Series Title: A Pre-Modern Response to the Post-Modern 'Lonely Mind’

The contemporary world suffers from a conception of the self as a "lonely mind": often without fully realizing it, we take ourselves to be disembodied subjects of consciousness, cut off from the world, from others, and even from ourselves, in spite of the constant advancements in information and communication technologies. This "lonely-mindedness" comes to expression in subtle, but significant, ways in how we conceive of the mind and the will in their everyday operation. The series will discuss this problem and present in response some ideas from the classical philosophical tradition.

Lecture 1: Knowledge as Personal Presence

The predominant model we have of the mind today is that of an "information processor." This lecture will attempt to show how this model isolates the mind from the world around it, and will propose a recovery of the ancient notion of "form," which implies a model of the mind as a personal encounter with reality.

Lecture 2: Freedom as the Gift of the Self

We tend to think of the human will as essentially the power to choose. While choice is important, the will is actually much more than this capacity. This lecture will argue against a "non-commital" notion of will, and for a conception of freedom as reaching its perfection in the gift of self.