Secular Hope

Tradition describes courage, moderation, justice, and prudence as the cardinal virtues (a list going back to Plato) and faith, hope, and charity as the theological virtues (a list going back to Saint Paul). Can we conceive of hope as a virtue, as a good quality for people to have, without a theological framework — without any notion of salvation?

On February 10, 2024, the Morningside Institute hosted Dhananjay Jagannathan, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, for a discussion on the possibility of secular hope. The seminar also explored questions including: What types of despair might be damaging to our individual and social lives? Is hope simply another name for a sunny or optimistic disposition? Is hope compatible with looking squarely at the truth about the present and likely predictions about the future?

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Natality and the Counter-Tradition of Birth

Birth is one of the most fraught and polarized issues of our time, at the center of debates on abortion, gender, work, and medicine. But birth is not only an issue; it is a fundamental part of the human condition, and, alongside death, the most consequential event in human life. Yet it remains dramatically unexplored. Although we have long intellectual traditions of wrestling with mortality, few have ever heard of natality, the term political theorist Hannah Arendt used to describe birth’s active role in our lives.

On February 6, 2024, Morningside held a talk with Jennifer Banks, Senior Executive Editor of Yale University Press, on her new book revealing a provocative counter tradition of birth from Nietzsche and Wollstonecraft to Arendt and Morrison.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Language Rights and Wrongs: Originalism, Textualism, Traditionalism, or Activism?

On October 9, 2023 the Morningside Institute and the Galileo Center at Columbia Law School hosted Joshua Katz (AEI) for the last lecture in our series Language Rights and Wrongs. This series explores the relationship between world and word, honing in on ancient texts, namely Homer, Plato, and the Bible.

This evening's conversation was not about the Constitution of the United States per se but rather the things that interest comparative linguists when they read texts like Homer's Iliad. These peculiarities are related to larger and increasingly pressing issues of how to interpret words and phrases from decades, centuries, and millennia ago.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Language Rights and Wrongs: Is Language Truthful?

Does language contain truth in itself? And whether or not it does, at what level are the words we use natural, and at what level are they a matter of convention? Plato’s Cratylus provides the earliest in-depth discussion of these matters, and it turns out that we can learn something about our own linguistic problems today by considering this neglected dialogue.

On October 3, 2023, the Morningside Institute and the Galileo Center at Columbia Law School hosted Joshua Katz (AEI) for his second lecture in our Fall 2023 series Language Rights and Wrongs.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Language Rights and Wrongs: In the Beginning Was the Word?

This fall, the Morningside Institute and the Galileo Center at the Columbia Law School hosted Joshua Katz (AEI) for a three-part lecture series on the relationship between word and world. The series focused on ancient texts—namely, Homer, Plato, and the Bible—and what these reveal about the nature (or artificiality) of language.

On September 26, 2023, Dr. Katz introduced the series and led a discussion on the relationship between language and creation in a number of ancient traditions, especially the Book of Genesis but also well beyond.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Beginner's Mind with James Valentini

In his famous Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki writes, “In the Beginner’s Mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” These words have served as a guide for James Valentini during his time as a professor of Chemistry and then much-beloved dean of Columbia College. As he has developed it, the concept of beginner’s mind encourages us to put aside the judgment of others as our guide and to use self-awareness and self-reflection to formulate our own assessments of the world. It reminds each of us to consider the possibility that we might be entirely wrong in an assessment about which we feel certain, and to temper our judgment of others who have made a different assessment.

On September 27, 2023, the Morningside Institute and the Earl Hall Center for Religious Life hosted a conversation with Deantini, Szabolcs Marka (Physics), and Elaine Sisman (Music).

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Aquinas and Structural Racism

Thomas Aquinas's ethical system is framed in terms of evaluating an individual's intentional actions, which may be good or bad depending on their conformity with the natural law.  Can such a framework make sense of the notion that social structures and practices can also be just or unjust, as in the contemporary notion of structural racism?

