Growing In Faith And Intellect Through The Liberal Arts | Prof. Zena Hitz

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2019

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This talk was given at the United States Naval Academy on 5 November 2019.

Zena Hitz is a Tutor at St. John's College where she teaches across the liberal arts. She is interested in defending intellectual activity for its own sake, as against its use for economic or political goals. Her forthcoming book, Intellectual Life, is rooted in essays that have appeared in First Things, Modern Age, and The Washington Post. Her scholarly work has focused on the political thought of Plato and Aristotle, especially the question of how law cultivates or fails to cultivate human excellence. She received an MPhil in Classics from Cambridge and studied Social Thought and Philosophy at the University of Chicago before finishing her PhD in Philosophy at Princeton.

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

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	How do the liberal arts help a person to grow in faith?
0:05.0	And how can a person dedicated to other tasks by profession or by calling pursue the liberal arts?
0:12.0	Now along the way obvious I have to explain something about what the liberal arts are.
0:16.0	It may not be obvious and I may have a distinctive view of it.
0:19.0	So if we think of the following question,
0:21.6	what do the intellectual life, that is the life of the mind,
0:25.6	and the spiritual life, life with God, have in common?
0:29.6	What did they have to do with one another?
0:31.6	What would studying or reading or thinking have to do with your life with God?
0:36.6	And it's easy for professional intellectuals like myself to tread a little too heavily.
0:41.3	So just to make it clear, the cultivation of the intellect, it's not necessary for salvation.
0:46.3	We have many wonderful saints, including some of the greatest, Catherine Siena,
0:50.3	Bertadette Subaru, who didn't know how to read. But we shouldn't find a crutch or an excuse
0:57.5	in this, it seems to me, because we are in institutions of higher learning. We are currently
1:03.0	dedicated at this stage of our lives learning. And we have tons of resources, human resources,
1:08.9	books, all kinds of things to help us learn.
1:12.5	And if God gave us that opportunity,
1:14.7	it seems to me he didn't want us to waste it.
1:16.9	So a wise friend once told me that God doesn't want our work,
1:21.3	he wants our heart.
1:23.9	And that means, I think, finding a way
1:26.4	to use everything for God's sake, and that includes learning.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.