Simone Weil: On Human Dignity and the Crisis of International Law
Frank Ambrosio, Associate Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Georgetown University
Tuesdays, March 5, 12, 19, and 26 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. Last day for registration: 2/23/2024
Frank Ambrosio is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Georgetown University. After studies in Italian language and literature in Florence, Italy, he completed his doctoral degree at Fordham University with a specialization in contemporary European Philosophy.
Shortly before her premature death in 1943, Simone Weil, a French secular Jew, wrote a very short essay addressed to Charles de Gaulle and his senior advisors in anticipation of the defeat of Germany and the restoration of the French Republic. The essay was entitled, “A Draft of a Statement of Human Obligations.” In it, she identified the two conditions that must be met in order to establish and maintain the rule of law as effective, both within individual societies and among the nations of the world. They were: first, the recognition of the universal and unconditional dignity of every human being; second, assent to the obligation incumbent on all persons to respect the most basic needs of human beings, both physical and spiritual, by acknowledging and accepting a personal obligation to work towards meeting those needs to the limit of one’s capacity as an individual and also as a citizen.
In 1948, the newly established United Nations issued its own attempt to address the same issues of justice and the rule of law which Weil had addressed in her earlier essay. It was entitled “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” and it has rightly been identified as one of the most consequential documents in the history of civilization. In effect, the statement put forward the same conception of human dignity and enumerated the same aspirations toward which all human beings must be allowed to strive as had Weil. There was, however, one glaring difference between the horizons against which the two statements projected their vision for bettering the future of humanity: the United Nations document spoke of certain “Human Rights;” Weil’s essay identified “Human Obligations.”
This course will first undertake a close analysis of Simone Weil’s essay to clarify precisely the full implications of the choice of the terms “rights” and “obligations” in each statement. Second, it will argue that with the advance of “globalization” as the fate of contemporary humanity since the close of the Second World War, the need to address the dysfunction in our conception of the rule of law at the level of both states and the international community has reached the level of an existential crisis for both our race and the planet. Finally, it will consider what if any steps are available to at least mitigate the human suffering that has and will continue to occur due to the failure to confront the distinction between “rights” and “obligations” 75 years ago.
He is the founding Director, with Edward Maloney, of the Georgetown University “My Dante Project” a web-based platform for personal and collaborative study of Dante’s Commedia. In 2014, he acted as lead instructor for the launch of an ongoing web-based course (MOOC) on Dante offered by EDX (http://dante.georgetown.edu (new window)) which currently has been utilized by over 20,000 students.
He has received five separate awards from Georgetown University for excellence in teaching. He is the former Director of the Doctor of Liberal Studies Program, and in 2015, he received the Award for Faculty Achievement from the American Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs.
His most recent book is Dante and Derrida: Face to Face, (State University of New York Press). In 2009, The Great Courses Program issued his 36-lecture course, Philosophy, Religion and the Meaning of Life.
Evolution and Faith: How Much Can Biology Explain?
John F. Haught, Professor Emeritus of Theology, Georgetown University
Wednesdays, March 6, 13 and 20. 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. Last day for registration 2/23/2024
John F. Haught (Ph. D. Catholic University, 1970) is a Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC. He was formerly a Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University (1970-2005) and Chair (1990-95). His area of specialization is systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to science, cosmology, evolution, ecology, and religion.
Why do half of the Christians in the United States reject evolutionary biology? How might theology respond to both Darwin and those who reject his understanding of life? What would theology look like if it embraced evolutionary science enthusiastically? Increasingly scientists and philosophers have come to believe that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is powerful enough to explain almost everything going on in life including human intelligence, morality, and religion.
This mini-series examines why updated Darwinian explanations are so important today, and what they imply as far as religion and theology are concerned. It also looks at the claims of Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists who try to make Darwinian biology the intellectual core of their critiques of religion. (Recommended but not required background readings include the presenter’s books God after Darwin and Making Sense of Evolution.)
Among the books he published are Resting on the Future: Catholic Theology for an Unfinished Universe (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015), Science and Faith: A New Introduction (New York: Paulist Press, 2012), Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and The Drama of Life (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, February 2010). God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens (Louisville: 2003). He lectures internationally on many issues related to science and religion.
In 2002 he was the winner of the Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion; and in 2004 the Sophia Award for Theological Excellence. In Fall 2008 he held the D’Angelo Chair in the Humanities at St. John’s University in New York City. In April 2009 he received an honorary doctorate from Louvain University, Belgium.
Catholicism in America Today
Chester Gillis, Professor Emeritus of Theology and Religious Studies, Georgetown University
Mondays, March 11, 18 and 25 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Last day for registration 3/1/2024
Chester Gillis is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. He is the initial holder of the Amaturo Chair in Catholic Studies and the founding director for the Program on the Church and Interreligious Dialogue at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. At Georgetown, he served as Department Chair and Dean of Georgetown College, and as Provost at St. Louis University.
This course will examine the contemporary Catholic church in America. How would a stranger to Catholicism identify a Catholic; by their beliefs, religious practices, ethics, politics, economic status, education, profession, family life, or social circle? On all counts it is difficult to distinguish a contemporary Catholic from a non-Catholic. In the first half of the twentieth-century it was often possible to distinguish American Catholics by their immigrant status, their public and unique religious practices (for example, abstinence from meat on Fridays), and their loyalty to the Vatican. Even Catholics do not find it easy to define what it means to be a Catholic in America today. Many disagree with the Vatican and with each other on ethical, doctrinal, and ecclesiastical issues. The church has suffered from its self-inflicted sexual abuse crisis. A high percentage of young people (the “nones”) no longer identify as Catholics. Nuns are aging and disappearing, and local parishes are being assimilated with sister parishes or closing. These are challenging times for the church. With the synodality process, Pope Francis is attempting to breathe life into the church by listening to women, the LBGTQ community, the divorced, the alienated, as well as Catholics who do not want change because they fear it will hold the church hostage to cultural patterns at odds with tradition. We will examine how the church looks today and what is the shape of the church to come.
