Pints With Aquinas - Phenomenology, Thomism, and The Theology of the Body w/ Dr. Rob McNamara

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Dr. Rob McNamara joins the show to discuss St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, Phenomenology, Husserl, and how it influenced St. John Paul II's thought and writing. Husserl: Logical Investigations https://www.amazon.com/Logical-Investigations-International-Library-Philosophy/dp/0415241898 Love and Responsibility https://www.amazon.com/Love-Responsibility-Karol-Wojtyla/dp/0898704456 On The Problem of Empathy: https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Empathy-Collected-Works-Edith/dp/0935216111 Being a Person: The Mature Personalism of Stein (Coming Soon) By: Dr. McNamara

So Thomas Aquinas wrote Daily Meditations for Lent. And so what I'm gonna do over on matfrad.locals.com is read those meditations and release them every day throughout Lent. So if you've been thinking, what's a cool way I could prepare for Easter, this would be it. Go over and support us at matfrad.locals.com

and you'll get a bunch of free things in return. And one of those free things will be Daily Meditations for Lent. Matfrad.locals.com. Thanks. Alright, we ready? Yeah, let's go. Dr. Rob McNamara, lovely to have you on the show. Matfrad, great to be here.

You are my neighbour. Yes, across the street. But I'm going to ask you what you do, as if I don't know, so you can tell the people at home what you do. What is it you do? I teach for Franciscan University for the Philosophy Department and also some courses in theology. I've taught for them for eight and a half years, mostly in Gammion and Austria on their study abroad campus where I began teaching for the university and then came over here a few years ago.

From Ireland? Yes, originally. You've got a great Irish accent. Thank you, Matt. Your Irish accent is different. I mean, I know Irish accents differ greatly. I used to live there. Yeah. There's something about your accent. Thank you, Matt. Your Irish accent is, I mean, I know Irish accents differ greatly. I used to live there. Yeah. Something about your accent. Yeah. My family lived in Dublin on the East coast, well near Dublin, Manuth on the East coast when I was a kid. Then we

moved West. And so I think I got a bit of both accents and the kind of neutralization of both. Do you have people from home when they speak to you say that you've lost your accent? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they don't recognize I'm Irish anymore, which is sad. Yeah. But when you're around them, do you find you start picking it up? Yeah. And also when I'm upset or sick or angry, then my accent comes out stronger for some reason. Ah, I can see you trying to like ask a girl out in a pub, but you don't have your accent anymore.

So you're going to get really angry. Hey! And then she's maybe back by it now be married exactly yeah terrific yeah yeah and congratulations on your beautiful boy thank you we yeah we just had a boy New Year's Eve so delighted about that yeah so are my kids because I have very much fans of oh yeah they're all very motherly and fatherly yeah it's a great neighborhood to live in. It is. Yeah. Hashtag Steubenville. We're taking more people. I don't know.

I'm looking at you like you've got a response to that. Yeah. Do you know that Thursday showed up at Steubenville with his bags and his car? You were telling me. Without knowing it. Is that right? I had a box of books, a box of clothes,

and a mattress in the bed of my truck, and apartment, no job and no idea what I was doing. And I showed up at Mark Barnes' New Year's Eve party and was like, hey guys, I live here now. And had you known Mark before this? Please be my friend. I talked to him once on the phone and he was like, you should not think about it and just come to Steubenville. And I was like, all right, cool. So you heard how beautiful it was and what a lovely little town it was. I was. I had a really crappy job before this, but not before this job.

Obviously, I was working for Jacob and a mom, so it was a great job. But before I moved to Steubenville, I had a really crappy job. I was miserable and I wanted to, I just wanted to be Catholic and I felt like I was being hindered where I was. And so I decided to take the risk and I figured worse comes to worse, I would go back to Indianapolis

and pick up somewhere along the lines. Yeah. Whenever you leave this town you do realize how beautiful other cities are then, don't you? Yeah. Like I'm shocked. I'll go to places and I have the sometimes people. I do really. Yeah, I can't like. I mean, I always miss Stephenville. There's something we're going to lose most of our audience at this point. But who cares? Yeah, you go. I think it's the community here. That's exactly. Yeah. Because when I go back home or when I go to other cities and places, there's less of a Catholic community and it just seems to boy you up.