On Thursday, February 23, 2023, the Morningside Institute hosted the John and Jean Oesterle Associate Professor of Thomistic Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Therese Cory for an online lecture. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Learning to See: Images in Theology and Philosophy

We instinctively think of images as things we create, control, and consume. But in this lecture, Prof. Thomas Pfau (Duke) argued that our encounter with images and the visible world as a whole serves as a test of our spiritual and moral condition. Following a brief overview of his recent book on this subject, Prof. Pfau's lecture considered three images in some depth: the famous Pantocrator icon from Mt. Sinai monastery; a painting by Jan van Eyck; and a portrait by Paul Cézanne.

On Wednesday, February 15, 2023, the Morningside Institute hosted Professor Thomas Pfau for an online lecture. Professor Pfau is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English at Duke University, with a secondary appointment in the Divinity School at Duke University. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Why Read Great Books?: Liberal Education in the Twenty-First Century

Are some books “great” in a way others are not? Can a core curriculum represent all the members of a university community? What should students get out of their classes in the Core? How should we justify liberal education today? These questions shaped many universities' curricula, including Columbia's Core, and today are at the center of debates about the purpose of education and the university.

On Friday, February 3, 2023, the Morningside Institute hosted a conversation between Roosevelt Montás (Columbia) and Zena Hitz (St. John’s College), moderated by Emmanuelle Saada (Columbia).

Zena Hitz is a tutor at St. John's College and the author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Roosevelt Montás directed Columbia's Center for the Core Curriculum for ten years and is the author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation.  The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

The Myth of Left and Right

As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called "left" and "right," people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis provide the surprising answer: nothing. As the authors argue, there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. Far from being an eternal dividing line of American politics, the political spectrum came to the United States in the 1920s and, since then, left and right have evolved in so many unpredictable and even contradictory ways that there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of "liberal" and "conservative."

On Tuesday, January 24, 2023, the Morningside Institute and Elm Institute hosted Verlan Lewis (Harvard, Utah Valley University) and Hyrum Lewis (Brigham Young University-Idaho) to discuss the shortcomings of the political spectrum.

Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion

Many scholars have held that Christianity created a new kind of religious belief and devotion, unlike the ritualistic, legal, and cultural religious practice widespread throughout the Roman Empire. But in a new book, Jacob Mackey (Occidental) draws on cognitive theory to argue that, despite having little to do with faith or salvation, real belief underlay every aspect of Roman religious practices and helped create and maintain Rome’s social reality. In a deep sense, no man could count as an augur and no act of animal slaughter as a successful offering to the gods, unless Romans collectively shared appropriate beliefs about these things.

The Morningside Institute hosted Professor Jacob Mackey of Occidental College on November 1, 2022. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Why Should Lawyers Represent Unpopular Clients?

In the past, a lawyer might have taken for granted, as one ABA report explained, that “one of the highest services the lawyer can render to society is to appear in court on behalf of client whose causes are in disfavor with the general public." But not today, when lawyers across the profession increasingly face boycotts, protests, and public shaming campaigns for zealously advocating on behalf of unpopular clients and causes. Are fundamental norms—including professional independence, commitment to service pro bono publico, access to justice, and the adversary system as a truth-seeking process—thereby under attack? Or is it appropriate that lawyers should be held to account in some way for the broader impact of their legal work?

The Morningside Institute and the Columbia Law School Center on Law and Liberty hosted this panel with the Hon. Richard J. Sullivan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Professor Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School, and Erin E. Murphy, Esq., Partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Clement & Murphy, LLC on October 13, 2022. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

How to Live in the Earthly City: Augustine on Loves, Lies, and the Politics of Perfection

In this talk, Prof. Veronica Ogle (Assumption University) helps us understand how Augustine sees the earthly city as parodying the city of God, a process that produces illusions and lies that entrap its inhabitants in a nihilistic dreamworld. She explores how Augustine’s critique of the earthly city uncovers the self-love and lust for domination that drove Roman thought and history. But Augustine places his unmasking of Rome’s injustice within a broader framework aimed at reorienting this self-love to a love of God. He argues that we can live in the political sphere without participating in the earthly city—as good neighbors whose purified loves make them better citizens.

