This course will explore what it means to say that God is free, and what human freedom means in relation to God’s will. It will do this through a study of principal texts representing the classical understanding as it was taken up and transformed within Christian revelation, and eventually overturned in the late medieval/early modern period. This exploration will take its bearings above all from a metaphysical understanding of the good. Some of the authors that will be considered are Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, Aquinas, and Scotus.
Selected Texts
Plotinus, Ennead VI.
Augustine, The City of God.
Maximus the Confessor, Disputations with Pyrrhus.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On Grace and Free Choice.
John Duns Scotus, On the Will and Morality.
Faculty
D.C. Schindler
Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology
Ph.D. Program Advisor
Dr. Schindler’s work is concerned above all with shedding light on contemporary cultural challenges and philosophical questions by drawing on the resources of the classical Christian tradition. His principal thematic focus is metaphysics and philosophical anthropology.
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