The Thomistic Institute

Feb 16, 2022 • 56 min

This lecture was given on December 7, 2021 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The handout for this lecture can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/mrrhu2sp. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Gregory T. Doolan received his B.A. in political theory from Georgetown University in 1993 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in 2003. He taught philosophy at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. from 2004–05 and joined the faculty of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in 2005. Dr. Doolan’s research interest is in the area of Aquinas’s metaphysics; in recent years, his focus has been on Aquinas’s account of the Aristotelian categories of being. A native of Philadelphia, Dr. Doolan currently lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children.

Feb 14, 2022 • 1h 5m

This lecture was given on November 15, 2021 at Oxford University. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Dr. George Corbett is a Senior Lecturer in Theology and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. Previously, he held positions as Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy, Trinity College, and affiliated lecturer in Italian, University of Cambridge, where he also taught English literature and theology. He received his BA (double first), MPhil (distinction), and PhD (AHRC-funded) from the University of Cambridge. He has also studied in Pisa (as an Erasmus-Socrates exchange scholar at La Scuola Normale Superiore), Rome (Institutum Pontificium Alterioris Latinitatis), and Montella (Vivarium Novum). Dr. Corbett directs CEPHAS (a Thomistic Centre for Philosophy and Scholastic Theology), TheoArtistry (a project linking up theologians and artists), and is leading on a new collaborative MLitt in Sacred Music. 892718

Feb 11, 2022 • 56 min

This walk was given on September 21, 2021 at Yale University. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: R. J. Snell is Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ. Prior to his appointment at the Witherspoon Institute, he was Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy Program at Eastern University and the Templeton Honors College, where he founded and directed the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good. He has been visiting instructor at Princeton University, where he is also executive director of the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Life. He's written books and articles on natural law, education, Bernard Lonergan, boredom, subjectivity, and sexual ethics for a variety of publications. 892718

Feb 10, 2022 • 1h 17m

This lecture was delivered on October 28, 2021 at the University of South Carolina. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Christopher Frey is currently an associate professor in the department of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. Prof. Frey works primarily in Ancient Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle’s natural philosophy and metaphysics. He is writing a book entitled The Principle of Life: Aristotelian Souls in an Inanimate World. It concerns the distinction between the animate and the inanimate, the unity of living organisms, nutrition, birth, death, and, more generally, what one’s metaphysical worldview looks like if one takes life to be central. He also works in contemporary philosophy of perception and mind and has written extensively on the relationship between the intentionality and phenomenality of perceptual experience. In addition to these two main areas of research, he has secondary projects in metaphysics, the philosophy of action, Medieval philosophy, Early Modern philosophy, and the history of analytic philosophy.

Feb 9, 2022 • 1h 18m

Prof. Bogardus' slides can be viewed here: https://tinyurl.com/dc329b72 This lecture was given on November 30, 2021 at the University of Texas at Austin. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Tomás Bogardus is associate professor of philosophy at Pepperdine University. He was born in Long Beach, California, and earned his BS in biology at UC San Diego, his MA in philosophy at Biola University, and his PhD in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He works mainly in metaphysics and epistemology, and is most interested in the mind-body problem and the rationality of religious belief.

Feb 8, 2022 • 1h 3m

This lecture was given on November 19, 2021 at the University of South Carolina. View Prof. Keown's slides here: https://tinyurl.com/yck2hbwu For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Dr. John Keown is the Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.He graduated in law from Cambridge and took a doctorate in law at Oxford, after which he was called to the Bar of England and Wales (Middle Temple). After a spell teaching medical and criminal law at the University of Leicester, he became the first holder of a lectureship in the law and ethics of medicine at Cambridge, where he was elected to a Fellowship at Queens' College and, later, a Senior Research Fellowship at Churchill College. In 2015 he was made a Doctor of Civil Law by the University of Oxford in recognition of his contribution to law and bioethics.He has published widely in the law and ethics of medicine, specializing in issues at the beginning and end of life. The second and heavily revised edition of his widely acclaimed book Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: An Argument Against Legalisation was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.His research has been cited by distinguished bodies worldwide, including the United States Supreme Court; the Law Lords; the House of Commons; the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics, and the Australian Senate. In 2011 he testified as an expert witness for Canada in a leading case concerning the country’s laws against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. He has served as a member of the Ethics Committee of the British Medical Association and has been regularly consulted, not least by legislators and the media, on legal and ethical aspects of medicine. Author of the first paper to demonstrate comprehensively that the American War for Independence failed to satisfy all (if any) of the criteria for a ‘just war’ (and was, therefore, an unjust revolution), he has also written a play based on one of the classic cases in law and bioethics: the trial of Dr. Leonard Arthur for the attempted murder of a newborn baby with Down's syndrome.

