Why Leisure is Necessary for Human Beings | Zena Hitz

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2019

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was offered at the University of Oklahoma on November 13th, 2018. For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/

Speaker Bio:

Dr. 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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In his autobiography, the Confessions, St. Augustine describes a fascinating moment in the process of his conversion to the Catholic faith.
0:10.7	At this point in the story, he's a successful teacher of rhetoric in Milan looking to prestigious positions in the Roman civil service.
0:26.6	He's living with his longtime conctime concubine, his living girlfriend, and their son. He has a group of close friends who really care about each other.
0:31.6	He has, in other words, everything that he wants.
0:33.6	He has success, love, friendship, conversation. He has, at this point in the story,
0:41.9	has broken or is about to break with the Manichaeans. This is a Gnostic cult, which he spent
0:48.1	many years with, teaching and studying. At this point, he's overwhelmed by the limits of human knowledge
0:54.9	and skeptical that anyone could come to know the truth about how to live.
1:01.0	So he switches, he oscillates between this skepticism
1:05.6	and his budding interest in the Catholic faith,
1:09.4	which he's been receiving through the preaching of Ambrose,
1:12.6	later St. Ambrose, who is the Bishop of Milan.
1:16.6	So here is how he describes a dialogue that he has with himself at this time,
1:21.6	and this is the bottom of the first front page of your handout.
1:26.6	Tomorrow I shall find it. That will be perfect, that's the right way to
1:30.2	live. It will be perfectly clear and I shall have no more doubts. Faustus, this is the great
1:36.6	mannequin intellectual, will come and explain everything. What great men the academic philosophers
1:42.6	were. Nothing for the conduct of life can be a matter of assured knowledge. Notice he's already oscillated back and forth between thinking he's about to find out everything and he can't know anything. Yet let us seek diligently and not lose heart. The books of the church we know not to contain absurdities. The things which seem absurd can be seen in another way which is edifying.
2:03.8	Let me fix my feet on that step where as a boy I was placed by my parents,
2:07.1	that's the Catholic Church, until clear truth may be found.
2:12.0	But where can truth be sought?
2:13.6	So there's one more oscillation.
	...

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