Duke University Undergraduate Chapter

7:00 PM

Perkins Library, Room 217

A lecture by Prof. Robert Miner (Baylor University)

Free and open to the public.

Event Description: 

“Love your enemies”—a notoriously difficult command to obey. But we are good at finding ways to wriggle out of it. We can declare it to be inapplicable (“I have no enemies”). Or we can judge it impossible, and thus remove it from the set of commands that make a serious claim upon us (“ought implies can”). Such evasions do not help. But reading Thomas Aquinas might—particularly if his proposals about enemy-love within the Questions on charity (Summa 2-2) are considered in tandem with insights from Kierkegaard.

This event is co-sponsored by the Thomistic Institute and the Duke Catholic Center.

Speaker Bio:

Robert Miner teaches Great Texts and philosophy at Baylor University.  He is the author of three books, including Thomas Aquinas on the Passions (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and the translator of Thomas Aquinas: Questions on Love and Charity (Yale University Press, 2016). His research is focused mainly in the history of medieval and modern thought.  Before he came to Baylor, he taught in the philosophy department at Boston College.  He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame.