What better way to celebrate the liturgical memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas than to attend the Aquinas Lecture at the University of Dallas with Alain de Libera from the University of Geneva?

Here are the details. See you there!

2008 Aquinas Lecture, “When did the ‘Modern Subject’ Emerge?”
by Alain de Libera, University of Geneva, Switzerland

January 28, 2008 – February 1, 2008
7:30 p.m.
Lynch Auditorium

Reception to follow in Gorman Faculty Lounge.

This is a public lecture that will also include a student discussion and three seminars:

Tuesday, January 29th, 5:00 p.m., Braniff 201
Wednesday, January 30th, 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Gorman Faculty Lounge
Thursday, January 31st, 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Gorman B
Friday, February 1st, 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Gorman Faculty Lounge

Lecture Information:

This wide-ranging lecture deconstructs the historiographical myth that sees Descartes as the creator of the “modern subject.” It argues that subjectivity, understood as the idea of some “thing” that is both the owner of certain mental states and the agent of certain activities, is a medieval theological construct, developed in connection with such problems as that of the two wills in the incarnate Christ. The lecture will discuss Thomas Aquinas’s and Peter Olivi’s treatment of this problem as well as the principle invoked to resolve it. Against this background, the lecture analyzes “attributivism,” which has for a long time been the prevailing model of subjectivity and personhood in modern philosophy, and reappraises the Lockean and Leibnizian contributions to the history of the Self.

For more information, please phone the UD Philosophy Department at 972-721-5161.