Demons at the Feast of Love: Concupiscence, Benevolence, and Transcendence | Dr. R.J. Snell

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2020

⏱️ 66 minutes

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Summary

This lecture 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).

R. J. Snell is Director of the Center on the University and Intellectual Life. Prior to his appointment at the Witherspoon Institute, he was for many years Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy Program at Eastern University and the Templeton Honors College, where he founded and directed the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good.

He earned his M.A. in philosophy at Boston College, and his Ph.D. in philosophy at Marquette University. Research interests include the liberal arts, ethics, natural law theory, Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic intellectual tradition, and the work of Bernard Lonergan, SJ.

He is the author of Through a Glass Darkly: Bernard Lonergan and Richard Rorty on Knowing without a God’s-eye View (Marquette, 2006), Authentic Cosmopolitanism (with Steve Cone, Pickwick, 2013), The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode (Pickwick, 2014), Acedia and Its Discontents (Angelico, 2015), and co-editor of Subjectivity: Ancient and Modern (Lexington, 2016) and Nature: Ancient and Modern (Lexington), as well as articles, chapters, and essays in a variety of scholarly and popular venues. He and his family reside in the Princeton area.

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Perhaps nothing is so intrinsically, instinctually celebrated, desired, and praised as love.
0:06.9	We are, many of us, like Augustine, in love with love.
0:11.8	And how could we not be? Because love really is a grand and many splendid thing, isn't it, after all?
0:19.1	And of course, more than our experience of love, we know that God is love.
0:23.6	We know that the greatest of all human virtues, the theological one of course, as well, is love.
0:29.6	And we know that the mandatim, the new and greatest commandment given to us, is to love even as God loves.
0:36.6	And so, of course, there's good reasons for us to be in love with love and to take love so seriously.
0:43.6	Still, my patience for Valentine's Day diminishes steadily the older I get. And we know that the claims made on love's behalf are oh so grand, aren't they?
0:56.5	Love, you know, makes the world go round.
1:00.4	Not only that, but even better, love covers a multitude of sins,
1:04.5	and love means never having to say you're sorry,
1:08.2	which is very convenient given that all is fair in love and war.
1:15.6	So there's no need to apologize or to confess so long as you were doing it for love.
1:21.5	On second thought, scratch that.
1:24.1	Maybe all is fair in love, but not in war, because the sages counsel us to make love but not war.
1:32.3	Wise words those. What can love in the end not do?
1:39.3	Those philosophers of all time, the Beatles, reminded us that love is all that you need.
1:47.0	We're reminded of the power of love in one of the greatest of the 80s films back to the future.
1:54.0	Love is greater than fear, and lest we forget or doubt, remember, love will find a way.
2:03.2	Love is capable even of solving the thornyest of moral issues
2:06.5	because love is love and love wins, and there is only one love.
2:11.2	Although all too sadly, love apparently wins only so long as love lasts,
	...

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