Our Scholar Jean Porter will give the 49TH Annual Père Marquette Lecture in Theology lecture “The Perfection of Desire: Habit, Reason and Virtue in Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae” at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

2pm, April 22

Raynor Memorial Library. The Beaumier Suite  | 1355 W. Wisconsin Avenue

Reception to follow. Free and open to the public.

Link to flyer

Talk description

Aquinas claims that the virtues are habits, that is to say, stable dispositions oriented towards desires of a certain kind.  As such, like all habits they presuppose rationality and enable a distinctively human way of feeling and acting.  Thus, if we want to make sense of what Aquinas says about rationality and the virtues, it makes sense to turn first to the more fundamental ways in which habits generally speaking are shaped by, and responsive to reason.

 

Jean Porter is the John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and a scholar with the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life.