LIBERALISM, DEMOCRACY, AND MODERNITY. TOCQUEVILLE’S AMERICAN JOURNEY
Dr. V. Bradley Lewis
Associate Professor, School of Philosophy
Catholic University of America, USA

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (2 volumes, 1835, 1840) has been described as the greatest book ever written on democracy and the greatest book ever written on America. In it, Tocqueville perceives nearly all of the important issues related to modern liberal democracies and contextualizes them in his interpretation of the American experience. The book was written to convince Europeans that democracy was inevitable and to prepare them for it, so that the transition might be peaceful, moderate and just. Among the issues treated are the rule of law, the relationship between church and state, the activities of civil associations and local government, and the importance of culture and institutions in political life. This course will take Tocqueville’s book as its text in order to develop Tocquevillian themes related to politics and society today.

Dr. Bradley Lewis. Ph.D. Government and International Studies, University of Notre Dame. M.A., Government and International Studies, University of Notre Dame. B.A., Government and Politics, University of Maryland. Associate Professor at the School of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America. Associate Editor of The American Journal of Jurisprudence.

MEDIEVAL COSMOLOGY AND MODERN SCIENCE FICTION. EXPLORING THE SPACE TRILOGY OF C.S. LEWIS
Dr. Clinton Brand
Associate Professor & Chair of English
University of St. Thomas, Houston, USA

What do ancient myth-making and medieval cosmology have to do with modern science fiction and stories of space travel and alien civilizations? Well, quite a lot, if you are to appreciate the Space Trilogy of C. S. Lewis. Though not as well known or widely read as his popular Chronicles of Narnia, or the fantasy fiction of his friend J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Lewis’s Space Trilogy ranks as one of the most probing accomplishments of twentieth-century speculative and mythopoeic fiction with antecedents in the world-making imaginations of Dante and Milton. These three novels (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) also offer an intriguing survey of the range and variety of Lewis’s intellectual vitality as a writer, story teller, literary critic, moral philosopher, and Christian apologist. In this class, we will explore Lewis’s Space Trilogy in relation to his study of the integrated worldview of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as outlined in The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, as well as in the context of his pioneering work of moral and educational philosophy, The Abolition of Man. Then we will voyage to Mars in the narrative of Out of the Silent Planet, before another space flight to Venus in Perelandra. Finally, we come back to Earth in That Hideous Strength for Lewis’s dystopian tale of a world beset by scientific materialism and resurgent gnosticism and a novel that offers a searching critique of social engineering and the quest for human perfectibility. Along the way, we will discuss a number of philosophical problems and theological mysteries, including the relationships between language and reality, metaphysics and ethics, fall and redemption, nature and grace, incarnation and atonement, flesh and spirit, sin and charity, morality and politics, science and imagination, among others. The Space Trilogy will take us from the “outer space” of modern science fiction to the “Deep Heaven” of classical and medieval cosmology and then to “this pendent world,” the Earth, as the scene for a drama of academic intrigue and eschatological warfare.

Dr. Clinton Brand. Ph.D., English, Vanderbilt University. M.A. English, Vanderbilt University. B.A., English, University of Dallas. Associate Professor & Chair at the English Department of the University of St. Thomas.

LOVE. A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE GREEK, JEWISH, AND CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS
Dr. Diego I. Rosales
Professor, Philosophy
Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico

Love is the most important question a person has to face in his existence. Even if not everyone addresses it in a theoretical way —searching for the essence of love or looking for its precise definition–, sooner or later we all have to address the question in an existential way: “What or who should I love?” and “How should I love it?” Throughout history, many philosophers have dedicated some of their most relevant thoughts to answer the questions of what love is and why is it so important for the manifestation and development of the human person. Among the philosophers of Ancient Greece many can be found -Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato or Plotinus- who considered these as the most important questions a philosopher can ask. But Ancient Greece is not the only place where important philosophical, theological, and literary reflections about love can be found. In the Song of Songs, the Jewish tradition offers us one of the most beautiful books ever written about the different facets of love: love as an erotic relation between two human beings, but also as a quest for the searching of God. There are also contemporary Jewish philosophers that have treated this question in depth such as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber or Emmanuel Levinas. In Christianity, the Gospel itself is one of the most beautiful love stories ever told, but there is also a great Christian literary and philosophical tradition that places love at the core of its reflections: Saint Augustine, Saint John of the Cross, or Søren Kierkegaard, just to mention three great classics. After a general introduction to love and its manifestations through works of literature, this course will explore the main insights that the above-mentioned traditions provide on the matter. Reading materials will include texts from Plato, St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as literary works from W. Shakespeare, C. Peguy, and T.S. Eliot, among others.

Dr. Diego I. Rosales. Ph.D. Philosophy, Comillas Pontifical University of Madrid, Spain. M.A. Philosophy, National Autonomous University of Mexico. B.A. Philosophy, Panamerican University, Mexico. Chair of Contemporary Thought at the School of Humanities of the Technological Institute of Monterrey, Mexico. Level I member of the Researchers National System (SNI, Mexico). Correspondent member of the la plate-form ALPHA at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.