At the Angelicum in Rome Professor Cecilia Trifogli lectured on Thomas and the ontological nature of time. Check out the lecture's handout, as well as audio of the whole thing.
Read MoreThere is a scholarship opportunity for doctoral studies to attend Aquinas Institute events in Oxford in March. Apply now for travel and lodging coverage—quickly, as the deadline looms!
Read MoreNow in its second year, the Medieval Latin Summer Program at Ohio Dominican University is accepting applications. There are three courses:
Beginner/Review CourseJune 18 - July 13, Monday-Friday, 9:00 -10:20 AMThe Beginner/Review course provides an intensive introduction to the basics of Latin grammar and requires no previous preparation in the Latin language.Intermediate Medieval LatinJune 18- July 13, Monday-Friday, 10:30 AM -12:00 PMStudents who have completed the Beginner/Review course or who have taken at least one year of Latin instruction at the university level may enroll in Intermediate Medieval Latin. The Intermediate course introduces students to the reading of medieval Latin texts. Selections are typically drawn from the Vulgate Bible, Church Fathers, medieval chronicles, letters, hagiography, scholastic treatises, and poetry.Advanced Medieval LatinJuly 16- August 10, Monday-Friday, 12:00-1:30 PMThe Advanced Medieval Latin course is intended for students who have completed Intermediate Medieval Latin or those who have who have some experience reading Medieval Latin texts. Students will be expected to read advanced texts in varying genres of medieval Latin writing.
The program website is here, and a flyer can be downloaded here. For more information, contact Dr. Matthew Ponesse.
Fr Gilles Emery, OP, is a guest this spring of the Lumen Christi Institute at the University of Chicago, where he will be giving two public talks, listed below:
Wednesday, April 27, 4:30pm
“The Dignity of Being a Substance”
Swift Hall, Common Room
1025 East 58th Street, Chicago IL (link)
Thursday, April 28, 7:00pm
“A Carnal Love of Concepts or a Work of Mercy? The Intellectual Life and the Dominican Vocation”
Social Sciences 122
1126 East 59th Street, Chicago IL (link)
Fordham University’s Center for Medieval Studies is holding its 31st Annual Conference on Saturday, March 26 - Sunday, March 27, 2011, entitled “The Metaphysics of Aquinas and Its Modern Interpreters: Theological and Philosophical Perspectives.” I wrote about this conference and its call for papers last fall. The people already scheduled at the time, and now those who have joined them by having their papers included, form a veritable who’s who of contemporary North-American Thomistic scholarship. Here’s a recent description:The Conference seeks to capitalize on the pluralism of Thomistic studies by inviting papers from a wide range of areas within the disciplines of philosophy and theology. Conference organizers welcome papers that may approach the topic from various branches of philosophy (such as the philosophy of religion, ontology, or natural theology), or various fields of theology, such as historical, fundamental, or systematic theology (including such areas as Trinitarian theology, Christology, or theological anthropology). Conference organizers also seek a representative variety of approaches to Aquinas and to Thomism, including those of the Dominican commentators, Transcendental Thomism, Existential Thomism, analytic philosophy, and postmodernism.The Conference will include a special strand of sessions on what many regard as one of the central problems in the contemporary retrieval of Aquinas’s thought, namely, how to account for the mind’s knowledge of being qua being, or as this issue is often referred to, the discovery of the being of metaphysics.
In from Adriano Oliva, OP, over in Paris, comes news of a one-day conference on preaching from antiquity to the modern age, “Prédications de l’antiquité à l’époque moderne,” to be held on April 7, and sponsored by the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (PDF). This sounds like a great way to get ready for volume 44 of the Leonine Edition. Fr Oliva himself will speak on “Les Sermons de Thomas d’Aquin édités par le Père Louis Jacques Bataillon.”
My Ohio Dominican University colleague Matthew Ponesse is directing a new Summer Program in Medieval Latin:
This summer Ohio Dominican University will offer a Summer Program in Medieval Latin. The program has been developed for students pursuing graduate studies in the fields of medieval history, literature, philosophy, or theology, but also serves those with a general interest in Medieval or Ecclesiastical Latin. The Summer Program in Medieval Latin offers non-credit courses to students at various levels of Latin competency:Beginner/Review CourseJune 13 - July 8, Monday-Friday, 9:00 -10:00 a.m.Intermediate Medieval LatinJune 13- July 8, Monday-Friday, 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.Advanced Medieval LatinJuly 11- August 5, Monday-Friday, 12:00 – 1:30 p.m.Limited on-campus housing is available for interested students. The deadline for applying to the Medieval Latin Summer Program is May 1, 2011.
This in, from Matthew O’Brien of the University of Texas:
The Thomistic Seminar is the Witherspoon Institute’s fifth-annual, week-long, intensive program for graduate students in philosophy. The seminar is devoted to exploring the intersection between analytic philosophy and the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition.
This year’s seminar, entitled “Aesthetics and Morality: Thomistic and Contemporary Philosophical Approaches,” will examine the relationship between aesthetics and morality, particularly with respect to the social aspects of human life. It will take place August 15 - 21, 2010 in Princeton, New Jersey.
