2020-2021 FOR-CREDIT COURSES

Fall

PHIL 20004/FNDL 20004 Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Physics

In the Physics, Aristotle lays out the basic concepts and principles governing his thought about physical reality. His approach is both philosophically sophisticated and quite different from that of modern science. We will work through substantial selections, especially from Books I-IV and Book VIII, with the help of Aquinas’s expositions, which make them more digestible without diluting them. Topics to be treated include the principles of change, matter and form, the concept of nature, causality, teleology, motion, the infinite, place, time, the duration of the physical world, and the primary mover.

 

Led by Fr. Stephen Brock

Spring

PHIL 23402/FNDL 23404 Augustine’s Confessions

We will study this work in its entirety, chiefly from a philosophical point of view.  The more popular, more autobiographical Books (I-IX) already offer a good deal of philosophical material; themes treated include the will, friendship, good and evil, knowledge, truth, incorporeal reality, and divine providence.  Then come the more impersonal Books (X-XIII), which present extended and sometimes impassioned inquiries into the natures of memory, time, eternity, and creation.  Latin would be helpful, but it is not required. (A)

Students with majors other than Philosophy or Fundamentals need the permission of the instructor.

Led by Fr. Stephen Brock

PHIL 21514/31514 What is So Good about Virtue?

Virtue is a central concept in many traditions of moral philosophy. What is its relation to notions such as action, practical reason, norm, obligation, goodness, happiness, pleasure? Why not put any of these other notions first in one’s ethical thinking? – The answer is to be found in a unique contribution that virtues, as dispositions of the human will, make to what we are, and what we are conscious of being.

Led by Anselm Mueller.