Yeah. And I don't I suppose it's what makes it down, despite the infrastructure here being somewhat dilapidated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When did you get your doctorate? 2019, I finished early 2019, I defended February 22nd. When did you know you wanted to get a PhD? I had. Was it a different kind of doctorate? No yeah it was a PhD so it's kind of a maybe to give the proper context a longish story but I'll shorten it. I had returned to the practice of the faith in my early to mid 20s. You living in Ireland know this.

Irish society drifted away from the practice of the faith over maybe the 1980s, 1990s. And like that, I, what my peers drifted to. Early in my 20s, for personal reasons, one of which being my mom's passing and questions surrounding that, her illness and her death and where was she now? I started to question whether or not my leaving the faith was a good idea. In desperation, started to pray, began to discover things Catholic again, and at the same time, realized that I didn't have a clue what the Catholic religion actually thought about what it means to be human, the structure of reality. Even though I'd been schooled in Catholic schools all my life, perhaps I wasn't listening

close enough. So then I set out on the study of theology. Where were you living and was there any kind of Catholic community around you to help kind of guide you or did you just read your way back into the faith? I was living in Galway in Dublin over the course of years as I returned to the faith. There were Catholic communities, two of which were particularly decisive, U2000, you've probably heard of, and another small Irish community, Pure and Heart. And those two were like a peer support structure. And at the same time, I became voraciously interested in reading into the faith.

And that then led me to the study of theology. And I went to Austria to study at the ITI, the International Theological Institute. Wow. And that was a wonderful experience, just a great liturgical, communal and academic environment. And out of that, then I thought I was being called to be a priest. So I entered seminary in Maynooth, Ireland for a couple of years. And when that seemed to hit the rocks, I really wanted to explore the idea of teaching in relation to the faith. So I thought to do a doctorate in philosophy would be a good idea. So you've always been intellectually inclined then? Because not a lot of people would regain

interest in the faith and then go study at the ITI. In my schooling I was scientifically inclined. So I loved the maths and the sciences and originally studied physics at university. But when I returned to the faith, I realized there was physics as a way of grasping reality was preliminary and philosophy and theology move further than that. And so I think with my conversion just came this, you know what it's like, Matt, just this desire to explore, this desire to find out more. And fortunately that hasn't left me since. I don't have as much time to read books anymore, but I like reading nonetheless.

So when did you decide you were going to focus more on philosophy than theology? I initially started studying theology and then as I studied it I realized you need the philosophical underpinnings to do so. I just found myself more at home there. My philosophical interests have a theological leaning in a semi-consistent way, but I just felt myself more capacitated for that kind of study. And I suppose we're all kitted with different talents and that was where maybe God wanted me to focus my talents. But I do like teaching theology as well, particularly those subjects related to vocation, Christian marriage, theology of the body, that kind of subject. subjects related to vocation, Christian marriage, theology of the body, that kind of subject.

What was your dissertation on? It was on the human person in St. Edith Stein and in as much as she incorporated insights received from Aquinas and the scholastic tradition and taught through them phenomenologically to give us a contemporary presentation of what it means to be a human person. Oh that's excellent. Yeah. Am I right in thinking that her dissertation was something of a Socratic dialogue between Aquinas and Husserl? She did write a Socratic dialogue between Aquinas and Husserl, but it wasn't her dissertation. Her dissertation was on empathy.

That's right. Sorry, for us, midwits, who's Husserl? We'll get there. We'll get there. Piece by piece. There's a lot that gets to, we have to unpack here. Because I mean, unless people are somewhat intimately familiar with Voitiwa, love and responsibility, the body, they may not have even heard of phenomenology. Yeah. So what was it initially that attracted you to Stein?