Recent years have seen intense philosophical work on the nature and content of morality; addressing issues in normative ethics, moral theory and metaethics. There has also been a growth of serious work on nature and value of the arts, and on the role of the aesthetic as a constituent of human well-being. The seminar will draw together some of these themes and issues, bringing to bear both contemporary ideas and aspects of the theories of value and practice to be found in the writings of Aquinas.
It has been increasingly common to see Aquinas cited or discussed by contemporary moral philosophers outside the Thomistic tradition, such as Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Rawls, Thomas Scanlon, Michael Thompson, and David Wiggins, but to date aestheticians in the analytical tradition have neglected ideas and figures from the pre-Kantian period. Yet there is in Aquinas the makings of theories of beauty, art and normative aesthetics that are of intrinsic interest and which also suggest ways in which aesthetics and ethics might be interwoven in a general account of value and practice, both personal and social.
John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Andrews
Thomas Hibbs, Professor of Ethics and Culture, Baylor University
Anthony O’Hear, Professor of Philosophy, University of Buckingham
Candace Vogler, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago
Past student participants in the seminar have hailed from top-tier graduate philosophy programs in North America and Europe. Past faculty participants have included Nicholas Rescher (Pittsburgh), Michael Gorman (Catholic University), John Haldane (St. Andrews), Candace Vogler (Chicago), John O’Callaghan (Notre Dame), Robert Koons (UT, Austin), Gavin Lawrence (UCLA), Mark Murphy (Georgetown), David Solomon (Notre Dame), Alexander Pruss (Baylor), David Oderberg (Reading), Gyula Klima (Fordham), Anselm Mueller (Trier), Jeff McDonough (Harvard) and Thomas Pink (King’s College, London).
This seminar is open to graduate students in philosophy. Applications from students in other disciplines (e.g. theology, political theory, and art history), who nonetheless have a background in philosophy, will also be considered.
This seminar will take place on the campus of the Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. Seminar participants will be provided with room and board for the duration of the seminar.
Visit http://www.winst.org/ethics_and_university/seminars/philosophy/index.php for application information. The application deadline has been extended to April 15, 2010.
This in, from Peter Kwasniewski:
The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, founded by John Mortensen (recent recipient of a pontifical award), Jeremy Holmes, and Peter Kwasniewski, will be conducting its third annual Summer Program from May 24th to July 16th, 2010, in the town of Lander, Wyoming. The theme of this summer is “Man on Pilgrimage to God: The Prima Secundae of the Summa theologiae.” Serious students of Catholic theology: consider joining us as we plumb the depths of the Angelic Doctor’s most profound general treatment of moral theology, including the ultimate end of human life, the definition of the moral act in all its components, the concupiscible and irascible passions of the soul, the structure of the virtues both natural and supernatural, the goal of heroic sanctity put forth in the beatitudes, the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit, law in its magnificent range of analogous forms (human, natural, eternal, revealed), and supernatural grace, the very foundation of specifically Christian morals. In this eight-week summer program we will read nearly every treatise in the Prima Secundae — a rare and enviable opportunity to see the whole domain of morality as the Church’s greatest theologian conceived it.
For details, visit our website.
This in from Jeremy Holmes of Wyoming Catholic College, regarding a new summer Aquinas Institute entitled "Reading St. Paul with St. Thomas":
I thought I should update you on a project undertaken by Peter Kwasniewski, John Mortensen, and myself. We have founded a non-profit corporation here in Lander called The Aquinas Institute whose main purpose is to offer graduate level summer courses centered on the writings of Aquinas. We ran classes last summer with great success, so we've made it official and plan to continue.
Our regular curriculum will include three summers of work on the Summa, working through as much of the Summa as possible and treating it as a real theological source rather than as a historical artifact. We will also offer a one-summer program in Scripture, based as much as possible around Thomas's commentaries; this coming summer, in fact, we are not doing anything with the Summa, instead reading all of Paul's letters with all of Aquinas's commentaries thereupon--probably the first time such a thing has been done since anyone can remember!
The Institute has a fine website that contains all the detailed one could want.
Just in, from the people at the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame:
The Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame is pleased to invite applications from undergraduate and graduate students for its two Medieval Academy CARA (Centers and Regional Associates) scholarships in medieval Latin or paleography for Summer 2007.
Two students taking "Medieval Latin" or "Latin Paleography" courses for credit will be awarded full tuition scholarships. (Registration and other fees, books, and housing costs are the responsibility of the students.) Scholarship applicants must be student members of the Medieval Academy. To apply for one of these scholarships, please send a letter of intent, two letters of recommendation, and a transcript to the address below. The deadline for Summer 2007 is May 1, 2007.
CARA Summer Scholarships
Medieval Institute
715 Hesburgh Library
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556-5629
Both courses will be taught by Frank A. C. Mantello, professor in the Department of Greek and Latin at The Catholic University of America. All students who wish to take summer classes at Notre Dame, apply for admission the University's Summer Session Office. Details about costs, registration, course offerings, and housing options are available on the Summer Session web site:
http://www.nd.edu/~sumsess/
Or phone 574-631-7282. Questions about the CARA scholarships may be directed to me (see contact info below). Please contact the Summer Session Office for non-scholarship information.
Cordially,
Roberta Baranowski
Assistant Director, Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame
715 Hesburgh Library
Notre Dame, IN 46556
574-631-8304 (telephone)
574-631-8644 (fax)
Under the direction of the Sacra Doctrina Project
