I recently participated in a panel discussion on St. Augustine’s notion of a people with my dear friends, Russ Hittinger and Fr. Michael Sherwin, OP. We mostly discuss Book XIX of The City of God. St. Augustine was a republican (in the classical sense!) and Augustine does not argue (contrary to what some have suggested) that only those who share the same religion can form a people–i.e., be united by common loves.
You can watch the entire exchange, hosted by The Lumen Christi Institute and America magazine, here:
I appeared on Haley Stewart’s and Christy Isinger’s podcast to speak about the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe and what it would look like to upend certain motherhood narratives.
FOC 157: ELIZABETH ANSCOMBE: PHILOSOPHER, MOM, AND UPENDING THE MOTHERHOOD NARRATIVE WITH DR. JENNIFER FREY
“Heaven is a place where nothing, nothing ever happens...” Talking Heads
OK, friends, we are finally in Paradise, with our faithful guides Beatrice, St. Bernard, and of course, Professor Matthew Rothaus Moser. It turns out that perfect happiness is resting, delighting, and dwelling in the good. How does Dante manage to write 33 more cantos about rest? You should listen to find out, of course!
As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Matthew Rothaus Moser joined the Honors College faculty at Azusa Pacific University in Fall 2020 after teaching for seven years in the Theology Department at Loyola University Maryland. He has won two awards for excellence in teaching: the first from Baylor University (2013), the second from Loyola University Maryland’s Center for Humanities (2016). In addition to essays and book chapters on the theology of reading, theological aesthetics, and theology and literature, he has also published Love Itself is Understanding: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Saints (Fortress Press, 2016) and the forthcoming Dante and the Poetic Practice of Theology (Wipf & Stock Publishers). You can follow him on Twitter @M_Rothaus_Moser
JenniferA. Frey is an associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. Prior to joining the philosophy faculty at USC, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and an affiliated faculty in the philosophy department. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and her B.A. in Philosophy and Medieval Studies (with a Classics minor) at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. She has published widely on action, virtue, practical reason, and meta-ethics, and has recently co-edited an interdisciplinary volume, Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology. Her writing has also been featured in First Things, Fare Forward, Image, Law and Liberty, Plough, The Point, and USA Today. She lives in Columbia, SC, with her husband, six children, and six chickens. You can follow her on Twitter @jennfrey
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Sacred and Profane Love is a podcast in which philosophers, theologians, and literary critics discuss some of their favorite works of literature, and how these works have shaped their own ideas about love, happiness, and meaning in human life. Host Jennifer A. Frey is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. The podcast is generously supported by The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America and produced by William Deatherage.
This episode of Sacred and Profane Love is sponsored by The Classical Learning Test, which provides an to alternative standardized tests rooted in tradition. Featuring passages selected from great works across a variety of disciplines (including Dante!), the CLT suite of assessments provide a highly accurate and rigorous measure of reasoning, aptitude, and academic formation for students from diverse educational backgrounds. The exams are taken online in just two to three hours, and all three assessments (traditional CLT, CLT10, CLT8) give test results within 24 hours. (Please note that scores for the new remote-proctored CLT are available 1-2 weeks after testing.) The CLT also provides colleges and secondary schools with detailed information about student learning trends, to facilitate decisions about admissions, curricula, and instruction. The CLT unites a dedicated group of educators, businesspeople, and scholars, all in service to a shared passion: to reconnect intellectual pursuit with the pursuit of virtue.
