Gratitude
13th Annual Summer Seminar
June 26-30, 2023
Franciscan University of Steubenville
The person who is filled with gratitude toward God is also the only person who is truly awake.
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Gratitude
Seminar Description
In this seminar we will explore gratitude as a fundamental moral disposition without which no one can really be happy.
We are made for gratitude because we are creatures, owing gratitude to our creator for our very existence. We either accept ourselves, our own created being, in gratitude or we reject it in resentment both of ourselves and of reality.
Gratitude precludes proclamations to absolute autonomy and rejects the Promethean aspiration to complete self-creation, to become ourselves like gods.
Influential philosophical errors both old and new are marked particularly by their hostility toward gratitude. Marx’s charge to remake the world. Nietzsche’s will to power. The modernist’s self-made man. Transhumanist fantasies for worldly immortality.
Our culture today is fraught by questions about gratitude. How do we receive in gratitude the goods of our own traditions despite their evils, of which we are increasingly aware? Can we cultivate gratitude in a social-media world of envy, isolation, and self-assertion? Why should we be grateful in the midst of great suffering?
In this seminar, we will attempt to answer these questions and to offer gratitude as an antidote to other challenges, such as feelings of loneliness, resentment, envy, and the self-hatred that oppresses so many today. We will show how gratitude guards against despair, and resists the nihilist attitude that fails to see the value of anything.
Ultimately, we will propose gratitude as an essential condition of human happiness and human flourishing. In so doing, we will explore the relations between gratitude and contemplation, stewardship, and material creation; between gratitude and wonder, creativity, and invention; between gratitude and beauty, hope, and joy; and between gratitude, self-love, and the love of God.
We will draw on ideas in Sts. Augustine and Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Romano Guardini, Joseph Pieper, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II, Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand, Gabriel Marcel, Max Scheler, Roger Scruton, Russell Kirk, and many others. We will also draw on artistic expressions of gratitude, notably in poetry (e.g., Gerard Manley Hopkins) and music (e.g. Schubert).
Seminar Faculty
John Henry Crosby
Christopher T. Haley
John F. Crosby
Mark K. Spencer
Derek S. Jefferys
Robert McNamara
Matthew Shea
President & Founder
John Henry Crosby
John Henry Crosby is a translator, writer, critic, and cultural entrepreneur.
Late in 2003, searching for a life’s work that could integrate the quest for truth, the existential need for beauty, and the service of a great good, and beginning to despair of ever finding such a mission, he called Alice von Hildebrand to propose that he spend one year translating her late husband’s Aesthetics. Would she help, he asked.
She did, and her blessing transformed his one-year plan into lifelong mission that soon attracted the collaboration of others. Thus, the life’s work he had sought found him. Established in February 2004, the Hildebrand Project’s mission to renew culture has grown to encompass publications, events, fellowships, and online resources that draw on the continuing vitality of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s thought and witness.
Under his leadership, the Hildebrand Project has become the world’s leading organization dedicated to Dietrich von Hildebrand’s legacy. The Project has been supported by many leading foundations and donors, including the Bradley Foundation, Chiaroscuro Foundation, Earhart Foundation, Fieldstead & Company, Henry Luce Foundation, Luddy Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Our Sunday Visitor Institute, Papal Foundation, and the Raskob Foundation.
He was the editor of a new edition of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s The Heart (St. Augustine’s Press, 2007). He joined John F. Crosby as co-translator of Hildebrand’s major philosophical work, The Nature of Love (St. Augustine’s Press, 2009). He edited Selected Papers in the Philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand (2012), the first major volume of essays on von Hildebrand in two decades. Most recently he is the primary compiler, editor, and translator of Hildebrand’s anti-Nazi papers, My Battle Against Hitler (Random House, 2014).
His work has been featured in both popular (e.g., The Daily Beast) and scholarly publications (Logos Journal). His numerous radio appearances have taken him from PRI’s The Takeaway to the Hugh Hewitt Show. He was host of He Dared Speak the Truth, a 14-part television series on the life of Dietrich von Hildebrand, which aired on EWTN (2014).
Son of an Austrian mother and an American father, his mother tongue was German. Both his undergraduate studies in philosophy, history, and literature (2000) as well as his graduate studies in philosophy (2001) were pursued at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.
He was for many years a violinist. As a student of Daniel Heifetz, he was formed in the great violinistic traditions of Henryk Szeryng, David Oistrakh, and Ivan Galamian.
He serves as a trustee of The Personalist Project.
In 2010 he married Robin-Marie Bobak. Through their marriage—and all the more with the birth of their children Magdalene (2011), Robin (2013), John Henry, Jr. (2015), and Peter—he has found (or, again, been found by) an integration of the good, true, and beautiful far greater than any he has ever known.
