Philosophy Episodes

June 30, 2025

Free Will and the Brain | Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

Fr. Anselm Ramelow explores the philosophical and scientific debates surrounding free will, examining cultural attitudes, neuroscience experiments like Benjamin Libet's, and the necessity of free will for rational thought and...

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June 27, 2025

Could God Weep or Feel Pain? Christ's Assumption of Human Suffering f…

Prof. Paul Gondreau explores whether God could truly experience human emotions and suffering by examining Christ’s full humanity, the Church’s response to heresies like docetism and monophysitism, and the Aristotelian-Thomist...

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June 25, 2025

Is Anything More Tortuous than the Human Heart? I Prof. Steven Jensen

Prof. Steven Jensen analyzes the complexity of the human heart by distinguishing the interplay between emotions and will, drawing on Aquinas and Aristotle to explain how passions like love, desire, sorrow, anxiety, guilt, vai...

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June 24, 2025

Pope John Paul II's Salvifici Doloris I Prof. Gina Noia

Prof. Gina Noia explores Catholic teaching on medical treatment decision-making, focusing on how suffering, prudence, and the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means inform ethical choices in end-of-life care, eu...

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June 23, 2025

Suffering and End-of-Life Care I Prof. Gina Noia

Prof. Gina Noia explores Catholic teaching on end-of-life care, suffering, and medical treatment decision-making, highlighting the nuanced distinction between morally obligatory and optional treatments within the Catholic eth...

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June 13, 2025

The Convertibility of Being and Goodness | Prof. Thomas Ward

Prof. Thomas Ward explores the Thomistic concept of the convertibility of being and goodness, examining how the privation theory of evil and the essential natures of things underpin the intrinsic goodness of all that exists, ...

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June 11, 2025

A Method for Metaethics | Prof. Candace Vogler

Prof. Candace Vogler analyzes the concept of the highest good in metaethics, comparing the views of Mill, Kant, and Aquinas, and explores how the pursuit of the highest good shapes moral philosophy and practical reasoning. Th...

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June 10, 2025

How Could a Good God Allow Horrible Diseases? | Prof. Stephen Meredith

Prof. Stephen Meredith examines why a good and all-powerful God would allow horrible diseases, weaving together scientific explanations, philosophical arguments from figures like Boethius and Aquinas, and personal anecdotes t...

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June 9, 2025

Evil as Privation | Prof. Thomas Ward

Prof. Thomas Ward explains the classical Christian theory that evil is not a real entity but a privation of goodness, drawing from thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, and Boethius to address philosophical and theological challe...

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June 5, 2025

Wonderment, Contemplation, and Friendship with God | Fr. Cassian Derb…

Fr. Cassian Derbes explores how wonderment, contemplation, and friendship with God are essential to the Christian life, drawing on insights from Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and literary works such as A River Runs Through...

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June 2, 2025

Key Principles for a Happy Life | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Fr. Gregory Pine explores the principles for a happy life by drawing on Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, focusing on the concept of beatitude as the fullness of flourishing rooted in the nature of God and human beings. ...

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May 30, 2025

What Happens After Death | Prof. Jeffrey Brower

Prof. Jeffrey Brower defends Aquinas’s hylomorphic account of human nature, arguing that the soul, as the body’s substantial form, ensures metaphysical unity while allowing for postmortem survival, offering a coherent alterna...

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May 23, 2025

How Is My iPhone Changing Me? | Prof. Joshua Hochschild

Prof. Joshua Hochschild analyzes how smartphones and digital technologies reshape our brains, habits, and sense of self by leveraging neuroscience and AI-driven behavioral design, warning that these tools commodify our attention, erode agency, and pose deep spiritual and ethical challenges that dem…

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May 22, 2025

Transhumanism: The New Eugenics | Prof. Steven Jensen

Prof. Steven Jensen critically examines transhumanism as a new form of eugenics, arguing that the pursuit of human enhancement through technologies like genetic engineering and brain-computer interfaces repeats the ethical pitfalls of historical eugenics by neglecting the importance of human nature…

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May 21, 2025

What Can We Learn from Aquinas About AI? | Prof. Gyula Klima

Prof. Gyula Klima uses Aquinas’ philosophy of mind to argue that human intelligence, rooted in immaterial universal concept formation, is metaphysically distinct from artificial general intelligence (AGI), though AGI can still serve as a powerful tool for enhancing human understanding and life.

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May 20, 2025

Ought I Use AI Assisted Writing? | Fr. Ambrose Little, O.P.

Fr. Ambrose Little examines the philosophical and ethical implications of AI-assisted writing by drawing on Plato’s myth of Thoth, Aristotle, and Aquinas, arguing that while new technologies like AI can threaten essential intellectual virtues, they can also be used wisely if we seek a balanced, vir…

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May 18, 2025

The Use of Tools in a Technocratic Age: the Death of Wisdom? | Sr. An…

This lecture was given on February 20th, 2025, at University of Pittsburgh. The speaker requests that anyone interested in a summary of this talk listen to the whole thing. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at...

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May 16, 2025

Friendship and the Common Good | Prof. Adam Eitel

Prof. Adam Eitel explores the nature of friendship and the common good through the lens of Aquinas and Aristotle, emphasizing that true friendship is a mutual, habitual disposition to will and pursue the good of another through concrete sharing and fellowship.

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May 15, 2025

Friendship is a Difficult Good | Fr. Cassian Derbes, O.P.

Fr. Cassian Derbes explores why friendship is a difficult but essential good, drawing on Aquinas, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and Dante to show how hope, fortitude, and magnanimity help us overcome sloth and despair in pursuit of true friendship as a common good.

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May 14, 2025

Aquinas on Friendship and Human Excellence | Prof. Thomas Hibbs

Prof. Thomas Hibbs analyzes Aquinas’ account of friendship and human excellence, drawing on Aristotle and Tocqueville to show how friendship is a necessary, intrinsically valuable common good that addresses contemporary crises of loneliness, civic animosity, and the loss of meaningful community.

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May 13, 2025

How To Be A Good Friend: Combatting Envy And Apathy And Exercising Lo…

Prof. W. Scott Cleveland explores how to be a good friend by applying Aristotle’s philosophy of human flourishing, highlighting the importance of combating envy and apathy while cultivating the virtues of love and wisdom for lasting, meaningful friendships.

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May 12, 2025

What is Love? Plato’s Theology of the Body | Prof. Joshua Hochschild

Prof. Joshua Hochschild compares Plato’s philosophical exploration of love in the Symposium with John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, analyzing how both traditions address the unity of eros and agape, the meaning of embodied love, and the enduring questions of sexual ethics in light of Humanae Vita…

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May 9, 2025

The Metaphysics of Prayer | Fr. Stephen Brock

Fr. Stephen Brock examines the metaphysics of petitionary prayer through the perspectives of C.S. Lewis, Peter Geach, and especially Thomas Aquinas, highlighting how Aquinas’ account uniquely reconciles divine immutability, providence, and the real efficacy of prayer.

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May 8, 2025

Can Philosophical Skepticism Be Overcome? | Fr. Thomas Joseph White, …

Fr. Thomas Joseph White explores whether philosophical skepticism can be overcome by examining Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Nietzsche on metaphysical knowledge, emphasizing foundational principles like non-contradiction and identity.

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