Friendship and the Digital Age: A Thomistic Reflection on Human Connection – Prof. Joshua Hochschild

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prof. Joshua Hochschild argues that digital culture reshapes friendship and attention through Curiositas and acedia, offering a path of renewal by cultivating virtue, mindful leisure, and rooted communal belonging.

This lecture was given on November 5th, 2025, at John Hopkins University.

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About the Speakers:

Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Keywords: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics, Attention and Technology, Common Action and Solidarity, Curiositas and Acedia, Digital Age, Friendship and Human Flourishing, Leisure and Attention, Trustworthiness and Integrity, Virtue Cultivation in College Life, Virtue Ethics in Friendship

Transcript

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0:00.0	College students are struggling to find Christ in a culture that rejects God.
0:04.5	They need the Christmas message of hope and truth now more than ever.
0:08.2	Thanks to a generous matching gift, every dollar you give to the Thomistic Institute before December 31st will be doubled,
0:14.9	so your gift will touch twice as many souls.
0:18.1	You can give the greatest of all gifts by sending the light of Christ to students
0:22.5	aching for truth. Please use the link below or go to to mystic institute.org slash donate to give
0:28.7	today.
0:32.5	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast. Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church,
0:39.7	and the wider public square.
0:41.7	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute
0:46.2	chapters around the world.
0:48.1	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at tomistic institute.org.
0:53.9	Friendship and the digital age, a to mystic reflection on human
0:57.9	connection. In fall 2008, when many current college students, any of you, were four, three, two,
1:08.6	or maybe even only one years old.
1:11.5	I taught a class called Love and Friendship.
1:14.8	It was a 400-level philosophy class, and the course description read in part,
1:20.3	from Plato to John Paul II, love has been considered one of the most significant themes of philosophical reflection,
1:27.0	linked to the concerns of ethics, the nature of the human person, politics, and theology,
1:31.7	evoking our basest passions and highest aspirations, perhaps no theme is more central to the human condition.
1:39.4	The readings included texts from classical and modern authors, philosophers, theologians, and novelists, and it attracted college students and seminarians.
1:49.8	Conversations in class were spirited, challenging, and most of all fun. Fittingly, it was one of those classes that feels like a little community.
	...

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