Originally, I was attracted to Aquinas. And when I want to do doctor's studies, I realized that if I'm to study Aquinas to add anything of any value, I'd have to take a really specific area of his of his corpus. And I wanted to be a teacher more than a scholar. I like being a scholar, but really, I found myself more alive teaching. So the idea of studying something more broad through the eyes of a contemporary seemed a good way to go about it. I had been introduced to Voitiwa and his scholastic and phenomenological leanings. And so Stein remained in the wings as this person of interest, person of curiosity.

And when I was in seminary then, one of my teachers, Dr. Mette Lebeck, she was a Stein scholar and she often mentioned Stein during her lectures and then ran a conference on Stein and I went to that conference and I just thought this is wonderful. I have to get to know more. So when I started doctor studies then it was the person, it was Stein, it was Aquinas. It was just a matter of figuring out the middle pieces. So what was it about Aquinas that you wanted to study? You said you wanted to pick something more specific. I wanted to, no, I knew that I would have had to, unless I took him through the eyes

of a contemporary, and then I could take a broad area like the person. So the person in Aquinas is rich, deep. It's not as expansive as contemporary personalism. He's not a personalist thinker, so to speak, but he does have the seeds of personalism and his understanding of the person largely wrote in a theological context is a worthy area of study. But I wanted to do it with respect to the human person, which he doesn't write on very frequently, though he writes on human nature,

and I wanted to do it in some way that would be compelling to the contemporary generation. Okay. Yeah, it might be helpful. It will be helpful. Let's talk about phenomenology and Hasthorl and what he was responding to. And just a kind of brief overview of that for those who aren't aware. Yeah. So one of the great movements of philosophy in the 20th century is one that was began by Edmund Husserl. The beginning of the 20th century, he published a book, The Logical Investigations, in a number of volumes.

And in that work, he begins to lay out what has come to be called phenomenology. And it's hard to define phenomenology because in its many practitioners, it's taken up in various different ways and there's no doctrinal commitments to it. And so it's kind of difficult to pin down. But you could basically set it as the study or science of phenomena and what are phenomena, they're the elements of experience. And so phenomenology closely attends to conscious experience in an effort to unpack its contents and therefore give us reality

at its most refined, comprehensive and clear. And so it's in a way to return to the things themselves as we experience them and not leave anything behind. And talk about why that was necessary given Hume and Kant and where people were at. So various different philosophical schools or traditions are develop by this point, empiricism would be one British empiricism or Kantian, which would be an understanding that the mind brings to reality most of what's given in our experience. Empiricism, there would be a sense that we in the mind represent reality like we have

an image of reality and phenomenology in way, seeks to answer both of these ways of thinking about how we come to know by speaking about the intentionality of the mind. So our cognitive faculties are ordered towards the world in an intentional way, that is, our mind is about the world or of the world. And so what we have in experience then is consciousness, the then is consciousness, the acts of consciousness, like I think, I doubt, I remember, I wish, and then the objects that are given in those acts.

And it seeks to unveil all of the aspects there. What is the structure of consciousness? What is the structure of the acts of consciousness? And what are the objects given in consciousness? And in that way, I suppose, attempts to be more faithful to how we experience the world and experience ourselves in the world. So was it like after the time of human can't, there was this separation between us and the world and we got maybe too much into our heads and our ideas of

things. And it was like, let's return to the things themselves. Yeah. Yeah. We can at least talk about our experience of those things, whatever they are, because at least there's a subjective element to that, but it's also maybe the best we got. Talk to that. Yeah. There tends to be in contemporary thought, a mind world problem and a mind body problem. And both of these problems are in some way coordinate with one another. And in different ways, Kantian philosophy would propose this problem.

