The Thomistic Institute

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Are Animals Intelligent? | Marie George Dec 13, 2018

Show notes

This lecture was offered at MIT on October 25th as the 2nd part of a series of lectures on "The Distinctiveness of Human Intelligence."

For more information about upcoming TI events, check out: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

Speaker Bio:

Marie George has been a member of the Philosophy Department of St. John's University 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 the Society for Aristotelian Studies.

Aquinas's Reception of Aristotle | Reinhard Hütter Dec 12, 2018

Show notes

This lecture was given to a small student seminar at Duke University on October 5th, 2018. For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Reinhard Huetter is Ordinary Professor of Fundamental Theology at the School of Theology and Religious Studies of The Catholic University.

Professor Huetter is a native of Lichtenfels, Germany. He received his Dr. theol. (summa cum laude) in 1990, and his Habilitation in 1995, both from the University of Erlangen. He taught for nine years theological ethics and systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and for seventeen years systematic theology at Duke University Divinity School. In 2004, he and his wife entered into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

His teaching and research focuses on fundamental theological questions of the relationship between faith and reason, nature and grace, revelation and faith, theology and philosophy, dogma and history, on questions of theological anthropology (grace and freedom), and the theology and epistemology of faith. He has an abiding interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and has, in more recent years, developed also an intense interest in the thought of John Henry Newman.

Huetter is the author of numerous books, most recently Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (2012) and Divine Happiness: Aquinas on the Journey to Beatitude, the Ultimate Human End (forthcoming 2018) and has contributed numerous chapters to handbooks and edited collections. He is presently working on a theological commentary on Psalm 119, a small book on John Henry Newman, and a theological treatise on Doctrine: Its Nature and Development.

Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers for the Renewal of Theology | Fr. Andrew Hofer OP Dec 11, 2018

Show notes

This lecture was given at Duke by Fr. Andrew Hofer OP (Dominican House of Studies) on October 25th, 2018.

For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

Speaker Bio:

Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., grew up as the youngest of ten children on a farm in Kansas, and studied history, philosophy, and classics at Benedictine College. He then went to St Andrews, Scotland for a Master of Letters in medieval history. He entered the Order of Preachers as a son of the Province of St. Joseph, and was ordained a priest in 2002. After finishing his S.T.L. and serving as an associate pastor for a brief time, he was sent to Kenya as a missionary for two years. He taught at the Tangaza College of The Catholic University of Eastern Africa and other institutions in Nairobi. He returned to the U.S. and completed the Ph.D. in theology at the University of Notre Dame, with the primary area of history of Christianity (specializing in patristic theology with additional studies in medieval theology) and the secondary area of systematic theology. His research appears in such journals as Vigiliae Christianae, Augustinianum, International Journal of Systematic Theology, New Blackfriars, Nova et Vetera, Pro Ecclesia, The Thomist, Communio, and Angelicum and in books published by Catholic University America Press and Ignatius Press. He is the author of Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus (Oxford Early Christian Studies), Oxford University Press, 2013, and the editor of Divinization: Becoming Icons of Christ through the Liturgy, Hillenbrand Books, 2015.

What is the Purpose of Life? Classical and Contemporary Answers | Jennifer Frey Dec 10, 2018

Show notes

This lecture was offered at UVA on October 19th, 2018. For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

Speaker Bio:

Jennifer A. Frey (University of South Carolina) received her BA from Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana in 2000, and her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. In 2013 she was Collegiate Assistant Professor and Harper Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago prior to taking up her current appointment as Assistant Professor in the Philosophy department at the University of South Carolina. Jennifer's research interests lie at the intersection of virtue ethics and action theory. She has publications in The Journal of the History of Philosophy, The Journal of Analytic Philosophy, and in several edited volumes. She is the recipient of several grants, including a 2.1 million dollar project awarded by the John Templeton Foundation, titled "Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning in Life." She is currently at work on three separate book projects.

Is Free Will an Illusion?| Timothy Pawl Dec 07, 2018

Show notes

This talk was offered on October 17th, 2018 at Brown University. For more info about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

Speaker Bio:

Tim Pawl is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, MN, where he works on metaphysics and philosophical theology. In metaphysics he works on "truthmaker theory, modality, and free will. In philosophical theology, he has published on transubstantiation, Christology, and divine immutability. Publications where his work has appeared include: The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Faith and Philosophy, and Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. A listing of his publications is available on his PhilPapers Profile. Additionally, Prof. Pawl published a monograph in the Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology series, entitled In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. In this book he argues that the philosophical objections to the traditional Christian doctrine of the incarnation fail.

