Please join us as we continue our lunchtime history of philosophy workshops! Each meeting will consist of a presentation by a graduate student or faculty on a project that they are working on in the history of philosophy, followed by a period of comments/questions from the other participants. The workshop is designed to give grad students and faculty the opportunity to develop ideas and receive helpful feedback on projects/papers in a friendly and low stakes environment.
This week's presenter is visiting graduate student Matthew Glaser, whose talk is on "The Value of Self-Knowledge in Aquinas."
Abstract: While Aquinas writes about how self-knowledge works, he does not provide much as to why a reader might care about such knowledge or what its value might be. This paper constructs an account of self-knowledge's value grounded in Aquinas's thought. In particular, it draws on his remarks about the value of knowledge in Sentencia libri De anima and his distinction between practical (practica) and theoretical (speculativa) knowledge in Summa Theologiae I q14 a16 to argue that self-knowledge is clearly worthy of honor and that it is potentially worthy of praise for what it might contribute to the good life.
For more information about the workshop, please email Dylan MacFarlane (dmacfarl@nd.edu). We hope to see you there!