Is There a Human Nature? | Prof. Michael Gorman

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2019

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This talk was offered on February 16th, 2019 at Princeton Theological Seminary. It was one of the talks offered at the "Faith, Science and Nature Conference" co-sponsored by the Thomistic Institute, the Scala Foundation and PTS.

For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1

Speaker Bio:

Michael Gorman is Ordinary Professor of Philosophy at CUA. He received a doctorate in philosophy from SUNY Buffalo and a doctorate in theology from Boston College. He is also a scholar in the Templeton Virtue Project and a fellow of CUA's Institute for Human Ecology. He recently published a book, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union, published by Cambridge University Press.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The question I have been asked to address is, is there a human nature?
0:06.4	Surprise, surprise, I'm going to say yes.
0:12.6	Sorry, I'm just spoiled the plot.
0:15.3	But saying yes isn't enough, as I will try to make clear, we could say yes to the idea of human nature, but still
0:23.8	have an inadequate account of it. We need to have an adequate account, an adequate conception.
0:31.1	And by that, I mean, I'll explain more below, pretty much the conception that normal people
0:37.4	have,
0:38.4	conception of ourselves as rational animals with free will and so forth.
0:44.7	Having an adequate conception of human nature
0:47.7	turns out to require some serious metaphysical commitments.
0:52.3	Commitments that have, at least to some people, seemed questionable in light questions
0:58.1	raised by modern science since the 17th century.
1:02.0	To discuss all this in one short lecture, I'll have to cover a lot of ground.
1:07.6	That will mean skipping on the technical details and sketching things out in broad
1:12.7	strokes. Putting it differently,
1:16.0	what I
1:16.3	will be saying
1:18.6	will be rather short on the giving
1:20.6	of arguments and rather long
1:22.6	on the making of connections.
1:24.5	I hope that's okay.
1:26.4	Anyway, it's what I'm going to do.
	...

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.