Month: May 2018

Aquinas on Sin, Suffering, and Evil

We are pleased to share an audio recording of a lecture titled, “Aquinas on Sin, Suffering, and Evil,” delivered by our co-PI, Jennifer Frey, at the University of Maryland College Park, under the auspices of our institutional partner, The Thomistic Institute.  

In this lecture, Professor Frey outlines what Thomas Aquinas means by evil and sin, with particular focuses on the sources of sin, as well as addresses the question that lies at the heart of the problem of evil: How can a loving and omnipotent God permit sin, evil, and suffering in the world?

Elizabeth Anscombe on Living the Truth

We are pleased to share this video of a recent lectured delivered by our co-PI, Jennifer Frey, here at the University of Chicago under the auspices of our institutional partner, The Lumen Christi Institute.

 

Here is the abstract associated with Professor Frey’s talk:

Elizabeth Anscombe was one of the most formidable and influential analytic philosophers of the twentieth century.  One of the last lectures she delivered was titled, “Doing the Truth.”  In it, she sets out to identify and clarify a specifically practical mode of truth as the proper goal of a specifically practical mode of reasoning and knowledge.  This talk explores how Anscombe understands practical truth by relating it to her influential theory of action; its ultimate suggestion is that “living the truth” just is living a good human life–i.e., knowingly performing actions in accordance with true judgments of right practical reasoning. The person who achieves such truth is virtuous and lives well.

Podcast: “Boasts of Love in Troilus and Criseyde” | Sacred and Profane Love, Episode 7

Download Episode 7:

Boasts of Love in Troilus and Criseyde

 

In Episode 7 of Sacred & Profane Love, Professor Jennifer A. Frey speaks with her colleague in the English department at the University of South Carolina, Professor Holly A. Crocker, about the boasts and pledges of love in Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous Middle English poem, Troilus and Criseyde.  This wide ranging conversation considers how the courtly love tradition, the Christian tradition, and the classical pagan traditions are put to use in Chaucer’s poem to help us understand the all too human failure to live up to our pledges of love, and to what extent this failure depends on good fortune rather than philosophical and practical wisdom.

Additional Resources:
Troilus and Criseyde (annotated edition)
Teach yourself Middle English for free here!
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.
Holly A. Crocker is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. Her current projects include an essay collection (co-edited with Glenn Burger), *Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion,* which is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, and a monograph, *The Matter of Virtue: Women’s Ethical Action from Chaucer to Shakespeare,* which is under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press. She’s beginning a new monograph, *Feminism Without Gender in Late Medieval Literature,* which argues for a feminist model of subjectivity in Chaucer, Langland, Kempe, Hoccleve, and the *Pearl*-poet.

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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 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.

Podcast: Elena Ferrante on Friendship and the Intellectual Life | Sacred & Profane Love

Download Episode 6: Elena Ferrante on Friendship and the Intellectual Life

 In Episode 6 of Sacred & Profane Love, Professor Jennifer A. Frey (University of South Carolina) has a conversation with Zena Hitz (St. John’s College) about friendship, the intellectual life, and the virtue of seriousness in Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels.  This episode explores how the cultivation of an inner life through contemplation–i.e., seeing, understanding, and savoring things as they are–allows us to enter into a deep and meaningful communion with other human persons.

Ferrante novels: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26828169-the-neapolitan-novels

Zena Hitz is a Tutor at St. John’s College where she teaches across the liberal arts.  She writes in defense of intellectual activity for its own sake, as against its use for economic or political goals.  She is currently writing a book on intellectual life and why it matters for Princeton University Press, based on 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.

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.

 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.