2021 marks the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death in Ravenna. This is the second of three episodes exploring Dante’s The Divine Comedy, with Professor Matthew Rothaus Moser (Theology, Honors College, Azusa Pacific University). In this episode, we discuss Dante’s vision of Purgatory, a place where sin is healed and the soul purified, so that a person can become truly free to enjoy the good.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Matthew Rothaus Moser joined the Honors College faculty at Azusa Pacific University in Fall 2020 after teaching for seven years in the Theology Department at Loyola University Maryland. He has won two awards for excellence in teaching: the first from Baylor University (2013), the second from Loyola University Maryland’s Center for Humanities (2016). In addition to essays and book chapters on the theology of reading, theological aesthetics, and theology and literature, he has also published Love Itself is Understanding: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Saints (Fortress Press, 2016) and the forthcoming Dante and the Poetic Practice of Theology (Wipf & Stock Publishers). You can follow him on Twitter @M_Rothaus_Moser
JenniferA. Frey is an associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. Prior to joining the philosophy faculty at USC, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and an affiliated faculty in the philosophy department. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and her B.A. in Philosophy and Medieval Studies (with a Classics minor) at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. She has published widely on action, virtue, practical reason, and meta-ethics, and has recently co-edited an interdisciplinary volume, Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology. Her writing has also been featured in First Things, Fare Forward, Image, Law and Liberty, Plough, The Point, and USA Today. She lives in Columbia, SC, with her husband, six children, and six chickens. You can follow her on Twitter @jennfrey
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Sacred and Profane Love is a podcast in which philosophers, theologians, and literary critics discuss some of their favorite works of literature, and how these works have shaped their own ideas about love, happiness, and meaning in human life. Host Jennifer A. Frey is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. The podcast is generously supported by The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America and produced by William Deatherage.
In this episode, I am joined by one of the founding editors of The Point, Jon Baskin, to discuss the prospects of philosophical literary criticism and how we can apply such criticism to the fiction of David Foster Wallace. Baskin elaborates his ideas in a book I highly recommend, Ordinary Unhappiness: The Therapeutic Fiction of David Foster Wallace. Jon and I discuss Wittgenstein, Iris Murdoch, Stanley Cavell, Robert Pippin, and of course, David Foster Wallace. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Jon Baskin is the Associate Director of the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism program at the New School for Social Research and a founding editor of The Point. He earned his Ph.D. from The Committee on Social Thought at The University of Chicago. His writings have been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Nation, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. He is also the author of Ordinary Unhappiness: The Therapeutic Fiction of David Foster Wallace. You can follow him on Twitter @BaskinJon
JenniferA. Frey is an associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. Prior to joining the philosophy faculty at USC, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and an affiliated faculty in the philosophy department. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and her B.A. in Philosophy and Medieval Studies (with a Classics minor) at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. She has published widely on action, virtue, practical reason, and meta-ethics, and has recently co-edited an interdisciplinary volume, Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology. Her writing has also been featured in First Things, Fare Forward, Image, Law and Liberty, Plough, The Point, and USA Today. She lives in Columbia, SC, with her husband, six children, and six chickens. You can follow her on Twitter @jennfrey
Subscribe
Become a Patron!
Preview on iTunes
Sacred and Profane Love is a podcast in which philosophers, theologians, and literary critics discuss some of their favorite works of literature, and how these works have shaped their own ideas about love, happiness, and meaning in human life. Host Jennifer A. Frey is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. The podcast is generously supported by The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America.
Music credits, “Help me Somebody,” by Brian Eno and David Byrne, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.5.
2021 marks the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death in Ravenna. This is the first of three episodes exploring Dante’s The Divine Comedy, with Professor Matthew Rothaus Moser (Theology, Honors College, Azusa Pacific University). In this episode, we discuss Dante’s vision of Hell as a place where the truth of one’s desires are finally revealed to oneself. In Dante’s Hell, people get what they really want and deserve; since what they want is a distortion of what is truly good, the realization of their desire doesn’t make them happy or fulfilled, but perpetually miserable. In this initial conversation, we discuss who Dante was, the structure of his poem on the whole, and how Christians and secularists alike can approach and benefit from reading Dante’s famous poem.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Matthew Rothaus Moser joined the Honors College faculty at Azusa Pacific University in Fall 2020 after teaching for seven years in the Theology Department at Loyola University Maryland. He has won two awards for excellence in teaching: the first from Baylor University (2013), the second from Loyola University Maryland’s Center for Humanities (2016). In addition to essays and book chapters on the theology of reading, theological aesthetics, and theology and literature, he has also published Love Itself is Understanding: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Saints (Fortress Press, 2016) and the forthcoming Dante and the Poetic Practice of Theology (Wipf & Stock Publishers). You can follow him on Twitter @M_Rothaus_Moser
JenniferA. Frey is an associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. Prior to joining the philosophy faculty at USC, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and an affiliated faculty in the philosophy department. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and her B.A. in Philosophy and Medieval Studies (with a Classics minor) at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. She has published widely on action, virtue, practical reason, and meta-ethics, and has recently co-edited an interdisciplinary volume, Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology. Her writing has also been featured in First Things, Fare Forward, Image, Law and Liberty, Plough, The Point, and USA Today. She lives in Columbia, SC, with her husband, six children, and six chickens. You can follow her on Twitter @jennfrey
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Become a Patron!
