Christian Metaphysics: Ferdinand Ulrich & Twentieth-Century Thomism

Christian Metaphysics: Ferdinand Ulrich & Twentieth-Century Thomism

JPI 982c
3 Credits

This course will explore the work of the speculative Thomist Ferdinand Ulrich within the context of the “rediscovery of being” in twentieth-century neo-Thomism. The first part of the semester will be spent studying fundamental texts by Gilson and Fabro—the founder of “existential Thomism” and the recoverer of the neoplatonic theme of participation in Aquinas, respectively. We will also read some lesser-known Thomists who developed some of the ideas of Gilson and Fabro further. The second part of the course, then, will be a study of principal sections of Ulrich’s Homo Abyssus. Our aim will be to see how Ulrich continues the lines opened up by the other Thomists, how he deepens some of their insights, and how he introduces new ways of interpreting Aquinas through an engagement with modern philosophy.

Selected Texts

Faculty

DC Schindler portrait

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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