Episodes
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
Aristotle on Friendship with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
“Social connection,” wrote U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in his May 2023 “Advisory on our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” “is a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter. Throughout history, our ability to rely on one another has been crucial to survival.”
That may come as news to many modern Americans, but back in the fourth century BC Aristotle would have told you the same things. Friendship, he wrote in his Nichomachean Ethics, “is not only a necessary thing but a splendid one. We praise those who love their friends, and the possession of many friends is held to be one of the fine things of life.”
Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos recently taught The Nichomachean Ethics with our Wyoming Catholic College juniors and looking at, among other things, friendship.
Tuesday Oct 31, 2023
”Leisure the Basis of Culture” with Dr. Michael Bolin
Tuesday Oct 31, 2023
Tuesday Oct 31, 2023
Once every semester at Wyoming Catholic College, we hold an All-School Seminar. For the fall seminar, a week ago, all of our students and faculty read and discussed Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture.
Pieper wrote in 1947 in what was a devastated Germany. Everything was damaged or destroyed and workers were a vital necessity at all levels of the culture. It was a world of what he calls "total work," a world he believed would lose its soul without leisure properly understood.
Philosopher Dr. Michael Bolin attended one of student-led seminars and had this to share.
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
Aristotle’s ”Nicomachean Ethics” with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
“Every art and every investigation, and similarly every action and pursuit,” wrote Aristotle at the beginning of his book on ethics, “is considered to aim at some good. Hence the good has rightly been defined as ‘that at which all things aim’.”
We all, Aristotle contends, aim at what we believe is the good. But how do we know what is truly good? And how is it possible as he tells us, that the way to aim at the good has to do with politics?
Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos is reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics with our Wyoming Catholic College juniors. Here's what he had to say about the good.
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
”Nature and Nature’s God” with Dr. Daniel Shields
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
…[W]hatever is in motion must be put in motion by another,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas at the beginning of his Summa Theologiae, “If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.”
This proof of God’s existence is the first of five that Thomas presents at the beginning of the Summa. And while that seems simple and convincing to most of us, many scholars are certain that the proof is not at all convincing insofar as it relies on Medieval physics and cosmology.
In his new book, Nature and Nature’s God: The Scientific and Philosophical Validity of Aquinas’ Proof of an Unmoved Mover Wyoming Catholic College philosopher Dr. Daniel Shields argues that those scholars should take another look at Thomas’ argument.
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
St. Thomas on Providence with Dr. Michael Bolin
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
“We know,” St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, “that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”
Those words from St. Paul can and should comfort us. Nothing happens in our lives or our world that God does not intend to bring about good for His children. His providential care surrounds us. On the other hand, terrible things happen in our lives and in the world around us. Does God will evil? Allow evil? Maybe evil is not what we think it is?
Dr. Michael Bolin has been reading St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae with our Wyoming Catholic College sophomores considering, among other things, that “all things are governed by divine providence.”
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Philosophizing about Nature with Dr. Henry Zepeda
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Whether it’s fermions and bosoms or air, earth, fire, and water or nothing but water, the question “What is the world?” has a long history and there have been many answers.
Wyoming Catholic College freshmen discover the many answers in Philosophy 102, going on this semester. Dr. Henry Zepeda has been teaching them the philosophy of nature and the material world and I asked him why student’s journey through philosophy begins here.
Tuesday Jan 17, 2023
Pro-Life After Dobbs 2: The Arguments for Abortion Rights with Dr. Michael Bolin
Tuesday Jan 17, 2023
Tuesday Jan 17, 2023
“Usually when I debate on this topic,” said pro-life advocate Helen Alvare, “I feel like I’m behind a podium speaking French and the other person is behind a podium speaking Finnish. There’s no common ground.”
Part of the reason there is no common ground in the abortion debate is that our pro-abortion family and friends don’t understand our arguments and we don’t understand theirs.
Wyoming Catholic College philosopher, Dr. Michael Bolin allows his students to puzzle over what might be the best philosophical argument for abortion rights: Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” published in the journal Philosophy & Public Affairs in 1971—about 18 months before Roe v. Wade was decided.
Tuesday Nov 22, 2022
How and How Not to Be Happy with Dr. J. Budziszewski
Tuesday Nov 22, 2022
Tuesday Nov 22, 2022
While there may be people in this world who don’t care one way or another about happiness, it’s safe to say that most people often say to themselves, “I just want to be happy. Is that too much to ask?”
The question is how to achieve happiness if “achieve” is even the right word.
University of Texas Austin Professor of Government and Philosophy, Dr. J Budziszewski, takes on that question in a new book, How and How Not to Be Happy.
Dr. Budziszewski lectured at Wyoming Catholic College on the topic of that new book and was kind enough to join us for this podcast.
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
When Wyoming Catholic College sophomores take Theology 201: The Mystery of the Trinity, they’re typically surprised that before diving into the theology of the Trinity, they’re up to their ears in philosophy. God exists. God is unmovable. God is eternal. God is necessary. God is everlasting. God is simple.
Such considerations need to come first since without them, theology can lose the moorings it needs in the intellect and in the world as it is.
To help us understand the place of philosophy in our theology, our guest this week is the professor who teaches Theology 201: The Mystery of the Trinity, theologian Dr. Jeremy Holmes.
Books Recommended by Dr. Holmes
- Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas (Aquinas Institute Edition)
- Who Designed the Designer?: A Rediscovered Path to God's Existence by Michael Augros
- Aquinas: An Introduction to the Life and Work of the Great Medieval Thinker by F. C. Copleston
- Aquinas (A Beginner's Guide) by Edward Feser
- A Summa of the Summa by Thomas Aquinas and Peter Kreeft
Tuesday May 03, 2022
Leadership and ”The Abolition of Man” with Dr. Travis Dziad
Tuesday May 03, 2022
Tuesday May 03, 2022
In his book, After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, Fr. Michael Ward writes that Lewis in The Abolition of Man, “defends the objectivity of value, pointing to the universal moral ecology that all great philosophical and religious traditions have acknowledged as self-evident.” Self-evident, that is, until just recently.
Today the idea that there might be a “universal moral ecology” seems unthinkable. My truth is my truth; your truth is your truth and good is whatever I define good to be.
Believing that ideas have consequences and having an ability to reason from premises to conclusions, C. S. Lewis saw the danger and in The Abolition of Man issued a firm warning.
Dr. Travis Dziad recently taught The Abolition of Man in his sophomore leadership course.