Special Guest: Therese Cory.

Links:

• Therese Cory's homepage
• News: ND philosopher appointed to Vatican academy of St. Thomas Aquinas — Therese Cory, the John and Jean Oesterle Associate Professor of Thomistic Studies in the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Philosophy, has been named a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas by Pope Francis. Cory is one of 50 total members and one of two women — the third in the academy’s history — to be so honored.
• Book: Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge — Self-knowledge is commonly thought to have become a topic of serious philosophical inquiry during the early modern period. Already in the thirteenth century, however, the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas developed a sophisticated theory of self-knowledge, which Therese Scarpelli Cory presents as a project of reconciling the conflicting phenomena of self-opacity and privileged self-access. Situating Aquinas's theory within the mid-thirteenth-century debate and his own maturing thought on human nature, Cory investigates the kinds of self-knowledge that Aquinas describes and the questions they raise.
• Book: The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (by Fr. Stephen Brock) — If Saint Thomas Aquinas was a great theologian, it is in no small part because he was a great philosopher. And he was a great philosopher because he was a great metaphysician. In the twentieth century, metaphysics was not much in vogue, among either theologians or even philosophers; but now it is making a comeback, and once the contours of Thomas's metaphysical vision are glimpsed, it looks like anything but a museum piece. It only needs some dusting off. Many are studying Thomas now for the answers that he might be able to give to current questions, but he is perhaps even more interesting for the questions that he can raise regarding current answers: about the physical world, about human life and knowledge, and (needless to say) about God. This book is aimed at helping those who are not experts in medieval thought to begin to enter into Thomas's philosophical point of view.
• Lecture: Muslim Philosophers and the Christian Middle Ages — This lecture was offered by the University of Texas chapter of the Thomistic Institute in Austin on February 20th, 2019.
• Theme Song: "I Dunno" by grapes — I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque

• The Qur'an and the Bible: Text and Commentary — While the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are understood to be related texts, the sacred scripture of Islam, the third Abrahamic faith, has generally been considered separately. Noted religious scholar Gabriel Said Reynolds draws on centuries of Qur'ānic and Biblical studies to offer rigorous and revelatory commentary on how these holy books are intrinsically connected.
• The Emergence of Islam — This brief survey text tells the story of Islam. Gabriel Said Reynolds organizes his study in three parts, beginning with Muhammad's early life and rise to power, showing the origins and development of the Qur an with a distinctive, if unique, juxtaposition between the Qur'an and biblical literature, and concluding with an overview of modern and fundamentalist narratives of Islam's origin, which reveals how those who represent Islam's future begin by shaping its past.
• Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices — Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices offers a survey of Islamic history and thought from the formative period of the religion to the contemporary period. It examines the unique elements which have combined to form Islam, in particular, the Qurʾān and perceptions of the Prophet Muḥammad, and traces the ways in which these ideas have interacted to influence Islam’s path to the present. Combining core source materials with coverage of current scholarship and of recent events in the Islamic world, Bernheimer and Rippin introduce this hugely significant religion, including alternative visions of Islam found in Shi’ism and Sufism, in a succinct, challenging, and refreshing way. The improved and expanded fifth edition is updated throughout and includes new textboxes.
• Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty — As the Arab Spring threatens to give way to authoritarianism in Egypt and reports from Afghanistan detail widespread violence against U.S. troops and women, news from the Muslim world raises the question: Is Islam incompatible with freedom? In Islam without Extremes, Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol answers this question by revealing the little-understood roots of political Islam, which originally included both rationalist, flexible strains and more dogmatic, rigid ones. Though the rigid traditionalists won out, Akyol points to a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique “Islamo-liberal synthesis” in present-day Turkey. As he powerfully asserts, only by accepting a secular state can Islamic societies thrive. Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and liberty.
• Minding Scripture Podcast — Minding Scripture is a podcast series where divine word and human reason meet. We explore questions that believers and skeptics alike ask about the Bible and the Qur’an. Minding Scripture is moderated by Gabriel Reynolds, co-hosted by Francesca Murphy, Tzvi Novick, and Mun'im Sirry, and sponsored by the World Religion World Church program in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
• Theme Song: "I Dunno" by grapes — I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque