Aquinas on the Moral Development of Friendship | Prof. Craig Titus

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2020

⏱️ 68 minutes

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Summary

The full title of this lecture is "Aquinas on the Moral Development of Friendship: Love as a Contribution to Mental Health Practice." It was given at a conference on "Love, Friendship, and Happiness," co-sponsored with the Scala Foundation and the Aquinas Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary on February 15, 2020. This conference featured Prof. Erika Kidd (University of St. Thomas), Prof. Craig Titus (Divine Mercy University), Prof. Anna Moreland (Villanova University), and Dr. RJ Snell (The Witherspoon Institute).

Speaker Bio: Dr. Craig Steven Titus, S.T.D., Ph.D teaches the integration courses pertaining to the nature of the human person; practical reason and moral character; and marriage and family life at Divine Mercy University. In addition to these areas, his research interests include virtue theory, emotional and moral development, psychology of virtue, and the integration of psychological sciences, philosophy, and theology.

His book, Resilience and the Virtue of Fortitude: Aquinas in Dialogue with the Psychosocial Sciences (CUA Press, 2006), sets up a dialogue between virtue theory and the psychological research on resilience and overcoming difficulty. He has published numerous articles. He is co-editor of The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology (CUA Press, 2005) and editor of nine other books.

Dr. Titus previously worked as Researcher and Instructor at the University of Fribourg, where he served as Vice-Director of the St. Thomas Aquinas Institute for Theology and Culture and Vice-Director of the Servais Pinckaers Archives.

For more information on this and other events go to thomisticinstitute.org/events-1

Transcript

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0:00.0	So what I'd like to do today is actually speak to the title that Father Gregory mentioned,
0:06.2	but also perhaps tweak it at the same time.
0:09.7	Because in doing the paper, I actually realized in writing the paper for you,
0:12.7	I realized that empathy was becoming more and more the theme.
0:16.8	And so in the dialogue section between Aquinas' understanding
0:21.6	of friendship and flourishing,
0:24.6	I was originally thinking of, including,
0:27.6	from the psychological sciences, attachment theory,
0:31.6	the theory of forgiveness as a technique in therapy,
0:36.6	as well as empathy.
0:38.3	But then I realized you can only do so much to do it well.
0:42.3	So what we're going to do is go a little bit deeper in empathy
0:45.3	and make some connections with the other important aspects
0:50.3	of our embodiedness that are found through the psychosocial sciences
0:57.0	relating to friendship.
0:59.0	And so I do, I've kept friendship and I've kept happiness, included more clearly empathy.
1:07.0	And as I was saying, the focus will be a dialogue, Aquinas and psychosocial research on friendship,
1:14.7	love, and empathy.
1:17.4	It is a start, if you will, of a new research project, of a continuing research project
1:21.7	that's also somewhat new, in which there is this connection between Aquinas' thought which represents
1:31.6	for us today a classic understanding of love, charity, and friendship, along with the
1:38.2	psychosocial theory and mental health practice that contribute reflections on the
	...

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