In Episode 2 of the podcast
Sacred & Profane Love, philosopher Jennifer A. Frey has a conversation with fellow philosopher, David McPherson (Creighton University), about transfiguring love as explored by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his influential novel, The Brother’s Karamazov. The episode covers Dostoyevksy’s treatment of the classic problem of evil—i.e., the problem of reconciling God’s love and wisdom with the evil and suffering that are part of his creation—and in particular, his idea that active and self-transcending love for others is the only proper response to human suffering, because the only true path to achieving the kind of deep happiness that is the goal of every human heart.
Download Episode 2 “Transfiguring Love in the Brothers Karamazov”
Works under discussion in Episode 2:
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, TheBrothers Karamazov
Albert Camus, The Mythof Sisyphus
David McPherson, “Transfiguring Love,” in New Models for Religious Understanding,edited by Fiona Ellis, Oxford University Press, 2018: pp. 79-96.
Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice
David McPherson is assistant professor of philosophy at Creighton University. His research and teaching center around ethics (especially virtue ethics) and the philosophy of religion. He has authored many essays on ethics, moral psychology, and spirituality. He is most recently the editor of the collection of essays, Spirituality and the Good Life (Cambridge University Press, 2018). David is current working on a monograph on human beings as meaning seeking animals.
Jennifer A. Frey is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. 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 PhD in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and her B.A. in Philosophy and Medieval Studies (with Classics minor) at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her research lies at the intersection of philosophy of action and ethics, with a particular focus on the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition.
NEXT Episode 3: Nancy Snow, “Walt Whitman on hope and national character”
Subscribe
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 A Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and co-Principal Investigator at Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.
This podcast is a project of Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life, and is made possible through a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
Content copyright the University of South Carolina and the University of Chicago.
Music credits, “Help me Somebody,” by Brian Eno and David Byrne, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.5.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
