The Order of Charity and Friendship | Prof. Erik Dempsey
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2020
⏱️ 46 minutes
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Summary
This lecture was given on October 24, 2020 as part of "The Bonds of Love" Intellectual Retreat at the University of Texas, Austin.
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About the Speaker:
Erik Dempsey (PhD, Boston College) is the Assistant Director of UT's Thomas Jefferson for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas. He completed his doctorate at Boston College in June 2007. He is interested in understanding human virtue, and the proper place of politics in a well-lived human life, the different ways in which human virtue is understood in different political situations, and the ways in which human virtue may transcend any political situation. His dissertation looks at Aristotle's treatment of prudence in the Nicomachean Ethics, and Aristotle's suggestion that virtue should be understood as an end in itself. He is currently at work turning his dissertation into a book by adding chapters which consider Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of Aristotle in terms of natural law, and Marsilius of Padua's critique of Thomas.
He grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY and graduated from Hastings High School. As an undergraduate, he attended St. John's College in Annapolis, MD where he began to study the Great Books seriously. From June 2000 until August 2001, he worked for DynCorp in Chantilly, VA, doing mathematical modeling and providing other support for the GETS program. From September 2007 - May 2008, he taught in the Herbst Program for the Humanities at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute. |
| 0:04.2 | For more talks like this, visit us at tamisticinstitute.org. |
| 0:12.0 | Those of you who know me already and those of you who are getting to know me now, I hope we'll know now, |
| 0:18.6 | that one, really the topic that interests me the most personally, |
| 0:25.1 | the one around which I've built all my teaching and my scholarship and in some ways, like my whole life, |
| 0:30.6 | is the relationship between classical thought, especially classical philosophy |
| 0:39.5 | in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, |
| 0:41.7 | and Christian thought, the kind of whole, |
| 0:44.8 | I mean, Thomas is my particular love in that field, |
| 0:48.8 | but really the whole spectrum of Christian thought, |
| 0:52.0 | biblical Christianity in the study of the Bible. |
| 0:55.0 | What that's meant for me, above all, is studying Aristotle and Aristotle's reception in the |
| 1:02.0 | Christian world, particularly in the writings of Thomas. |
| 1:07.0 | In this talk on friendship, I'm going to focus largely on that issue or that problem. |
| 1:14.7 | And while I'm going to try to bring to light certain similarities between Thomas and Aristotle, |
| 1:20.6 | I'm also going to talk a little bit about the dimensions that Thomas adds to the classical account. |
| 1:27.3 | I would say pretty self-awarely. |
| 1:30.3 | Now, if there's a name you may not all be familiar with, |
| 1:33.3 | that I wanted to make sure that I had a chance to mention at a gathering like this, |
| 1:39.3 | if only so that someday you all might go look up some of his writings. |
| 1:43.3 | That name is Ernest Fortin, father Ernest Fortin, who was an Augustinian |
| 1:49.5 | assumptionist who taught at Boston College for decades in the theology department and the |
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