Dr. Thomas Pfau
Duke University
Held Monday, April 20, 2015
Thomas Pfau, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English & Professor of German and Director of Graduate Studies at Duke University, lectured from his recent and highly acclaimed Minding the Modern (University of Notre Dame, 2013).
In that work, Pfau argues that the loss of foundational concepts in classical and medieval Aristotelian philosophy caused a fateful separation between reason and will in European thought, explains how modern thought appears increasingly reluctant to engage the deep history of its own underlying conceptions, and demonstrates why the present crisis in the study of the humanities is linked to the diminishment of the very idea of personhood.
Brief faculty responses will be offered by Wheaton College faculty members Matthew Milliner (Art) and Jeffrey Barbeau (Biblical and Theological Studies), followed by open dialogue with those in attendance.