He is the author of A Question of Final Belief: John Hick’s Pluralistic Theory of Salvation (1989), Pluralism: A New Paradigm for Theology (1993), Roman Catholicism in America (1999), Catholic Faith in America (2003), and editor of The Political Papacy (2006). The second edition of his Roman Catholicism in America was published by Columbia University press in 2020. He is co-editor of the Columbia University series Religion and Politics. He received Ph.B. and Ph. L. degrees in Philosophy and M.A. in Religious Studies from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and his Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Chicago.
Wives on the Threshold of Murder: Dangerous Housekeeping in Greek Tragedy
Victoria Pedrick, Associate Professor Emerita of Classics, Georgetown University
Wednesdays, April 3, 10, 17 and 24 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. Last day for registration 3/22/2024
Professor Pedrick received her Ph.D., from the University of Cincinnati and her B.A. from Emory University. She primarily taught courses in Greek and Latin language and literature, with a particular interest in Archaic and Classical Greek literature and culture. She also taught an introduction to Classical myth. In all her courses, she encourages students to focus on the audience and cultural contexts for ancient texts, including when appropriate modern engagement.
Greek tragedy is remarkable for its dramatization of strong and dangerous women who murder their husbands—or even destroy their children—and are themselves destroyed before our eyes. Such cycles of violence and revenge were understood by the ancient Athenians as fundamental to the human condition. We study how the ancient playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides each staged a confrontation within the household, a fatal clash that drew on mythic and cultural stereotypes that held a fascination for the ancient audience. Do these stereotypes still resonate with us today?
To understand the sources of power for the tragic wife, we also study how figures such as Clytemnestra or Medea deploy the ordinary-seeming tools of their everyday lives—the loom & the pharmaka, or medicine chest, – to assume control within their household and corrupt it for their purposes. We visualize characters’ interactions and movements on stage as representation of such power, how it is gained or lost. And finally, we reflect on the figure of the child who can become a weapon in the struggle to wrest control away from the male head of household whose position seemed so unassailable.
Professor Pedrick has published essays on Homer, Greek tragedy, and Latin lyric as well as two volumes on tragedy, one a collection of essays and the other a study of Euripides and Freud. This book studies the construction of identity within the context of originary or primal trauma as it is articulated in Euripides’ Ion and Freud’s case history of the Wolfman. She is currently writing a book on Greek myths about human violations against nature, including the cardinal cultural act of sailing, the deliberate desecration of sacred trees, and the wholly unnatural act of flying.
Jorge Luis Borges and the Nature of Fiction
Gwen Kirkpatrick, Professor Emerita of Spanish, Georgetown University
Mondays, April 8, 15 and 22 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. Last day for registration 3/29/2024
The fiction of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986 Argentina) has fascinated readers with fictional worlds where philosophical or scientific concepts, like the nature of time itself or of memory, are treated as elements of the real world. Borges wrote poetry and essays, but his short stories gained him international attention. In the course, we will read and discuss short stories such as “The Garden of the Forking Paths”, “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, “El Aleph”, “The Library of Babel”, “Emma Zunz”, “The South”, and detective stories like “Death and the Compass”. We will also discuss Borges’s relationship with Argentina and Peronism.
Professor Emerita of Spanish taught at Georgetown from 2004 to 2020, at UC Berkeley (1982-2003), among other institutions. Her field is Latin American literature and culture from the 19th to 21st centuries, and her publications have focused on poetry, gender studies, and visual culture; her teaching has included courses on the modern novel, the Mexican Revolution, and TransAmerican studies.
Technological Transformations
Betsy Page Sigman, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University
Thursdays, April 11, 18 and 25 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Last day for registration 3/29/2024
Professor Betsy Page Sigman is a Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus, after serving for 22 years in the Operations and Information Management (OPIM, now OPAN) Department at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. During this time, she saw the OPIM major she advised grow from 8 graduates per year to become the second most popular major in the McDonough School of Business. She earned the Joseph F. Lemoine Award for Excellence in Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching as well as the Dean’s Service Award.
This intensive short course will provide an overview of three technologies currently changing society and the impacts they may have on business and society in the next few years. We will explore the basics behind each technical development, real-world applications, potential benefits and risks, and overall implications for the future.
Learning Outcomes: By the end of the course, students should be able to:
Discuss fundamental concepts and features behind several technologies that are shaping and will likely continue to shape the future.
Evaluate some possible applications, benefits, and risks associated with each of the technologies.
Speculate on how these technologies might be used in future business applications.
Explore some economic, social, and policy implications of these technological transformations for the future.
Topics:
Class 1: Internet of Things (IOT)/Ubiquitous Computing (UC)
Class 2: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
Class 3: Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR)
She has co-authored a Harvard Case Study, an article for the Harvard Business Review, and other journal articles, as well as those in the popular press. Dr. Sigman has frequently been quoted in the media. Her book, Splunk Essentials, is in its 3rd edition. She holds a B.A. from the College of William and Mary, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests are in issues management, data analytics, survey research, emerging technologies, and electronic commerce. She currently serves as the President of the Graduate Studies Advisory Board of the College of William and Mary, as well as a Board Member of the Council of Arts and Sciences of the College of William and Mary. She also consults for organizations and companies.