Quotes referred to during the lecture:

"We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love, the earthly city was created by self-love reaching to the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self."

Augustine, City of God 14.28

"He refused to be subject to his Creator, and in his arrogance supposed that he wielded power as his own private possession and rejoiced in that power. And thus, he was both deceived and deceiving because no one can escape the power of the Omnipotent. He has refused to accept reality and in his arrogant pride presumes to counterfeit an unreality.

Augustine, City of God 11.13

“Pride is a perverted imitation of God. For Pride hates a fellowship of equality under God, and seeks to impose its own dominion on fellow men, in place of God's rule. This means that it hates the just peace of God and loves its own peace of injustice.”

Augustine City of God, 19.12

“I know how great is the effort needed to convince the proud of the power and excellence of humility, an excellence which makes it soar above all the summits of this world, which sway in their temporal instability, overtopping them all with an eminence not arrogated by human pride, but granted by divine grace.”

Augustine, City of God 1.pr

Veronica Roberts Ogle is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Assumption University. This lecture was presented at the Morningside Institute on April 19, 2022. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Ross Douthat: What Is the Common Good in a Pluralistic Society?

As our society continues to fracture, writers across the political spectrum have repeatedly invoked the classical concept of the common good. Thinkers such as Jacques Maritain and Yves Simon offered robust accounts of the common good in a pluralistic, democratic society. Yet frequently, today’s invocations of the common good dodge questions about pluralism and pass over these accounts or reject them outright. Were these earlier thinkers naïve? Do their accounts still offer us valuable insights, or were they better suited to a time that has now passed? How can we genuinely promote the common good in a society with so much disagreement about what it is? 

Ross Douthat is a New York Times Opinion columnist. This lecture was presented at the Morningside Institute on February 24, 2022. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

The Theological Framework of Secular Society — Eric Nelson

It seems as though our cultural and moral debates in America and Europe take place between a secular side and a traditional, frequently religious, side. Secular liberalism is seen as consciously moving away from religious convictions of the past toward a more fair and objective viewpoint. But some scholars argue that the framework of secular liberalism is rooted in Judaism and Christianity and still operates with their metaphysical and ethical categories—albeit in an unacknowledged way. In this talk, Eric Nelson (Harvard) explores the theological framework of secular society and the ways in which liberal thinking is inescapably religious.

Eric Nelson is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard University. This lecture was presented at the Morningside Institute on November 4, 2021. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Classical Allusions in Contemporary African American Poetry — Chiyuma Elliott

African American literature has a rich tradition of both using and discarding the classics. In the 20th century, the Black feminist poet Audre Lorde argued that, “[t]he master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” and Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was inspired by Black Arts Movement poets to de-colonize her artistic practice systematically by eschewing poetic forms and modes of European origin. In this talk, Prof. Chiyuma Elliott (Berkeley) will explore a different pole on that creative continuum: contemporary poets (herself included) for whom classical authors are key touchstones and interlocutors. She will focus on several contemporary poems about peace and violence that allude to Homer’s epics in meaningful ways, including Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Latitudes,” Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s “Even Homer Nods,” and her own Black Lives Matter poem “Dear Ilium”. Her core argument is that exploring the different ways these poems are in sustained conversation with the classics tells us something about how contemporary authors are imagining Black selfhood, American history, and what it means to belong in this nation and on this planet.