You have the mind and its phenomena, but the numinal world we know nothing of. And empiricism, in a way, has a tendency to divide us from the world because what we know are the representations we have of the things. And so we don't really have direct access. Well, if we focus on conscious experience, we see that it's actually given very differently than this. What we have is me as a conscious subject experiencing acts of consciousness with objects of the world given in those acts

of consciousness, and so there's a kind of holistic unity to that. We can abstract consciousness or its acts or the objects. But really what we have is a unified experience. I am conscious of this wonderful pints with Aquinas mug and its contents. However you pronounce that. Yeah, I won't try some beer. And that's really what we have given an experience. And if all of our knowledge is based upon experience, as it was for Aquinas and Aristotle, then we have to tend again to experience.

And so one could think of phenomenologically, the phenomenological school or movement as a way of attending to reality. And so the phenomenological philosopher leaves behind the natural attitude, enters into the phenomenological attitude, which would be a focused attention upon experience and then an attempt to descriptively unpack experience. Now I'm a complete amateur here, so please correct me and lead me forward. But my understanding is that Voiti were sought to look at our experiences of being male and female and the sexual acts we might engage in through a phenomenological lens

and maybe show how that isn't incongruent with Thomistic teleology. Does that make sense? So mystic teleology. Does that make sense? So like, look at your experience, not as if this is something subjective, wholly independent of teleology, but the two somehow are mutually supportive. Talk to that. Yeah. So philosophical schools or traditions or movements don't often have good dialogue between them. And both Voitua and Stein recognized that this sealing off of contemporary philosophy phenomenology from the medieval philosophy scholasticism was problematic because it's not like our ancestors didn't see the world and didn't think clearly about the world. So both in their own way then thought to bring a kind of synthesis of methods of doing philosophy,

the scholastic way of disputation and the phenomenological way of attending in a focused way to experience. And I think both then added value to the Western tradition by thinking about scholastic themes in a contemporary method or mode of doing philosophy and in a way give more light to those themes. So both take up Aquinas, both are, you could say, faithful to the corpus of Aquinas, but both rethink the concepts Aquinas presented and cast more light upon them. And for Voitia a lot of that was to do with man and woman, marriage and family, the sacramentality of marriage and just wonderful work. You know, they talk about how modern man is much more subjective than medieval man. I mean, you

look at Aquinas's five proofs of God's existence, he may elude in different places, but at least in the five ways, there's not a moral argument, there's not an argument from beauty, even the argument from God's definition he takes issue with. Whereas today we talk a lot about how we feel. he takes issue with. Whereas today we talk a lot about how we feel. And it seems like maybe that's why this school of phenomenology and how Voitiwa used it, perhaps was a new way of talking about sexual morality in a way that modern man can resonate with. Do I have that wrong? No, no. And what do I mean? Because I don't know. In one of his articles, Voitieva divides the history of philosophy into two major eras or two major ways of doing philosophy. The ancients and medievals proposed a philosophy of being, which was a kind of objective metaphysical explanation of reality. And then you have Descartes in the modern era at the beginning of the modern era. And he then turns towards the subject and proposes, and many philosophers since then propose a philosophy of consciousness.

Now, of course, if you have a philosophy of being and it's objective, it's wonderful. A philosophy of consciousness and attention to the subject. It's also wonderful. But Voitiwa recognized that, well, these are two poles of experience and we need both to have a properly comprehensive explanation of the world and how we find ourselves in the world. And so I think that that division, it's brutish, but it does do work. And it's just really obvious to us in our own experience.

