SPRING 2022 ACADEMIC SEMINARS
Ambition: Intellectual, Moral, and Political
Led by R.J. Snell
Select Fridays, 12:45pm-2:15pm
Feb 4, Feb 18, March 18, April 1, April 22
For more information on this seminar, email R. J. at rsnell@winst.org.
While a perennial human drive, ambition occupies a somewhat paradoxical place in contemporary society and the university. On the one hand, ours is an ambitious time. Politically and technologically, many people profess hopes almost inconceivable in earlier epochs, striving to alleviate human suffering and overcome scarcity, unite peoples and societies, and even fundamentally reshape human nature and possibility. Universities function with similar goals, conducting innovative research in a variety of fields while engaging in a variety of experiments in social engineering. Whether advisable or achievable, these are ambitious attempts.
On the other hand, such ambitions appear to outstrip the intellectual, existential, and political foundations needed to ground them. For instance, the university articulates egalitarian claims about social justice even as many departments in the humanities and social sciences challenge and deconstruct the social, moral, political, and philosophical systems traditionally understood to ground and support such claims. With respect to technology, many claim we have a responsibility, even a duty, to harness our new found powers for the human future, even though the usual accounts of the human good are thought suspect, or even spurious.
Our ambitions go beyond the intellectual, moral, and political resources currently available to ground and sustain them. Consequently, many in our society are anxious about ambition, with deeply skeptical (and often contradictory) views regarding ideals such as statesmanship, human flourishing, ethical ambitions, merit, freedom, truth, and education. The late Richard Rorty summarized it well, supporting what he termed ironism, attempting to accomplish our most deeply held political ambitions without ever believing them to be true or warranted.
In this seminar we study and challenge the ironism found in both society and the university, exploring the intellectual, moral, and political foundations for a healthy and reasonable ambition, including the quests for truth, free society, and purpose.
And we’ll think about death. What does ambition mean in the face of death?
All Princeton undergraduate or graduate students are warmly invited to participate.
The Brothers Karamazov
Led by Maura Shea
Tuesday Evenings, 5:30-7pm:
Feb 8, 15, 22; March 1, 15, 22 29; April 5, 19
To learn more, email Maura at mshea@winst.org.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky has been called by some “the greatest novel ever written,” and is revered by many believers, atheists, and those in between. In this seminar, we will read it together and attempt to understand why.
The story explores the implication of four brothers in the murder of their father. The plot employs a chaotic yet rigorous dialectic, in which characters must live out the consequences of their ideological, political, and philosophical commitments. As scholar Gary Saul Morson notes, “Dostoevsky, and Russian writers generally, regarded the realist novel as more than a literary form. It was a philosophical instrument capable of demonstrating truths that treatises could only assert.” Yet Dosteovsky does not merely dress up philosophical ideas in the literary garb of symbolic characters—he achieves an intense psychological realism that honors the integrity of each character and invites his readers to be not just witnesses of but participants in the drama.
Come to this seminar with a willingness to be moved, repulsed, surprised, and delighted, and to engage in honest conversations about the difficult questions demanded by a careful reading of this work.
All Princeton undergraduate, graduate students, and local young professionals are warmly invited to participate.
The Character of Anxiety
Led by R. J. Snell
Select Fridays, 12:45pm-2:15pm
Feb 11, Feb 25, March 25, April 8
To learn more, email R. J. at rsnell@winst.org.
Recent studies report that between two-thirds to four-fifths of college students report levels of anxiety severe enough to negatively impact their studies. Many college administrators note the counseling services are often overwhelmed by demand.
Ours is an anxious age—anxiety is prevalent.
By now we’re familiar with the contemporary understandings of anxiety and the resources and tools to cope. But what about earlier traditions? Cicero and other Stoics discussed anxietas, but seemed to view it as a kind of ignorance, an unreasoned fear that was best dealt with by phronesis—by virtue.
An even older account, that of Aristotle, viewed the tension of existence as joyful, as an invitation to wonder, a hint of the order of the world and our place in it.
In this seminar, we examine anxiety—not as a medical or mental condition—but from the standpoint of metaphysics—who and what are we? What is the nature of things?—and the standpoint of virtue. What are the habits and dispositions of character that best allow us to live in keeping with our own nature, our fears, and the tension of existence?
All Princeton undergraduate or graduate students are warmly invited to participate.
The Central Problems of Metaphysics
If you know just enough Aristotle or Aquinas to know you would benefit from a more careful study of the basic principles of Aristotelian or Thomistic metaphysics, please join us for this seminar. Many of Witherspoon seminars tackle big life questions—this seminar, however, will be a close and detailed study of a classic Thomistic manual by Henri Grenier. At one point, his textbook, Cursus Philosophiae, was widely used, and while manuals such as his fell out of favor, they still merit study. No previous background in philosophy is required, and the text is (mostly) user-friendly, and helpful if you’d like to understand the basics of metaphysics, the discipline all others depend upon. The topics: being, truth, cause, and God.
All Princeton undergraduate or graduate students are warmly invited to participate.
