News & Publications
A Defense of Cicero at St. John's College
FOR RELEASE: October 17, 2008
CONTACT: Patricia Dempsey 410-626-2539
Patricia.Dempsey@sjca.edu
Walter Nicgorski, professor at the University of Notre Dame, will give a lecture at St. John's College entitled "In Defense of Cicero." The lecture will be held in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium on Friday, October 31, at 8:15 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.
While defending Cicero against the claim that he is not much of a philosopher, Nicgorski notes that his lecture will consider the range of Cicero's activities and achievements beyond the writing of philosophical books. "Judgments on Cicero as a philosopher have often been bound up with and grown out of these very activities and achievements as orator, statesman, master of Latin prose and correspondent," says Nicgorski. "These activities appear to bear on Cicero's distinctive approach to the fundamental questions of philosophy and especially of moral and political philosophy. His consideration of those questions is worthy of recovery and defense because it helps us understand better his important Greek predecessors and teachers, and because it serves us in our own need to think through these questions." The lecture, he adds, will attend to certain topics and passages in the writings of Cicero, looking to him to provide his own defense.
Nicgorski received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He is a professor for Notre Dame's program of Liberal Studies as well as professor in the department of Political Science. Nicgorski's primary interests are the political thought of Cicero, the theory and practice of liberal and moral education, and the impact of Christianity on contemporary democratic theory.