The Care of the Soul

Tim Hall

Tim Hall is K-12 Social Studies Instructional Specialist for Vance County Schools. He was formerly Director of Operations and Academics of Thales Academy which one of the largest private school management organizations in North Carolina. He is the author of several textbook supplements, curriculums, standards, and several popular history texts including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World History (Penguin, 2nd edn 2012) and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Middle Ages (Penguin, 2009). He was the course administrator of the MOOC on Kierkegaard at Coursera entitled “Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity.” Some of his recent research focuses on the philosophy of Kierkegaard and non‐cognitive education which was published in a shorter form in Wiley- Blackwell’s Companion to Kierkegaard and religious literacy and diversity in education which is in development.As an educator, Dr. Hall has taught AP World History, AP European History, AP Psychology, and Medieval Studies. He has received numerous awards, including two schoolteacher studentships to Oxford University for curriculum development and research fellowships to the Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. Dr. Hall has also collaborated with the College of William and Mary in Virginia in the development of curriculum materials for the teaching of the principle of separation of church and state in American history as an extension to a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar in which he participated.

Anne Snyder

Anne Snyder is the Editor-in-Chief of Comment Magazine and the host of Breaking Ground, a collaborative web commons created in 2020 to try to inspire a dynamic cross-section of thinkers and practitioners to respond to the major crises of the year with wisdom, hope and courage. She is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and the author of The Fabric of Character: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Renewing our Social and Moral Landscape, published in 2019.

John F. Crosby

Josef Seifert

Professor Seifert received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Salzburg in 1969 and, under Professor Robert Spaemann, his habilitation from the University of Munich (Privatdozent) in 1975. He studied chiefly under Balduin Schwarz, the most distinguished German former student of Dietrich von Hildebrand, at the University of Salzburg, and under Gabriel Marcel in Paris. Already as a child (from age 3 on) he knew Hildebrand personally, because Seifert’s mother had been a student of Hildebrand in Munich and both of his parents were Hildebrand’s friends. He is the author of many books, and Europe’s leading student and teacher of Hildebrand’s philosophy.

Rabbi Mark Gottlieb

Derek S. Jefferys

Robert McNamara

Elizabeth C. Shaw

Mark K. Spencer

University of St Thomas, MN Professor of Philosophy

Research Areas: Philosophical Anthropology, Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Philosophical Theology

Dr. Mark K. Spencer, Ph.D. is a 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 2 books and over 60 papers and reviews, 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.

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.

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.