On the 30th and 31st of October, starting at 2:30 pm, two conferences by Jeffrey Wilson, Professor at the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, will take place in the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences (FFCS) of the Catholic University of Portugal ( UCP) – Braga.
“Newsman’s Groundwork for a Post Humean Realist Metaphysics” will be the first topic under debate, moderated by Álvaro Balsas, professor at FFCS at UCP – Braga, on October 30th. In this session, Professor Wilson will address John Henry Newman's response, in his “Grammar of Assent”, to David Hume's empiricist claim to overcome realist metaphysics.
The second day will focus on the theme “Communities of Transmission: The Texts of Aristotle from Antiquity to the Renaissance”, moderated by Bruno Nobre, Professor of the FFCS at UCP – Braga. In this lecture, Professor Wilson will address the “miraculous” fact that the exoteric works of the Corpus Aristotelicum have survived for almost twenty centuries. The talk ends with reflections on the fragile existence of historical texts and how the digital age can further threaten the transmission of knowledge from the past to communities in the future.
Organization:
Álvaro Balsas, Professor at UCP - Braga
Center for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies - CEFH
Participation (Free), Registration needed! Here.
Jeffrey Dirk Wilson
Associate Professor and Researcher at the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., USA. He graduated from Bowdoin College, Union Theological Seminary (New York), Oxford University and The Catholic University of America, having also studied at the Universities of Hamburg, Edinburgh and Paris (X), in Nanterre. Between 2007 and 2009, he taught philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
His main academic interests are classical metaphysics, ancient Greek philosophy and political thought, above all, the philosophical reception of Homer and Neoplatonic Thomism. Art and Language, Epistemology, Ethics and Human Nature are also areas of his specialty.
Some Recent Publications:
Edited book:
Mystery and Intelligibility: History of Philosophy as Pursuit of Wisdom. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021.
Book chapters:
- "‘Gorgias as Reductio ad absurdum Argument: Socrates, True Politician but Failed Teacher?” In Liberty, Democracy, and the Temptations to Tyranny in the Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Charlotte C. S. Thomas. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2021: 171-193.
- “Introduction: Mystery and Intelligibility.” In Mystery and Intelligibility: History of Philosophy as Pursuit of Wisdom. Edited by Jeffrey Dirk Wilson. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021: 1-29.
- “Wonder and the Discovery of Being: Homeric Myth and the Natural Genera of Early Greek Philosophy.” In Mystery and Intelligibility: History of Philosophy as Pursuit of Wisdom. Edited by Jeffrey Dirk Wilson. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021: 82-109.
- “Pinocchio and the Puppet of Plato’s Laws.” In Civic Republicanism, Enlightenment and Modernity: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics. Edited by Geoffrey Kellow and Neven Brady Leddy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016: 282-304.
Articles:
- “Use of the Empirical Method by John Henry Newman and Arthur Conan Doyle.” Newman Studies Journal 19/2 (2022): 5-22.
- “A Proposed Solution of St. Thomas Aquinas’s ‘Third Way’ through Pros hen Analogy.” Philotheos 19/1 (2019): 85-105.