Preview on iTunes
Sacred and Profane Love is a podcast in which philosophers, theologians, and literary critics discuss some of their favorite works of literature, and how these works have shaped their own ideas about love, happiness, and meaning in human life. Host Jennifer A. Frey is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. The podcast is generously supported by The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America and produced by William Deatherage.
Music credits, “Help me Somebody,” by Brian Eno and David Byrne, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.5.
In this episode, I am joined by author and theologian Tara Isabella Burton. Tara and I explore the distinctive erotic pleasure one can experience in the act of creating a character out of another human being. This sort of seduction involves coming to possess someone else so as to transform them into a character in your own drama. This is a theme in the two works we discuss, Soren Kierkegaard’s The Seducer’s Diary and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. We also talk about the influence of Joris-Karl Huysman’s novel, Against Nature, on Wilde. Wilde’s novel, like Huysman’s, is a study of decadence and decay, but the end seems fairly moralizing, in spite of Wilde’s allegiance to the aesthetic. Or so we argue, anyway.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Tara Isabella Burton‘s debut novel, 2018’s Social Creature, was named a “book of the year” by The New York Times, New York’s Vulture, and The Guardian. A film adaptation is in development with Lionsgate. Her second novel, The World Cannot Give, a coming-of-age novel about desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence among members of a cultic chapel choir at a Maine boarding school, will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2022. Her first book of nonfiction, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World—praised byThe Wall Street Journal as “a bracing tour through the myriad forms of bespoke spiritualism and makeshift quasireligions springing up across America”– appeared in 2020. Her next work of nonfiction, Self-Made: Curating Our Image from Da Vinci to the Kardashians, will be published by Public Affairs in 2023. She has written on religion, culture, and place for The New York Times, National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, City Journal, The Economist’s 1843, Aeon, The BBC, The Atlantic, Salon, The New Statesman, and The Telegraph. She is a columnist at Religion News Service, a Contributing Editor at American Purpose, and the former staff religion writer at Vox. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, Volume 1 Brooklyn,The New Yorker‘s Daily Shouts, and more. She received a doctorate in theology from Trinity College, Oxford, where she was a Clarendon Scholar, in 2017. You can follow her on Twitter, @NotoriousTIB
JenniferA. Frey is an associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. Prior to joining the philosophy faculty at USC, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and an affiliated faculty in the philosophy department. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and her B.A. in Philosophy and Medieval Studies (with a Classics minor) at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. She has published widely on action, virtue, practical reason, and meta-ethics, and has recently co-edited an interdisciplinary volume, Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology. Her writing has also been featured in First Things, Fare Forward, Image, The Point, and USA Today. She lives in Columbia, SC, with her husband, six children, and six chickens. You can follow her on Twitter @jennfrey
Subscribe
Become a Patron!
Preview on iTunes
Sacred and Profane Love is a podcast in which philosophers, theologians, and literary critics discuss some of their favorite works of literature, and how these works have shaped their own ideas about love, happiness, and meaning in human life. Host Jennifer A. Frey is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. The podcast is generously supported by The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America and produced by William Deatherage.
Music credits, “Help me Somebody,” by Brian Eno and David Byrne, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.5.
