The Philosophy Department is pleased to announce its 2019 Aquinas Lecturer and recipient of its Aquinas Medal: John P. O'Callaghan, of the University of Notre Dame. His lecture, “The Mercy of Boo Radley,” is scheduled for Thursday, February 7, in the Multipurpose Room of SB Hall.
John O'Callaghan is an associate professor of philosophy and the director of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame. In 2010, he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Professor O'Callaghan has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He is the author of Thomistic Realism and The Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence as well as a host of scholarly papers and book chapters.
In his lecture, Professor O'Callaghan will reflect on ethical themes that arise from Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The curious figure of Boo Radley will come to the forefront. Why is it Boo--and not Atticus, their own father--who saves Scout and Jem? Contrasting Atticus with Boo provides an opportunity to reflect philosophically on the difference between a morality of duty and obligation prompted by stoic detachment and a morality of compassion and mercy prompted by friendship.
On Feb. 25 and 26, seven UD students traveled to Austin with Director of Undergraduate Admissions and Enrollment Michael Probus, BA '12 MBA '15, to advocate for continuing and/or increasing Tuition Equalization Grant (TEG) money.
+ Read MoreMike Kiegerl's youngest daughter, Christine, would have graduated from UD in the Class of 1994, but just before her graduation, she was struck by an impaired truck driver and died instantly. Kiegerl and his wife, Peggy, established the Christine S. Kiegerl Memorial Scholarship in their girl's memory in 1997.
+ Read MoreUD students not only read St. Augustine's "Confessions" in Rome, traveling to Ostia to marvel at the place in which, according to Book IX, St. Augustine and his mother, St. Monica, had a joint mystical vision of God — they also travel 4.4 miles from the Irving campus to read the text with residents of South Irving.
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