Santa Fe Events
Lectures
Spring 2010
Special Lecture
Santa Fe Council on International Relations
A Special Time in the Special Relationship—The United States and Great Britain
March 16, 2010, 4 - 6 p.m.
Lynne Olson, freelance writer and former correspondent
Co-sponsored by Santa Fe Council on International Relations and St. John’s College.
Following her presentation, Olson will join in a panel discussion with Stanley Cloud and Mike Peters of St. John’s College, moderated by John Andrews. The panel will entertain questions from the floor.
Lynne Olson has been a reporter and writer since shortly after her graduation from the University of Arizona. She worked for the Associated Press in the U.S. from 1971 to 1973 and in 1974 became AP’s first woman correspondent in Moscow. In 1977 Olson joined the Washington bureau of the Baltimore Sun, where she covered national politics and eventually the White House.
Dean's Lecture and Concert Series
Please join us for the Spring 2010 Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series. Following are descriptions of the lectures slated for January and February. Lectures are free and open to the public; evening lectures are held in the Great Hall at 8 p.m., and afternoon lectures are held in the Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center, starting at 3:15 p.m.
Evening Lectures
Uncommon Sense: Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II on Law
Friday, February 26, 8 p.m.
Great Hall
Rev. Michael Sweeney, O.P., President, Dominican School of
Philosophy and Theology
This lecture concerns the treatment of law in Thomas Aquinas and its application in the work of John Paul II. Rev. Sweeney proposes that many, both Catholics and others, have appropriated the scholastic understanding of law through an enlightenment filter, with the consequence that key ideas in St. Thomas (the common good, natural law, conscience) have been poorly understood and improperly applied. John Paul II sought to retrieve and represent the insights of St. Thomas.
Willa Cather's Sheltering Art
Friday, March 5, 8 p.m.
Worrell Lecture
Great Hall
John J. Murphy, Professor of English Emeritus, Brigham Young University, and Board of Governors, Willa Cather Foundation
This lecture focuses on Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) as the major component in Cather’s response to the materialistic crises of the 1920s and 1930s. Neither a tourist book nor a condescending mural of Hispanic and Native life, Cather’s “Santa Fe” narrative became part of a serious and developing art project to create from Medieval materials an idealized, well-ordered spiritual world—much as Henry Adams had in Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)—to serve as a refuge from Anglo-American capitalism.
This lecture is being presented by St. John’s College as part of the city-wide celebration of Santa Fe’s 400th Anniversary.
Aristotle's Politics: Common Good and Forgotten Excellence
Friday, April 2, 8 p.m.
Great Hall
Janet Dougherty, Tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe
The human is problematic, both in the sense that it is hard to define and in the sense that humans are drawn in opposing directions. In his Politics, Aristotle calls attention to the middleness of humans. We are neither beasts nor gods. We are the beings who care about justice and thus enter into conflicts over the meaning of justice. Politics is the realm in which these conflicts arise and in which they can be moderated. The virtues that arise in the process of moderating human conflicts constitute the most characteristically human excellence, the largely forgotten excellence of the citizen. Contemporary politics gives us very little sense of the activity that characterizes the Aristotelian polity, the most political regime. This lecture will show how Aristotle’s Politics can help to make more intelligible the problematic character of the human.
Marriage, Plots: Comedy and Tragedy in Much Ado About Nothing and Othello
Friday, April 9, 8 p.m.
Worrell Lecture
Great Hall
Emily Rena-Dozier, Tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe
A simple way to distinguish between comedy and tragedy is to note that a comedy ends in marriage, while a tragedy ends in death. But are the two so different after all? Shakespeare presented Much Ado About Nothing, a witty comedy ending with multiple marriages, in 1598; six years later, he presented Othello, a nihilistic tragedy ending with multiple murders. The two plays have nearly identical plots.
What point was Shakespeare making by setting out one plot two times with two very different conclusions? When we set Much Ado About Nothing beside Othello, what is revealed about the nature of plots and plotting, the connections between marriage and death, and the structure of comedy and tragedy?
Some Reflections on the Phenomenon of Beauty
Friday, April 16, 8 p.m.
Great Hall
James Carey, Tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe
Beauty is generally understood to be something that pleases. It does not follow, however, that beauty must be construed as a mere subclass of the pleasant. The Greek adjective, kalos –e–on, which in some contexts means “beautiful,” in other contexts means “noble,” even “morally noble.” The connection of beauty with pleasure, on the one hand, and with moral nobility, on the other, will be the main theme of this lecture. James Carey will sketch the major philosophical attempts—ancient, medieval, and modern—to shed light on these connections. Some observations and arguments made by Kant in the Critique of Judgment will loom large in the lecture, but no prior familiarity with Kant will be presupposed.
Wealth, Virtue, and Corruption: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy
Friday, April 30, 8 p.m.
Great Hall
Lauren Brubaker, Tutor, St. John’s College
Adam Smith was well known for his book on moral philosophy, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), long before he published Wealth of Nations (1776). If one only knows Smith from reading or hearing about his economics, one does not really know this important intellectual founder of modern commercial society. His moral philosophy emphasizes the role of sympathy (putting ourselves in the place of another) and what he calls the “impartial spectator” in forming our moral judgments. In the best case we are lead to the virtues of prudence, justice, benevolence, and self-command by our natural social interactions. Nevertheless, Smith describes two major sources of the corruption of our moral sentiments: our “disposition to admire the rich and the great,” and civil and religious “faction and fanaticism.” Do our natural sentiments need some human help? What kind of help?
Afternoon Lectures
Machiavelli's Desire
Wednesday, March 31, 3:15 p.m.
Junior Common Room
J. Walter Sterling, Tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe
Machiavelli’s new politics, as seen in his Prince, is based on a new interpretation of the public and the private. One must suppress the conscience, or the morality of private life, in order to do what is politically necessary. On the other hand, one must recognize that no political actors are disinterested; i.e., private desire is an ineradicable political force. How do these matters appear when we look to Machiavelli’s comedies, Mandragola and Clizia? Might these works address more directly Machiavelli’s understanding of the private sphere and of the psychological roots of his politics?
Thinking on Thinking
Wednesday, April 14, 3:15 p.m.
Junior Common Room
Robert Richardson, Tutor Emeritus, St. John’s College, Santa Fe
There is a widespread and longstanding view that we are embodied thinkers--a spirit, soul, or mind housed in a body. In this lecture, beginning with a glance at this opinion as expressed in Plato’s Phaedo and moving on to consider another articulation of it drawn from the Upanishads, Robert Richardson will undertake to loosen the hold this picture has on our way of seeing ourselves.
Hans Jonas on the Meaning of Morality in a Technological World
Wednesday, April 28, 3:15 p.m.
Junior Common Room
Topi Heikkerö
This lecture introduces Hans Jonas’s (1903–1993) thinking on morality in a techno-scientific civilization. In his Imperative of Responsibility (1979), Jonas observed that technological advances call for a new kind of ethic, since technologically enhanced human actions possess a novel scale of causal reach. Furthermore, genetic technology may enable humans to transform their own character. Jonas’s new ethic to address these issues, however, faces fundamental hurdles. The foundation of morality has become weak due to the same techno-scientific development, and in light of scientific rationality, ethics appears an arbitrary and not a truly rational pursuit. Drawing on his earlier work in The Phenomenon of Life (1966), Jonas attempted to ascertain a non-arbitrary basis for morality in the inherent purposefulness that he found in organic being.
View an archive of past lectures here.