Past Lecture Series
God and the Search for Happiness
Dr. Zena Hitz
September 19, 2023
Zena Hitz (PhD, Princeton) is an expert in ancient philosophy & author of Lost in Thought, and A Philosopher Looks at the Religious Life. Hitz is also a Tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis and the founder and president of the Catherine Project. Hitz writes for general audiences about freedom, education, happiness, the decline of our institutions, faith, hope, and love. Hitz’s scholarship is in classical philosophy, especially questions about law, character, friendship, and the human good.
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Last fall’s lecture series explored the end of the university: What, if anything, is the purpose or goal of the university? What should it be? Is the university headed toward closure and collapse? What does its role in and relation to economic crises, political battles, and cultural conflicts have to do with all this? Finally, how do visions of the university’s telos relate to its future – disintegration, renewal, or something else?
Why Does Racial Inequality Persist?
Dr. Glenn Loury, Brown University
September 13, 2022
A prominent social critic and public intellectual writing mainly on the themes of racial inequality and social policy, Dr. Glenn Loury has published more than 200 essays and reviews in journals of public affairs in the US and abroad. Loury has given the prestigious Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford (2007), the James A. Moffett ‘29 Lectures in Ethics at Princeton (2003), and the DuBois Lectures in African American Studies at Harvard (2000). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In this lecture, Dr. Glenn Loury asks why does racial inequality persist? An academic economist, Professor Loury has published mainly in applied microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of race and inequality.
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The Epistemic Commons
Dr. Hrishikesh Joshi, Bowling Green
October 4, 2022
Dr. Hrishikesh Joshi works on issues at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE). He is interested in distributive justice, public choice theory, and the moral and epistemic upshots of partisanship and political polarization. Currently, he is working on a book project that applies PPE tools to analyze the ethics of speaking one’s mind. Joshi also works in ethical theory and metaethics, particularly on moral worth, personhood, and the sources of normativity. Dr. Joshi is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University.
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Deflection, Value-Capture, and the Permanent Crisis of the Humanities
Dr. Chad Wellmon, University of Virginia
October 25, 2022
Dr. Chad Wellmon is a Professor of German Studies, with appointments in History and Media Studies, at the University of Virginia. He is also the co-director of UVA’s New Curriculum and Principal of Brown College.
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Liberal Learning and Love of Truth
Dr. Jennifer Frey, University of South Carolina
November 8, 2022
Dr. Jennifer Frey earned a B.A. in philosophy and medieval studies (with a classics minor) at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. Before teaching at the University of South Carolina, she was a junior fellow in the Society of the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago and a Collegiate Assistant Professor of the Humanities.
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The End of Moral Philosophy
Dr. Vanessa Wills, George Washington
November 29, 2022
Dr. Vanessa Wills is a political philosopher, ethicist, educator, and activist based in Washington, DC. She is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The George Washington University. Her areas of specialization are moral, social, and political philosophy, nineteenth-century German philosophy (especially Karl Marx), and the philosophy of race. Her research is informed by her study of Marx’s work and focuses on how economic and social arrangements can inhibit or promote the realization of values such as freedom, equality, and human development.
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2021 Fall Lecture Series: Buddhism as Philosophy
In recent years, the study of Buddhist philosophy has moved from its traditional homes in Religious and Area Studies into departments of Philosophy. This lecture series will explore the “philosophical turn” in the field through the works of some of its more influential practitioners and an exciting group of young scholars who are just entering the field. Topics will include Buddhist epistemology and the philosophy of mind, controversies with rival philosophers, and the relationship between philosophy and the path to nirvana.
The Golden Age of Philosophy in the Monastery of Vikramasila c. 1000 C.E.
Parimal Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Parks and Wholes: Madhyamaka Mereology and the Argument for Emptiness
Jan Westerhoff, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy, Oxford University
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Candrakirti’s Insight and Santideva’s Practical Wisdom: Two Mahayana Approaches to Awakening
Amber Carpenter, Associate Professor in Humanities (Philosophy), Yale-NUS College, Singapore
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Madyamaka Metaphysical Indefinitism
Alisson Aitken, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Is the Buddha’s Teaching Authoritative?
Rosanna Picascia, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Swathmore College
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
Can a Tantric Initiation Convey Knowledge?
Davey Tomlinson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
2019-2020 Lecture Series: Wisdom and Transformation?
Can philosophical insight change the way we live? If so, how? What are the limits of self-knowledge? How do these limits affect our choices? These questions have concerned Western philosophers since the time of Socrates and Plato. They also have been a central concern in Buddhist reflection about the nature of a good life. This series explored these questions from different perspectives through the eyes of several talented philosophers.
Becoming a Better Person: Aristotelian Reflections
Susan Sauvé Meyer, Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania
Wednesday, September 18, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video
Courage and Experiments in Selfhood: Plato, Žižek, and Herzog
Richard Eldridge, Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy, Swarthmore College
Wednesday, October 2, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video
Transformative Religious Experience and Empathy for Future Selves
L. A. Paul, Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Yale University
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
From Aspiration to Engagement: The Moral Logic of the Bodhisattva Path
Jay Garfield, Doris Silbert Professor of Philosophy, Smith College
Wednesday, October 30, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video
Is the Mind a Tool?
Agnes Callard, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago
Wednesday, November 13, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video
On Having Self-Knowledge while Lacking Self-Understanding
Paul Katsafanas, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Boston University
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video
2018-2019 Lecture Series: Persons
To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first annual lecture series in the Institute for Philosophy and Religion, we explored an idea that was dear to the Institute’s founders, the idea of the “Person.” The Institute grew out of the movement known as Boston Personalism, a tradition that shaped Martin Luther King, Jr. and his generation of young scholars. We will ask whether this school of metaphysical speculation and moral commitment has anything to teach us today.
James’s Barking Crab: Becoming a Person in a Mechanistic Universe
David Lamberth, Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Harvard Divinity School
Wednesday, September 19, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video
Why We Matter and Why We Are: The Value and Ontology of Persons
Marya Schectman, Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois Chicago
Wednesday, October 3, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video
Personhood and Interpretations of Embodied Cognition
Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy, University of Memphis
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video
Interdependent Personhood and Relational Ethics: A Tibetan Perspective
Sarah Jacoby, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Northwestern University
Wednesday, November 7, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video
Person and Community in the Age of Anxiety
Margarita Mooney, Associate Professor, Princeton Theological Seminary
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video
The World as Person
Randall Auxier, Professor of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Wednesday, December 5, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video
Nonself as Omnipresent Interpersonalities: Tiantai’s Four Steps for Rereading Impermanence as the Eternity of All Subjective States
Brook Ziporyn, Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Comparative Thought, University of Chicago Divinity School
Friday, March 29, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video
The Demise of Personalism, the Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, and the Prospects for Turning the Tide: a Plea for Analytic Personalism
Aaron Preston, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Valparaiso University
Friday, April 12, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video