Vice President & Publisher of the Hildebrand Press
Christopher T. Haley
“Only the brave return to the source.” — a favorite line from a Hölderlin poem. For Christopher, the source was beauty. Philosophy has always captured his interest, but it was beauty that was his first love, that first broke his heart (and a broken heart the Lord will not refuse, Ps. 51). After many years in school studying philosophy at St. Edward’s University (where he discovered Catholicism) ancient languages at the University of Texas (where he converted from atheism to Catholicism), and the University of Dallas (where he was introduced to Christian Personalism) Christopher misread Aristotle’s Rhetoric and decided that he needed to do something “practical;” so he began working in teaching, marketing, and politics, striking out in new areas with innovative ideas drawn from classical sources (he has a restive habit of starting new projects and companies).
But his restless soul brought him back to philosophy. He had heard of Dietrich von Hildebrand while studying St. Edith Stein at the University of Dallas, and was eagerly awaiting the publication of Hildebrand’s Aesthetics, when one day his mentor at UD suggested that he apply for a Summer Fellowship with the Hildebrand Project. So he dropped everything and applied. Now, Christopher has always had the strange practice of including his favorite poets and composers on his resume, and for once, it worked (he always knew it would!): at the Hildebrand Project, he finally found a place where a love for beauty mattered—and thus he returned to the source.
At the end of his Summer Fellowship, he was so excited about the potential of the Hildebrand Project that he refused to leave, finding clever ways to insert himself into vital operations and creating entire program areas with no one to manage them but himself. As a result, he now oversees the Hildebrand Project’s publishing enterprise, marketing, communications, and has helped pioneer a number of innovative and successful programs.
In his free time—when he gets free time—he likes to listen to classical music, write essays, ride two-wheeled vehicles, and build things. He also hosts a weekly theology symposium at a bar in his beloved state of Texas.
Senior Scholar
John F. Crosby
Prof. Crosby was himself a student of Dietrich Hildebrand. Besides writing major studies on the thought of John Henry Newman, Max Scheler, and Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, and making his own contributions to personalist philosophy, Prof. Crosby has devoted his long and distinguished academic career—first at the University of Dallas, then at the International Academy of Philosophy, and currently at Franciscan University of Steubenville—to introducing his students to the intellectual legacy of Hildebrand, and also to making Hildebrand better known in scholarly circles. Prof. Crosby was the translator of the English edition of Hildebrand’s philosophical masterpiece, The Nature of Love, and he also serves as the General Editor of all our present and future translations of Hildebrand’s works.
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Professor of Philosophy
Research Areas:
Personalism, John Henry Newman, John Paul II, Dietrich von Hildebrand
Academic Advisor
Mark K. Spencer
Dr. Mark Spencer Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Spencer fell in love with philosophy in high school when he first encountered the writings of Albert Camus and St. Thomas Aquinas. He earned his Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo, and his M.A. and B.A. from Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he first encountered the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand. He is the author of over 35 papers, mostly focusing on the nature of the human person, beauty, and God’s relations to us. In his research, he above all tries to synthesize many traditions’ approaches to these topics, drawing on the scholastic, phenomenological, analytic, and Greek Patristic traditions. Among the things he takes greatest delight in is introducing students to the insights of these traditions, so as to help them better perceive and contemplate reality, for which he finds the work of von Hildebrand an indispensable guide. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife, Susanna, and their four children. Together, they especially enjoy hiking, camping, reading novels, watching films, gardening, and homeschooling.
University of St Thomas, MN
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Research Areas:
Philosophical Anthropology, Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Philosophical Theology
Select Bibliography
“Created Persons are Subsistent Relations: A Scholastic-Phenomenological Synthesis.” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 89, Analyzing Catholic Philosophy (2015): 225-243.
“Aristotelian Substance and Personalistic Subjectivity.” International Philosophical Quarterly 55:2 (June 2015): 145-164.
“Divine Causality and Created Freedom: A Thomistic Personalist View.” Nova et Vetera 14:3 (Summer 2016): 375-419.
“The Many Powers of the Human Soul: Von Hildebrand’s Contribution to Scholastic Philosophical Anthropology,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 91:4, Special Issue on Dietrich Von Hildebrand (Fall 2017): 719-735.
“Perceiving the Image of God in the Whole Human Person,” The Saint Anselm Journal 13:2 (Spring 2018): 1-18.
“Sense Perception and the Flourishing of the Human Person in von Hildebrand and the Aristotelian Traditions,” Tópicos, Revista de Filosofía 56 (2019): 95-118.
“Beauty and Being in von Hildebrand and the Aristotelian Tradition,” The Review of Metaphysics 73:2 (December 2019): 311-334.
