KU Leuven

Fall 2016

Aquinas in Context: Memory, Dreams and Prophecy

Profs. Robiglio & Taylor

Marquette University

Fall 2016

Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’: Five Major Issues

Fall 2015 & Spring 2016

Topic 2015-2016: Philosophical Reflections on

the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

According to Genesis (2,9 and 2,15-17) God placed in the middle of the Garden of Eden the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and God forbid Adam to eat of the fruit of the Tree on pain of death. What happens next is well known: Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, and God drives them forth because “man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (4,22). This familiar biblical story offered Jewish and Christian thinkers right into the modern period ample food for philosophical speculation. What type of knowledge was at stake in the eating of the fruit of the tree? Is it not a knowledge every virtuous person should seek to obtain? Why then did God guard that knowledge so jealously that eating of the fruit resulted in the fall of mankind, banishment from the Garden, and a life of hardship and eventual death? What made Adam and Eve succumb to the temptation to disobey God’s admonishment not to eat of the fruit. Speculating on such themes in turn brought some of the greatest thinkers of the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds to speculate on core issues in ethics (and meta-ethics) such as the origin of evil, the ontological status of evil, divine and human knowledge of evil, the relation between the intellect and sensuality, pleasure and sexuality, the ambivalent nature of human freedom, the nature of moral prescriptions. In this course we will look at a wide variety of authors who took up the task of offering a philosophical interpretation of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Grades will be assigned on the basis of class participation (including one presentation) and one paper of 5200-7000 words length. Text readings will be distributed via Toledo. The seminar is organized over two semesters. Twelve sessions are scheduled:

 

1. START Tuesday 13.10 room S from 11-13. : Introduction. Presentation of the biblical text in the light of modern exegesis; philosophy and hermeneutics (see Ricoeur: Symbols of evil); Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria

2   Friday 23.10: Greek Christian authors: Clemens of Alexandra, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus Confessor

3. Friday 20.11: The Latin tradition: Augustine (with an note on Thomas Hobbes De cive)

4. Friday 27.11 John Scottus Eriugena between the Greek and the Latin tradition

5. Friday 4.12 Maimonides: visiting seminar dr. David Wirmer (Köln)

6. Friday  11.12 Eckhardt, Spinoza

Second semester

7-8. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure on original sin

9. special problem: how does God know evil: Thomas Aquinas and the debate in later medieval philosophy

10 Hegel and Kierkegaard (and a return to Augustine)

11-12 Student presentations

 

Fall 2015

“Thomas Aquinas in Context:

Aquinas and Bonaventure

on Divine Creation and Human Knowledge”

Prof. Andrea Robiglio, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Prof. Richard C. Taylor, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI USA

Click HERE.

The Nature and Attainment of Happiness”

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven , De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Leuven,

&

Marquette University, Department of Philosophy, Milwaukee

Instructors: Prof. Richard C. Taylor (MU) & Prof. Andrea Robiglio (KUL)

richard.taylor@hiw.kuleuven.be & Andrea.Robiglio@hiw.kuleuven.be

Click HERE.

Fall 2014 KUL & MU

“Thomas Aquinas Fall 2014: The Nature and Attainment of Happiness”

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven , De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Leuven,

&

Marquette University, Department of Philosophy, Milwaukee

Instructors: Prof. Richard C. Taylor (MU) & Prof. Andrea Robiglio (KUL)

richard.taylor@hiw.kuleuven.be & Andrea.Robiglio@hiw.kuleuven.be

Click HERE.

Fall 2013 KUL & MU

“Thomas Aquinas: Metaphysics”

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven , De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Leuven,

&

Marquette University, Department of Philosophy, Milwaukee

Instructors: Prof. Richard C. Taylor (MU) & Prof. Andrea Robiglio (KUL)

richard.taylor@hiw.kuleuven.be & Andrea.Robiglio@hiw.kuleuven.be

(17 hrs of video lectures)

Click HERE.

Faculty and students at other institutions interested in auditor status should contract Prof. Taylor at Richard.Taylor@Marquette.edu or richard.taylor@hiw.kuleuven.be

For information, click HERE.

Fall 2012 MU, KUL & UP

& Spring 2013 KUL

“Thomas Aquinas: Soul and Intellect”

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven , De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy,

Institute of Philosophy, Leuven,

Marquette University, Department of Philosophy, Milwaukee

&

Universidad Panamericana, Escuela de Filosofía, Cuidad de Mexico

Graduate level  (KUL: MPhil) Fall 2012

with continuation at KUL in Spring 2013

Instructors: Prof. Richard C. Taylor (MU),  Prof. Andrea Robiglio (KUL), Prof. Luis X.López-Farjeat (Universidad Panamericana)

richard.taylor@hiw.kuleuven.be, llopez@up.edu.mx,  Andrea.Robiglio@hiw.kuleuven.be

(13 hrs of video lectures available)

Click HERE.

Fall 2011 KUL

“Aquinas and the Arabic Philosophical Tradition on ‘creation’”

De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy,

Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

MA level  Fall 2011

Instructors: Prof. Richard C. Taylor (MU) & Prof. Andrea Robiglio (KUL)

richard.taylor@hiw.kuleuven.be & Andrea.Robiglio@hiw.kuleuven.be

(video lectures under revision)

Click HERE.