UD to Celebrate St. Thomas Aquinas Feast with Lecture on Trinitarian Metaphysics

Professor Wayne J. Hankey, a well-known expert in medieval philosophy, Neoplatonism and contemporary Christian thought, will deliver the 33rd Annual Aquinas Lecture at  UD on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. in Lynch Auditorium. Hankey, who serves as Carnegie Professor of Classics and Chair at Dalhousie University and Kings College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, will deliver a lecture titled "From Impassibility to Self-Affectivity: the Trinitarian Metaphysics of Esse in Thomas's Summa Theologiae." The lecture is free and open to the public.

"We look forward to what will no doubt be a fascinating and spirited lecture," said Philipp Rosemann, professor of philosophy and department chair. "Professor Hankey's stay in Irving for an entire week will create many opportunities for faculty and students to meet him and engage in dialogue."

Hankey has held research positions at the University of Toronto, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University and Boston College.

He has spent the majority of his career at Dalhousie University and King's College where he has held teaching and administrative posts since 1972. Hankey was responsible for building King's Colleges new library (1981-1993) and for creating the Program in Religious Studies at Dalhousie. Since 1997, he has been editor of Dionysius, the Dalhousie University Classics Departments academic journal. He has published three monographs and more than 120 scholarly articles, edited nine volumes and delivered more than 80 lectures and addresses.

The 2015 Aquinas Lecture will be introduced by the Most Reverend Michael Olson, Bishop of Fort Worth. Matthew Walz, University of Dallas associate professor of philosophy, will deliver a response to Hankey's lecture immediately afterward.

The Aquinas Lecture series, begun in 1983, is an annual event sponsored by the University of Dallas Department of Philosophy. It features distinguished contemporary thinkers who address philosophical topics in the spirit of St. Thomas Aquinas. In recent years, Aquinas Lecturers have included luminaries such as Robert George from Princeton University, William Desmond from the University of Louvain (Belgium), Thomas Hibbs from Baylor University, Timothy Noone from the Catholic University of America, and John Milbank from the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom). Since 2013, the Aquinas Lectures are published in a series of books produced by St. Augustine's Press of South Bend, Indiana.