Chiyuma Elliott is Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. This lecture was presented at the Morningside Institute on November 10, 2021. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Taking Disagreement Seriously: Does Relativism Follow from Cultural Diversity? — Michele Moody-Adams

The problem of relativism has presented itself ever since Herodotus introduced his readers to the astounding variety of religious beliefs and moral judgements among human communities. Philosophers soon began to consider the proposition that there is no objective truth and falsity, right and wrong, but that all of these are products of different conventions and cannot apply beyond the contexts in which they originated. Indeed, relativism seems to be an intuitive response to the fact of cultural diversity. But it also seems to carry troubling implications for promoting justice, negotiating disagreements, and leading one's life with purpose and integrity. In this series we will consider relativism in relation to two questions. First, is relativism ultimately the reality of the human condition, or are there realities and moral norms that we can discern as objectively true? And second, is there a way to maintain robust philosophical, religious, and moral convictions in a way that navigates between relativism and ideology?

Contemporary defenders of moral relativism often cite anthropological literature for support. They contend that cultural differences among the practices of human groups are often a source of fundamental and therefore irresolvable moral conflict. In this seminar, Prof. Michele Moody-Adams (Columbia) will draw on her book Fieldwork in Familiar Places to respond to these claims.

This lecture was presented at the Morningside Institute on November 8, 2021. The lecture was briefly interrupted due to connectivity issues, and the interruptions are evident in the recording. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you will enjoy Prof. Moody-Adams’ wonderful lecture nonetheless.

Reading Augustine at a Time of Chaos — Russell Hittinger

In August 410 Alaric, King of the Goths, entered Rome with his army, and proceeded to carry out a rather impressive version of a “sack”: murder, mayhem, theft, and desecration of churches and consecrated virgins. St. Augustine, then the bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa, soon received a large number of refugees, both pagan and Christian. These refugees grumbled that Christianity failed to protect the City. After all, what are gods good for if they cannot guarantee the temporal safety and prosperity of Rome? Four months later, Augustine preached a sermon outlining the true lessons of this catastrophe. Within the next year he wrote the first of twenty-two books of the City of God, which is a blueprint for the main moral and spiritual lessons of disaster. Indeed, Book I represents one of the most profound themes of the entire work: Human history is a trial and test of the just and the unjust. The trial is best understood in a comparison of two heroes, one biblical and the other worldly. Namely, Job and Cato.

Francis Russell Hittinger is the Warren Chair of Catholic Studies and Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa. He is on the governing council of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He has been on the faculties of Catholic University of America and Fordham University, and has served as a visiting professor at Princeton University and New York University. This lecture was given at the Morningside Institute on October 27, 2021. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Plato on the Relativism of Protagoras — Katja Vogt

The Ancient Greek Sophists kickstarted moral philosophy in the West with the provocative idea of relativism: that there is no objective right and wrong. Plato formulated and refuted the relativism of the Sophist Protagoras in his dialogue Theatetus, and this engagement remains arguably the most interesting discussion of relativism in the history of philosophy. If relativism is demonstrably false, why is it still interesting? Is there still truth that we can take away from it?

Professor Katja Vogt (Columbia), a specialist in ancient philosophy and ethics, led a seminar on Plato’s discussion of Protagorean relativism for the Morningside Institute on October 13, 2021. Join us for the rest of our seminars on relativism this semester here: https://www.morningsideinstitute.org/wrestling-with-relativism. 

Resurrecting Justice: How Can a Broader Vision of Justice Heal Society's Wounds? — Daniel Philpott

It is time to rethink justice. Dominant in the West is the classic definition of justice as the constant will to render another his due. In the modern world, this definition has come to mean rights and retribution. However, based on his experience as an activist in Kashmir and the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Prof. Daniel Philpott (Notre Dame) finds this conception inadequate for reconciliation after large-scale violence and denials of dignity. By contrast, the Bible offers a broader concept of justice based on right relationship. This framework does not reject rights or punishment but includes obligations and virtues that extend beyond duty: mercy, generosity, and forgiveness. In this lecture, Prof. Philpott explores the biblical understanding of justice and the way it can bear fruit in contemporary society, including reducing our current polarization and addressing historical wounds such as racism.

Daniel Philpott is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. This lecture was given at the Morningside Institute on October 6, 2021. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.