Prof. Pawl currently leads a grant with Gloria Frost called The Classical Theism Project, and recently finished a grant in collaboration with Kevin Timpe called Exploring the Interim State Writing Workshop. He is the husband of another philosopher, Faith Glavey Pawl, and the proud father of one son and four daughters.

"Out of this Stony Rubbish" Devastation and Rebirth in Eliot's "The Waste Land" | Thomas Pfau Dec 05, 2018

Show notes

This lecture was held on October 17th, 2018 at the Catholic Information Center, Washington DC. For more info about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

Lecture Description:

More than any other work of high modernist literature, Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) captures the loss of meaning and purpose that has overwhelmed an entire civilization. Surrounded by fragments of past knowledge that now seem barely intelligible in the wake of World War I, modern society appears mired in an unprecedented spiritual crisis. Yet unlike his modernist peers (e.g., Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, Ezra Pound, et al.), Eliot's critique of modern life is not confined to the conceptual resources and secular axioms that have shaped modern life. Though it predates Eliot's “conversion” to Christianity by five years, The Waste Land's forceful summation of spiritual, ecological, psycho-sexual, and moral devastation already contains the seeds for the spiritual awakening that will be at the center of Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" (1927) and his Four Quartets (1936-1943).

This lecture is the second of a three-part series titled "Tales That Tell: Moral Devastation and Original Sin in Literature," co-sponsored by the CIC and the Thomistic Institute.

Speaker Bio

Thomas Pfau (PhD 1989, SUNY Buffalo) is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English, with secondary appointments in Germanic Language & Literatures and the Divinity School at Duke University. He has published forty-five essays on literary and philosophical subjects ranging from the 18th through the early 20th century, translations of Hölderlin and Schelling (SUNY Press, 1987 and 1994). Having edited seven essay collections and special journal issues, he is also the author of three monographs: Wordsworth’s Profession (Stanford UP 1997), Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, Melancholy, 1790-1840 (Johns Hopkins UP 2005), and Minding the Modern: Intellectual Traditions, Human Agency, and Responsible Knowledge (Notre Dame UP, 2013). His current book project focuses on phenomenology of image-consciousness in literature, theology, and philosophy.

The Return of the Strong Gods | Rusty Reno Dec 04, 2018

Show notes

On October 9th, 2018, Rusty Reno, the editor of "First Things" offered this talk at Blackfriars, Oxford elaborating on his May 2017 article in First Things of the same name. This lecture was presented in collaboration with the Aquinas Institute, Blackfriars Hall.

For more about the TI's upcoming events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

What Does it Mean to be Human? Neuroscience, Psychology, and Personhood | Daniel De Haan Dec 03, 2018

Show notes

This lecture was given for the Harvard Medical School Chapter on November 6th, 2018.

Speaker Bio:

Daniel De Haan is a Research Fellow in Natural Theology at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. Before coming to Oxford he was a postdoctoral fellow working on the neuroscience strand of the Templeton World Charity Foundation’s Theology, Philosophy of Religion, and the Sciences project at the University of Cambridge. He has a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven and University of St Thomas in Texas. His research focuses on philosophical anthropology and the sciences, natural theology, and the thought of Thomas Aquinas.

More information on upcoming events can be found on our website: thomisticinstitute.org

What's the Purpose of Life? | Christopher Kaczor Nov 30, 2018

Show notes

In this lecture, Prof. Christopher Kaczor draws from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and research in contemporary psychology to discuss the final end to which human beings are ordered.

This lecture was delivered by Prof. Christopher Kaczor(Loyola

Marymount University) to the University of Arizona chapter of the Thomistic Institute on October 17, 2018.

The Fellowship of Happiness: Aquinas on the Making of Good Friends | Prof. Michael Pakaluk Nov 29, 2018

Show notes

This talk was given by Dr. Pakaluk on October 16th, 2018 at the United States Naval Academy and was co-sponsored by the Catholic Midshipmen's Club.

For more details about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

About the Speaker:

Michael Pakaluk studied philosophy at Harvard College and the University of Edinburgh on a Marshall Scholarship before getting his Ph.D. at Harvard writing a dissertation under John Rawls. He is a recognized authority on classical philosophy, especially Aristotle’s ethics. Pakaluk has held academic appointments at Clark University, Brown University, Ave Maria University, and The Catholic University of America, among others.

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