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John Henry Newman in Four Books

It has often been suggested, and not without ample reason and evidence, that the importance of a great thinker never finds itself as potently realized during the thinker’s own lifetime. The significance of truly great thoughts, that is, take not only decades but centuries to unfold. Thus, when it is claimed that John Henry Newman will be seen as the transitional figure between the modern and post-modern ages, much as Augustine was between antiquity and the medieval, it should be recognized that this claim points not to a past recognition but one dawning at this very hour. Certainly, Newman’s work carried weight in his own time, as did Augustine’s. Will Newman’s name grow to the same greatness?

Augustine’s Confessions, like Newman’s Apologia; his City of God, like Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine; and his On Christian Teaching, like Newman’s Idea of a University, all show striking parallels between the writings of the two saints. But it is in their most systematic works that we find an even more remarkable parallel. Living a life contemporaneous with the early definitions of nature and person in theology, in On the Trinity, Augustine trained his genius on the ultimate mystery of the Triune God, easily the most challenging and the most fertile of all Christian doctrines.

Newman, living amidst the modern world’s storms of doubt and confusion, along with its celebrated, and risky “turn to the subject,” directed his attention instead to a meticulous study of the very act of faith – that movement of the human intellect that enables it to assent to such teachings in the first place. What he discovered were insights of such uncommon luminosity that not only theology, but all knowledge – of whatever type – found itself newly vindicated. By showing the role that pre-rational belief plays in every venture of human knowing, and the complexities of assent in consolidating our opinions and certitudes, he seemed to be turning epistemology on its head. The result was easily his most demanding and in retrospect his most revolutionary book: The Grammar of Assent. To this book the seminar will direct a more focused attention. Also Newman’s oft misunderstood celebration of conscience can only be grasped from within the perspectives laid open by this book.

These initial comparisons between the two saints are being made only in the interest of portraying Newman as a kind of modern Augustine. It will be suggested that what Augustine meant for the subsequent medieval centuries, Newman represents for late modernity and post-modernity. It will be his four books that will be the focus of our study. Augustine’s thought has already been folded into the fields of Christian reflection during the long 15 centuries that separate the two men’s lives. Newman’s ideas, on the other hand, are just beginning to be fully appreciated. For most of our readings, we shall follow selections chosen from each of the four works in sequence: from the Apologia, the Essay, the Idea, and the Grammar. Access to the seminar, taught by Fr. Scott Randall Paine, PhD, begins on 1 April 2023. View the syllabus here.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

10:15am ET

(World times)
Study Topics &
Readings


April
15
Lecture 1: Overview of the Life, Work and Legacy of John Henry Newman
Readings:
» [Primary] Sheridan Gilley. “Life and Writings”.
» [Secondary] Afterword to Ian Ker’s biography of JHN.
April
22
Lecture 2: Apologia Pro Vita Sua“The Story of a Mind”
Reading:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Apologia.
» [Secondary] Ian Ker. John Henry Newman: A Biography.
» [Secondary] Robert C. Christie. The Logic of Conversion: The Harmony of Heart, Will, Mind, and Imagination in John Henry Newman.
April
29
Lecture 3: Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine – From Seed to Fruit
Reading:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Essay.
» [Secondary] Bogdan Dolenc. “Newman’s Essay… Its Genesis and Enduring Relevance”.
May
6
Lecture 4: The Idea of a UniversityNewman’s Vision of Liberal Education
Reading:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Idea.
» [Secondary] Mark van Doren. “Liberal Education,” from Liberal Education.
» [Secondary] Jarislav Pelikan. The Idea of a University: a Reexamination.
May
13

BREAK
May
20
Lecture 5: Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent I Notional and Real Assent
Reading:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Grammar, Part 1: “Assent and Apprehension.”
» [Secondary] Michael Polanyi. “The Logic of Affirmation”, in Personal Knowledge.
May
 27
Lecture 6: Grammar of Assent II – The Illative Sense
Reading:
» [Primary] Further selected excerpts from the Grammar, Part 2: “Assent and Inference.”
» [Secondary] John Deely. “Knowledge” from Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine.
» L.M. Régis. “Assent or Value Judgment About the Truth of First Principles,” in Epistemology.
June
3
Lecture 7: Newman and the Conscience
Readings:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Grammar and other works.
» [Secondary] Gerard J. Hughes. “Conscience,” in Cambridge Companion to JHN.
» Bernard Dive. “Introduction” to John Henry Newman and the Imagination.
June
10
Lecture 8: Newman Today – A Church Doctor for the 21st Century
Readings:
» [Primary] Discourse and Homily for the Beatification of John Henry Newman, Pope Benedict XVI, 2010
» [Primary] Newman’s “Biglietto Speech,” 1879.
» [Secondary] Erich Przywara. A Newman Synthesis, selections.

