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

Jennifer A. 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.

Music credits, “Help me Somebody,” by Brian Eno and David Byrne, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.5.By Jennifer A Freyin Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of LifeMarch 1, 2021534 WordsLeave a commentEdit

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

Jennifer A. 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.

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

Jennifer A. 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

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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.

Music credits, “Help me Somebody,” by Brian Eno and David Byrne, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.5.

In this episode I speak with my colleague, Agnes Mueller, who is professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, about why Thomas Mann’s novella, Death in Venice, is a must read during our ongoing pandemic. We talk Modernism, Plato, and Nietzsche. We see the novella as exploring sickness, death, and eros, and we find similarities and continuities between the lovesickness that grips von Aschenbach and the cholera that eventually kills him. We also ask whether Mann’s novella is a rebuke of, or perhaps even a vindication of, Plato’s ideal of erotic love. Either way, we agree that the novella is a deep engagement with Platonic ideas and is one of the best treatments of love in literature, period.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Agnes Mueller (M.A., LMU Munich, Germany, 1993, Ph.D., Vanderbilt U, 1997), Professor, is an expert on recent and contemporary German literature. She is core faculty in Comparative Literature and affiliated with Women’s and Gender Studies and with Jewish Studies. Her publications are on German-American relations, multicultural studies, gender issues in contemporary literature, German-Jewish studies, and Holocaust studies. Her 2004 anthology German Pop Culture: How “American” Is It? (U of Michigan P) is widely used for teaching and research. In addition to all levels of German language and culture, she regularly teaches advanced undergraduate and graduate classes, and has lectured in Germany, Canada, and the U.S. Her most recently published book is entitled The Inability to Love: Jews, Gender, and America in Recent German Literature now available in German translation as Die Unfaehigkeit zu lieben. She is currently at work on a new project, entitled Holocaust Migration: Jewish Fiction in Today’s Germany. In it, she traces the ways in which challenges of living in a multi-ethnic society where past trauma is dispersed are negotiated.

Jennifer A. 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 Classics minor) at Indiana University-Bloomington. 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.

In this episode, I have a wide ranging conversation with Agnes Callard. We discuss our experience teaching the Great Books Core at the University of Chicago, as well as why philosophers should read and teach great literature, how to teach Homer in a philosophy class, and how humans gain wisdom through mistakes and suffering. We also talk about arguments, piety, and wisdom in Antigone.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Agnes Callard is an associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. She received her BA from the University of Chicago in 1997 and her PhD from Berkeley in 2008. Her primary areas of specialization are Ancient Philosophy and Ethics. She is the author of Aspiration as well as many articles on ancient philosophy. Her writing is regularly featured at The New York Times and The Point Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @AgnesCallard

Jennifer A. 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 Classics minor) at Indiana University-Bloomington. 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.