March 2021 Online High School Seminars
The Witherspoon Institute is pleased to offer new online seminars for high school students. During this unprecedented time, many young people are finding their education disrupted. We are offering opportunities for students to enhance their education this year by exploring deep questions on love, the political order, death, and more with the help of great thinkers.
Nasty, Brutish, and Short: The Need and Nature of Law
In this seminar, we’ll examine the thought of Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Aquinas. For one, nature is essentially lawless, or at least the state of nature is violent and requires the force of law to bring an end to violence. For the other, nature is always ordered, and law is a reasonable direction towards peace and human fulfillment. Which vision is correct?
Click the button below to submit a brief application. Applications are due at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on February 19, 2021. A registration fee of $25 will be required of accepted students to reserve their place in the seminar.
When you reach the Submittable page by clicking the button below, be sure to choose March 2021 Online High School Seminar Application.
Led by
R.J Snell, Director of Academic Programs, The Witherspoon Institute
7:00pm – 8:20pm
Tuesdays: March 9, 16, 23
Format: Online, Zoom
Open to current juniors and seniors in high school
Thornton Wilder and the Purpose of Literature
‘Why did this happen to those five?’ If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.
Anton Chekhov says, “The business of literature is not to answer questions, but to state them fairly.” Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, stands out among its “lost generation” peers as plumbing the experience of human suffering without succumbing to either nihilistic despair or superficial sentimentalism. Yet in the story’s very simplicity, it resists interpretation. A bridge collapses, plunging the five travelers walking on it to their deaths, and a Franciscan monk who witnesses the collapse sets out to research each of the victim’s lives in order to uncover the hand of Providence, discover the reasons behind this event, and thereby “justify the ways of gods to man.” But his research does not yield him the answers he was expecting.
In this seminar we will read Wilder’s beautiful but troubling short novel and investigate the role of literature in examining the questions of human life. Should stories assume a didactic role, extolling virtue and condemning vice? Does literature have anything to say about human life and destiny that philosophy does not? Or are we better off banishing the poets from our city, like Plato recommends in The Republic?
Click the button below to submit a brief application. Applications are due at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on February 19, 2021. A registration fee of $25 will be required of accepted students to reserve their place in the seminar.
When you reach the Submittable page by clicking the button below, be sure to choose March 2021 Online High School Seminar Application.
Led by
Maura Shea, The Witherspoon Institute
7:00 PM – 8:20 PM
Wednesdays: March 10, 17, 24
Format: Online, Zoom
Open to current juniors and seniors in high school
Faith and Reason in Thomas Aquinas
Are faith and reason in conflict with one another? What is the nature of trust and belief? Should we “believe science” and take it as the last word on truth, or can it coexist with religious belief? These two kinds of trust, first in natural reason, second in religious revelation, and their relationship are the subjects of this seminar. We will read excerpts from the works of Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the most important medieval philosopher and theologian, who explains how faith and reason interlock and support each other. We will also touch on other crucial aspects of his exemplary thought which, together with his treatment of faith and reason, will lay the foundation for students’ further study of both philosophy and theology.
Click the button below to submit a brief application. Applications are due at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on February 19, 2021. A registration fee of $25 will be required of accepted students to reserve their place in the seminar.
When you reach the Submittable page by clicking the button below, be sure to choose March 2021 Online High School Seminar Application.
Led by
Joaquim Brooks, The Witherspoon Institute
7:00pm – 8:20pm
Thursdays: March 4, 11, 18, 25
Format: Online, Zoom
Open to current juniors and seniors in high school
