a Dominican friar, physicist, and philosopher. He joined the faculty of philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome in 2020, where he co-leads the Project for Science and Religion. Before joining the Dominican order he studied physics at the California Institute of Technology before going on to earn his doctorate in physics from Stanford University studying theoretical particle physics. The focus of his scientific research is writing and testing simulations for high energy particle colliders like the LHC at CERN. After joining the Dominicans in 2010, he studied philosophy and theology in preparation for his ordination to the priesthood in 2017. In addition, he earned a Licentiate in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, focusing on the philosophy of science and natural philosophy. For two years he was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Providence College in Providence, RI, where he taught physics and restarted a research program in particle physics. He has written and spoken in a number of forums on the relationship between faith and science including contributions to the Thomistic Evolution project and organizing conferences on science and philosophy for the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC.

Are Science And Religion Compatible? | Fr. Michael Dodds, O.P. Mar 05, 2021

Show notes

This lecture was given to the University of Edinburgh on January 26, 2021. The handout for this lecture is available here: tinyurl.com/tncfnsfe

For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:

Michael J. Dodds, O.P., is Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. After undergraduate studies at Seattle University, he entered the Order of Preachers in 1970 and was ordained in 1977. He then taught for three years at St. Mary’s College, Moraga, California, before doing his doctoral studies at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1986. He has served as Academic Dean of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Convener of the Theology Area at the Graduate Theological Union, and Regent of Studies and Vicar Provincial of the Western Dominican Province. He is the author of The Unchanging God of Love: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology on Divine Immutability (2008), and Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas (2012), both from The Catholic University of America Press.

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