The Morningside Institute

In the past, a lawyer might have taken for granted, as one ABA report explained, that “one of the highest services the lawyer can render to society is to appear in court on behalf of client whose cau…

In this talk, Prof. Veronica Ogle (Assumption University) helps us understand how Augustine sees the earthly city as parodying the city of God, a process that produces illusions and lies that entrap …

As our society continues to fracture, writers across the political spectrum have repeatedly invoked the classical concept of the common good. Thinkers such as Jacques Maritain and Yves Simon offered …

It seems as though our cultural and moral debates in America and Europe take place between a secular side and a traditional, frequently religious, side. Secular liberalism is seen as consciously movi…

African American literature has a rich tradition of both using and discarding the classics. In the 20th century, the Black feminist poet Audre Lorde argued that, “[t]he master’s tools will never dism…

The problem of relativism has presented itself ever since Herodotus introduced his readers to the astounding variety of religious beliefs and moral judgements among human communities. Philosophers so…

In August 410 Alaric, King of the Goths, entered Rome with his army, and proceeded to carry out a rather impressive version of a “sack”: murder, mayhem, theft, and desecration of churches and consecr…

The Ancient Greek Sophists kickstarted moral philosophy in the West with the provocative idea of relativism: that there is no objective right and wrong. Plato formulated and refuted the relativism of…

It is time to rethink justice. Dominant in the West is the classic definition of justice as the constant will to render another his due. In the modern world, this definition has come to mean rights a…

Popular theories like game theory try to explain why people find it rational to accept risk when making decisions, especially economic ones. But as thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Pascal argued, acc…

Much has been written recently about Arendt's political observation that totalitarian masses would "believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true," but …

Must public actors sacrifice their principles in order to advance their desired political ends? Realists, who argue that the messiness of political life makes moral purity impossible, accuse moralist…

Religious thinkers and contemporary scientists have seen acedia as a fundamental problem, as it opposes the goal of rest in relationship to the divine and enjoying the goodness of human relationships…

You may watch this lecture along with Dr. Sahner’s PowerPoint presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/96CmUeeNLls

How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majo…

Many wonder what will come of the deep divisions in American society. What lessons do the Civil War and other historic periods of conflict offer for our own divided time? How can we use history well …

You may watch this lecture along with Dr. Snead's PowerPoint presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Uab1SpYgAVI

The natural limits of the human body make us vulnerable and therefore dependent, thro…

The translation of Avicenna and other writers of the Islamic Golden Age into Latin was one of the most formative events in the history of Western Philosophy. Professor Therese Cory (Notre Dame) provi…

In 1930 the Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaître published a revolutionary view of the cosmos as one with a finite age and a definite beginning. But how he got there is as interesting a sto…