Feb 4, 2022 • 1h 10m

This lecture was given on November 5, 2021 at Auburn University. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel is a member of the St. Cecilia Congregation of Dominican Sisters of Nashville, Tennessee. She received her Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, Italy. She has been active in her religious community's teaching apostolate for over fifteen years and has assisted with the theological formation of the newest members of her religious congregation. In addition to contributing articles to a number of journals and magazines, including the Vatican newspaper (L'Osservatore Romano), The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, The Linacre Quarterly, and the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Sister has served as editor-in-chief of her Congregation's book, Praying as a Family (also available in Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic versions). With EWTN, she directed a television series of the same title. She has also served as the creator and founding Director of the University of Dallas Studies in Catholic Faith & Culture Program.

Jan 31, 2022 • 53 min

Fr. Guilbeau's handout can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/3vw4dp4e This lecture was delivered on December 6, 2021 at St. Mary Mother of God Catholic Church for the DC Young Professionals Chapter of the Thomistic Institute. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: A native of Louisiana, Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P. entered the Province of St. Joseph in 2005. After several years of pastoral work in New York City, Fr. Guilbeau began doctoral studies in moral theology at the University of Fribourg, where he completed a dissertation in moral theology. His topic was Charles De Koninck’s doctrine of the common good. In addition to his teaching, Fr. Guilbeau is prior of the Dominican House of Studies.

Jan 25, 2022 • 38 min

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.

Jan 24, 2022 • 1h 15m

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.

Jan 20, 2022 • 48 min

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.

Jan 17, 2022 • 1h 11m

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.

Jul 31, 2021 • 54 min

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.

Mar 13, 2021 • 33 min

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).

Mar 10, 2021 • 35 min

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.

Mar 8, 2021 • 1h 19m

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.

Mar 5, 2021 • 44 min

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.

Mar 1, 2021 • 1h 11m

This talk was given at the annual lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas held at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 21, 2021. For more information about upcoming events, visit thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Matthew Levering holds the James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary. He is the author or editor of over forty books on topics of dogmatic, sacramental, moral, historical, and biblical theology. He is the translator of Gilles Emery’s The Trinity. Most recently he has published Engaging the Doctrine of Creation, An Introduction to Vatican II as an Ongoing Theological Event, and Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church. He coedits two quarterly journals, Nova et Vetera and International Journal of Systematic Theology. Since 2004, he has been a participant in Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and from 20072016 he served as Chair of the Board of the Academy of Catholic Theology. He cofounded the Chicago Theological Initiative and has directed the Center for Scriptural Exegesis, Philosophy, and Doctrine since 2011. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the St. Paul Center.

Feb 26, 2021 • 51 min

This lecture was given on February 11, 2021 to the Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt Medical School chapters. For more information on upcoming events, 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.

Feb 24, 2021 • 44 min

This lecture was given on October 29, 2020 to Texas A&M University. For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Francis J. Beckwith is Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies at Baylor University, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Philosophy. Among his over one dozen books are Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Politics For Christians: Statecraft As Soulcraft (IVP, 2010), and Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith (Cambridge University Press, 2015), winner of the American Academy of Religion's prestigious 2016 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in Constructive-Reflective Studies. He is a graduate of the Washington University School of Law, St. Louis (MJS) as well as Fordham University (PhD, MA, philosophy).