Registration

Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, priced according to likely levels of income. If you wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the suggested rate, it is acceptable to sign up at a less-expensive level. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).

One payment covers all 8 weeks.

Registration is closed — thank you for your interest and perhaps we’ll see you in one of our upcoming seminars!

Pricing Comparison

Standard priceBasic Lyceum
Enrollment
Advanced Lyceum EnrollmentPremium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor$200 per seminar$903 seminars included
$90 after
8 seminars included
$90 after
Patron$135 per seminar$653 seminars included
$65 after
8 seminars included
$65 after
Participant$80 per seminar$403 seminars included
$40 after
8 seminars included
$40 after

Aquinas: De Veritate [Part I]

Quid est veritas? A question, doubtless, familiar to many: “What is truth?” Today, whether put into those exact words or others like them, we witness a similar disdain for beliefs that there exists a truth and that we may know it. Seldom, however does this scorn rise from genuine intellectual conviction in the posit of radical relativism or of an intellectual nihilism—such conviction warring against what it proposes to uphold. Rather, for many, the rejection of truth is born from despair mingled with vice: sloth, pride, and lust. Truth gives rise to norms, and accepting norms requires that we evaluate the quality of our actions.

Yet… all human beings, as Aristotle rightly tells us at the outset of his Metaphysics, desire to know. The despair over truth’s attainment, and the lostness to vice, are not insurmountable obstacles. While recovery from vice takes many acts of will—opting for the arduous good rather than the facile but shallow pleasure—we need truth to discern what goods are genuine, and which are false. Here, as in so many other places, we find Thomas Aquinas to be a guiding light.

Thomas Aquinas held his first series of “disputed questions”, De veritate, over the course of the three years of his first regency at the University of Paris, 1256-1259. He was then in his early thirties. The structure of the “disputation” – both live and in its published form – reflects the continual raising of questions and resolution of difficulties between teacher and students engaged together in common, probing inquiry.  This particular series of disputations, according to Aquinas’s biographer J.-P. Torrell, shows us “the genius of the young master… a genius in motion, perpetually in the act of discovery”.

Though we know this work as De veritate (On Truth), in fact Thomas and his students were occupied with two great themes: the true and the good. These two have a transcendental character: that is, each is a name for being itself, albeit under the aspect of a relation to mind (the true) or to appetite (the good). These two great themes yielded a total of 253 discussions (“articles”) ranged under a total of 29 areas of inquiry (“questions”). Access to the seminar, taught by Kirk Kanzelberger, PhD, begins on 1 April 2023.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

11:30am ET

(World times)
Study Topics &
Readings


April
15
Week 1: Being and the True I
Lecture: “Truth as communication of being and mind”
Readings:
» De Veritate (DV) 1, aa. 1-3, 5.
April
22
Week 2: Being and the True II
Lecture: “Truth and mutability, truth and falsity”
Reading:
» DV 1, aa. 6, 8-12.
April
29
Week 3: Divine Knowledge I
Lecture: “Divine knowledge as divine perfection”
Reading:
» DV 2, aa. 1-5, 8, 12.
May
6
Week 4: The Idea of a UniversityNewman’s Vision of Liberal Education
Lecture: “Divine knowledge as cause of the creature”
Reading:
» DV 2, aa. 13-15.
» DV 3, aa. 1-3.
May
13

BREAK
May
20
Week 5: Human Cognition I
Lecture: “The understanding animal”
Reading:
» DV 10, aa. 1-6.
May
 27
Week 6: Human Cognition II
Lecture: “The understanding animal understanding itself”
Reading:
» DV 10, aa. 8-9.
» DV 11, aa. 1-2.
June
3
Week 7: Faith
Lecture: “Knowledge beyond nature”
Readings:
» DV 10, aa. 11-13.
» DV 14, aa. 1-3.
June
10
Week 8: Practical Knowledge
Lecture: “Synderesis and conscience”
Readings:
» DV 16, aa. 1-3.
» DV 17, aa. 1-3.

Registration

Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, priced according to likely levels of income. If you wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the suggested rate, it is acceptable to sign up at a less-expensive level. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).

One payment covers all 8 weeks.

Registration is closed — thank you for your interest and perhaps we’ll see you in one of our upcoming seminars!

Pricing Comparison

Standard priceBasic Lyceum
Enrollment
Advanced Lyceum EnrollmentPremium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor$200 per seminar$903 seminars included
$90 after
8 seminars included
$90 after
Patron$135 per seminar$653 seminars included
$65 after
8 seminars included
$65 after
Participant$80 per seminar$403 seminars included
$40 after
8 seminars included
$40 after