[2020 Summer] Ethics: Sex

[Lyceum Institute Seminars]

In the word “sex” there is contained a twofold signification: the bifurcated biological nature of the individual and the complementary action toward which that birfucated nature is ordered.  This seminar will study both significations, as two parts of a continuous whole, within the existence of the human person.  This examination of sex in the light of personhood will be guided by a reading of Saint John Paul II’s Love & Responsibility, written while he was serving as Auxiliary Bishop of Kraków in 1960.

Love & Responsibility is steeped in two philosophical traditions: the metaphysically-oriented wisdom of Thomism and the experientially-reflective practice of phenomenology.  In the former, it is well-noted that the young Karol Wojtyla studied for two years under Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange at the Angelicum, receiving his doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on the doctrine of Faith in St. John of the Cross.  In the latter tradition, we find especially the influence of Max Scheler; Wojtyla wrote his doctoral dissertation in theology on the incorporation of Scheler’s thinking into Catholic ethics.  Together, these two ways of thinking united in Wojtyla’s mind to form a notion of Thomistic personalism, a notion which permeates his approach to love and sex—and through which we will ourselves better understand these perennially-difficult topics ourselves.

Note that one need not be deeply familiar with either phenomenology or Thomism—though a passing familiarity with the latter is strongly recommended—to benefit from this seminar.

Registration is closed.