“Covenantal Metaphysics and Cosmological Metaphysics: An Aesthetic Critique and an Aesthetic Synthesis”, The Saint Anselm Journal 15:2 (Spring 2020): forthcoming.
“Beauty and the Intellectual Virtues in Aristotle,” in Beauty and the Good: Past Interpretations and Their Contemporary Relevance ed. Alice Ramos, (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020).
Associated Scholar
Derek S. Jefferys
Derek S. Jeffreys is a professor of Humanities, Religion and Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. He did both his B.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He has written books on St. John Paul II, ethics and torture and ethics and solitary confinement. His most recent book is America’s Jails: The Search for Human Dignity in An Age of Mass Incarceration. Jeffreys teaches courses on love, Thomas Aquinas, ethics, ethics and punishment, evil, Dante, Buddhism, and other topics. For more than a decade he has been involved in jail and prison education, giving volunteer religion and philosophy lectures to inmates in Wisconsin’s jails and prisons. He is married and proud father of twin boys.
University of Wisconsin, Green Bay
Professor
Research Areas:
Personalism, Personalism and Violence, Personalism and Incarceration
Select Bibliography
Jeffreys, Derek S. Defending Human Dignity: John Paul II and Political Realism . Grand, Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004.
Jeffreys, Derek S. Spirituality and the Ethics of Torture. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Jeffreys, Derek S. Spirituality in Dark Places: The Ethics of Solitary Confinement. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Jeffreys, Derek S. America’s Jails: The Search for Human Dignity in an Age of Mass Incarceration. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2018.
Jeffreys, Derek S. “Personalists are not Kantians: Robert Kraynak and the Value of the Person,” Journal of Markets and Morality 7, no. 2 (October 2004): 507-516.
Jeffreys, Derek S. “Ignoring Thomistic Metaphysics: A Reply to Robert Kraynak,” Journal of Markets and Morality 7, no. 2 (October 2004): 527-531.
Jeffreys, Derek S. “Cruel but not Unusual: Derek Jeffreys on Solitary Confinement,” Commonweal, June 13, 2014: 20-23.
Jeffreys, Derek S. C-Span Book Interview on Spirituality in Dark Places: The Ethics of Solitary Confinement, September 23, 2014.
Associated Scholar
Robert McNamara
Robert is an Associate Professor of Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he teaches philosophy and theology, an associate member of faculty of the International Theological Institute and the Maryvale Institute, an Associated Scholar of the Hildebrand Project, and a founding member of the Aquinas Institute of Ireland, for which he currently holds the position of secretary. Robert was educated at the National University of Ireland Galway, where he studied physics and applied science, Maynooth University and St. Patrick’s College, where he studied philosophy and theological studies, the International Theological Institute, where he received a master’s degree in the theology of marriage and family, and Liverpool Hope University, where he completed a doctorate of philosophy detailing Edith Stein’s engagement with the thought of Thomas Aquinas in her mature philosophy of the human person. Robert is originally from Galway, Ireland.
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Research Areas:
Ethics, Moral Philosophy, Metaphysics, Personalism, Edith Stein, Thomas Aquinas (Thomism)
Select Bibliography
‘The Concept of Christian Philosophy in Edith Stein’, in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 94.2 (2020), pp. 323-46.
‘The Cognition of the Human Individual in the Mature Thought of Edith Stein’, in Philosophical News, a Publication of the European Society for Moral Philosophy, ed. Elisa Grimi, 16 (forthcoming).
‘Human Individuality in Stein’s Mature Works’, in Edith Steins Herausforderung heutiger Anthropologie, ed. by Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz and Mette Lebech (Heiligenkreuz: Be&Be, 2017), pp. 124-39
‘Essence in Edith Stein’s Festschrift Dialogue’, in Alles Wesentliche lässt sich nicht schreiben, ed. by Andreas Speer and Stephen Regh (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2016), pp. 175-94. Paper Presentations:
‘Edith Stein’s Understanding of Human Flourishing’, St. Saviour’s Symposium, Dominican House of Studies, Dublin, Ireland (2020).
‘Edith Stein’s Understanding of Human Unity and Bodily Formation’, 5th biennial International Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein (IASPES), University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany (2019).
‘Edith Stein’s Understanding of the Soul as Form of the Body’, The International Theological Institute, Trumau, Austria (2018).
‘The Cognition of the Human Individual’, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, U.S.A. (2018).
‘Individuality in Stein Reading Aquinas’, 3rd biennial International Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein (IASPES), University of Vienna, Austria (2016).
‘Essence in Husserl and Aquinas’, International Conference: ‘What’s essential can’t be written: Edith Stein’s Life and Thought as reflected in her oeuvre’, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany (2014).
