- This event has passed.
The Heart
Reading Group
January 17, 24, 31
A three-week reading group through The Heart just for clergy with Fr. James Brent, OP.
The group will meet over Zoom on Wednesdays afternoons (January 17, 24, 31) from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET. This group is for clergy and religious, including those currently in formation.
About the Text
In The Heart, Hildebrand is concerned rehabilitating the affective life of the human person. He thinks that for too long philosophers have held it in suspicion and thought of it as much inferior to the intellect and will, whereas in reality the heart, the center of affectivity, is just important a center of personal life as intellect and will. Hildebrand develops the idea that affectivity, rather than tending away from an objective relation to things, is in fact necessary for a fully objective relation to the world. Hildebrand also developed the important idea that the heart is “in many respects is more the real self of the person than his intellect or will.” The second half of The Heart makes the philosophical analysis fruitful for our understanding of the affectivity of the God-Man. Here readers will not only find important contributions to theology and spirituality but also an illuminating re-reading of familiar Scriptural passages.
Format
The meeting will be conducted live in Zoom. Links for the session will be sent out ahead of time.
To allow for rich discussion, the group is limited in size to a maximum of 20 participants. Once the group is full, additional registrations will be placed on a waitlist.
All participants are expected to have a copy of the text and to come prepared to each session having done the weekly reading (15-45 pages per week). The weekly reading schedule will be e-mailed to you.
Moderator
Fr. James Dominic Brent, O.P. was born and raised in Michigan. He pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies in Philosophy and completed his doctorate in Philosophy at Saint Louis University on the epistemic status of Christian beliefs according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. He has articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Natural Theology in the Oxford Handbook of Thomas Aquinas on “God’s Knowledge and Will”, and an article on “Thomas Aquinas” in the Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology. He earned his STL from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, and was ordained a priest in the same year. He taught in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America from 2010- 2014 and spent the year of 2014-2015 doing full-time itinerant preaching on college campuses across the United States. He now teaches full-time at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception.
Costs
Reading groups are free to attend.
If you are able, we invite you to make a donation to help defray the costs of organizing (reading groups cost the Hildebrand Project ~$900 for a four-week group). We are committed to making reading groups accessible to all; therefore, participation is not contingent on a donation.
Your gift support this reading group, our publications, web resources, and other events, all of which contribute to bringing the vital, life-giving witness of personalist philosophy into new and uncertain times.
Level:
Suitable for those with some philosophy background.
Readings:
Week 1: Part I, Ch 1 – 3
Week 2: Part 1, Ch 4 – 8
Week 3: Parts 2 & 3
Time:
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET