- Thursday, March 10, 2022
- 3:30 PM–5:00 PM
- Commons Annex Alumni Association Board Room
Weber, Newman, and the Fate of Philosophy in a Disenchanted Age
In this talk, Dr. Frey will contrast two competing models of knowledge for universities to uphold as an ideal: Max Weber’s ideal of university scholarship as a form of expertise and Cardinal John Henry Newman’s ideal of philosophical knowledge of truth that concerns the whole of reality. According to the second model, we can only begin to see how the different disciplines of university study are related to one another—how the truths they reveal can form a unified body of knowledge—if we have an account of philosophical knowledge available to them all. She will further argue that the fate of philosophy depends upon a model of university knowledge that does not reduce it to expertise or scholarship along Weberian lines, and that we need to recover some kind of universality of knowledge thesis as a regulative ideal for university research.
About the speaker: Jennifer Frey is an associate professor in the philosophy department at the University of South Carolina. Her research lies at the intersection of philosophy of action, ethics, and meta-ethics. She has co-edited the book Self-Transcendence and Virtue, which was part of a research project titled "Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning of Life." She hosts a popular philosophy, theology, and literature podcast called "Sacred and Profane Love." Further research interests include the history of ethics, particularly medieval and early modern.
Lecture sponsored by the Department of Philosophy