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Matthew Shea
Matthew is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Boston College and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Saint Louis University. His dissertation was a defense of a relationship-centered account of human nature, human flourishing, and natural law-virtue ethics, inspired by the thought of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Prior to joining the Philosophy Department at Franciscan, he was a postdoctoral fellow in clinical medical ethics at UCLA; a lecturer at UCLA’s schools of medicine, nursing, and public health; a faculty member at the Bioethics Institute at Loyola Marymount University; and an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Scranton. Matthew specializes in moral philosophy and bioethics, and his current research focuses on value theory, natural law ethics, and the connections between theism and happiness/well-being.
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Select Bibliography
“Value Comparability in Natural Law Ethics: A Defense.” Journal of Value Inquiry (forthcoming).
“A Thomistic Solution to the Deep Problem for Perfectionism” (with James Kintz). Utilitas 34 (2022): 461–477.
“Principlism’s Balancing Act: Why the Principles of Biomedical Ethics Need a Theory of the Good.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 45:4-5 (2020): 441–470.
“The Quality of Life is Not Strained: Disability, Human Nature, Well-Being, and Relationships.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 29:4 (2019): 333–366.
“Aquinas on God-Sanctioned Stealing.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92:2 (2018): 277–293.
“God, Evil, and Occasionalism” (with C.P. Ragland). Religious Studies 54 (2018): 265–283.
Format
The seminar will be a mix of lectures, panels, conversations, and small group discussions.
Each morning will open with a keynote lecture on a core topic, followed by panel discussions exploring particular themes. After a break for mass (optional) and lunch, the afternoons will be devoted to In Conversation sessions that will address questions and challenges, followed by small group discussions facilitated by seminar faculty.
Hildebrand Project events are intellectual and convivial. Participants are sent a list of reading materials upon acceptance, which should be completed before the start of the seminar. The days are devoted to seminar sessions, while the evenings are free—and often filled with wine, music, and conversation.
Schedule
The seminar will begin with an opening dinner on June 26. Participants will depart on July 1.
Day 1: Created in the Image of God
- Keynote: The Christian Vision of Creation
- Panel: Gratitude & Worship: Prayer, Eucharist, Liturgy
- Conversation: Gratitude & Great Suffering
Day 2: The Gift of Self
- Keynote: Acceptance of One’s Own Being
- Panel: Ingratitude – Self-Hatred, Depression, & Despair
- Conversation: Promethean Choice – Transhumanism & Euthanasia
Day 3: To Give as we Receive
- Keynote: Gratitude & the Reception of Tradition
- Panel: Human Challenges to which Gratitude is an Antidote
- Conversation: Care for One Another – Stewardship & Civil Society
Day 4: The Fruits of a Grateful Life
- Keynote: Manifestations of Gratitude – Joy, Festivity, Hope
- Panel: The Role of Gratitude in Creativity, Art, and Invention
- Conversation: Closing Faculty Panel
Applying for the Seminar
The seminar is open to anyone who wishes to explore the nature and significance of character, virtue, integrity, and authenticity, including especially:
- Undergraduate and graduate students
- University and high school professors
- Artists, writers, musicians, and architects
- Teachers, educators, and administrators
- Seminarians and clergy
The application process is based on interest but subject to space limitations.
The application window ends on April 1, 2023.
You may apply online below. The application contains two short essays (300 words max), and you will add your answers there:
(1) How do you expect the Hildebrand Seminar to affect your life and work when you return home?
(2) Read this excerpt from Gratitude and comment on the relationship between gratitude and God.
We encourage faculty to nominate students to attend. Nominations will serve in lieu of letters of recommendation.
Room, Board, and Travel
The seminar will be held on the campus of Franciscan University of Steubenville, where participants will be lodged in university housing. Professional participants also have the option of staying at the Franciscan Square Inn at their own expense (there is a discounted seminar rate available). Participants will have access to the university library, internet, and other basic amenities. All costs for room and board are included in the seminar fee.
Travel to and from Pittsburgh International Airport will be provided. Parking will be available on campus for those who drive.
Costs & Scholarship Opportunities
The fee covers room, board, and reading materials for the length of the seminar. Attendees are asked to pursue all possible funding sources as fees play a critical role in making the seminars possible. Attendees whose participation is contingent on financial support may request a scholarship when applying. To be considered for a scholarship, applicants must submit a letter of recommendation or receive a nomination.
Student: $650
Professional (dormitory housing): $1,650
Professional (no dormitory housing; attendee covers hotel accommodations at the special seminar rate of $129/night): $1,250
Special rate for Franciscan University of Steubenville students: $199 (with housing) / $99 (without housing).
Sponsor the Summer Seminar
Nominate a Student to Attend
Ready to Apply?
2023 Summer Seminar Application
Gratitude