We're conscious subjects and we're in the world experiencing it objectively. And we need to look at both the objects we're experiencing and us as the ones experiencing so as to give us a holistic picture. And when you apply this then to let's say man and woman and you do a biblical analysis like Vojtiwa did in The Theology of the Body, he unpacks the meaning of the Garden of Eden scene of our first parents with great and wondrous detail. And I think he answers the desires of modern man to understand what it means to be a subject in the world, but places it in this objective context that we are creatures before the Creator and there's a meaning to our

subjective experience before God, like there was for Adam and like there was for Eve in the garden. What is personalism? It's a philosophical or theological movement that attends to the person with priority. You could say the central given of your exploration is the person and what it means to be a person. Again, like phenomenology, it's hard to pin down because it's more like a movement than it is like a school. And various different there are various different personalisms. But with the Catholic tradition and philosophy, you have Wojtyla, Stein, von Hildebrandt and other thinkers who propose. Don't worry. He's just adjusting the camera.

Who propose a personalistic philosophy that's coherent with the Catholic tradition. So it places the person at the center. As opposed to? As opposed to being, as opposed to consciousness or the mind, as opposed to logic, as opposed to consciousness or the mind as opposed to logic, as opposed to language, but now in a way the person takes up all of these spheres because persons are beings in the world with beings. Persons are conscious persons or language users.

Persons should perform logical reasoning if we want to think rightly. So there's a way in which focusing on the person has strands to all of the various philosophic traditions. Persons are ethical beings. So it's legitimate to attend to the person with priority in this way, I would say. What are people's concerns with phenomenology? Because I've heard that sometimes Thomists and phenomenologists on campus take issue

with each other, perhaps not in any sort of serious way, but what is the kind of initial critique you sometimes hear? Do they see it as a threat to Thomism? And why? Well, this modern turn toward the subject is the, I suppose, beginning point of many philosophical and consequently cultural and social and political problems. And so when you think of it from a contemporary perspective, we can be radically individualistic or we can be relativistic morally. Like I have my truth, this is my lived experience, etc. So when we attend to the subject of a priority, it can bring with it many problems that are not merely theoretical, but with real practical import.

So, of course, Catholic theologians, philosophers then are wary of that turn toward the subject. And so with Descartes, you have this idea that what I can know with priority, first and foremost, and above and beyond everything else is that I am. And so there's a kind of solipsism, which means oneself alone. And then there's a difficulty getting back out into the world. Yeah. It's like the door is locked now from the inside in a way. You're not connecting with the world. So then you have the mind-world problem, the mind-body problem. And you have then various practical problems like many of the problems we're dealing with in contemporary society, hot button issues and stuff.

But Voitieu and Stein recognise that this turn toward the subject, though it brings with it these deviations, is actually an authentic philosophical development, if properly complemented by remaining present to the objective world and to be and then place in that context, you have the possibility to overcome the problems and at the same time appeal to contemporary man with his subjective interests. And if you think about it, subject and object, they're co-relative ideas. And so to unmoor them from one another is a problem. Like this cup is a thing, which is now the object of my sight, my knowledge and my love.

But it's only an object because I'm a personal subject who's perceiving it. And I am the personal subject who's always related to objects. So if I decouple the object and the subject, we have immediately a problem. And the clue is in the words. They're both formed by the same suffix, and so they show that they're in some way related to one another. That's really good. You don't have subjects without objects or objects without subjects. Right.

So to attend to our experience isn't to say that there is not an objective way the world is or an objective way to which our actions should conform. Yeah. But sometimes reflecting upon our own experience shows why there are certain objective truths that we have to conform to. Again, please don't, please correct me because I actually don't know what I'm talking about. No, no, you do. You're tracking this conversation. Well, as I say things, don't just nod.

Please correct me, right? So here's kind of... Nothing to correct so far? Well as I say things, don't just nod, please correct me. So here's kind of... Nothing's correct so far as far as I can see. So suppose I'm having difficulty accepting the church's teaching on human sexuality in some aspect. You know I read Aquinas, I see that he says something is a mortal sin, let's say sex outside of marriage. And but then if you were to say to me, like, what does it feel like when somebody treats you as merely a means to an end?

Yeah, I'd be like, it feels gross. Like, I hate that feeling. And I think we've all had that feeling. Yeah. What does that then say about you objectively then? Yeah. So it enables me to kind of connect with the objective truth that I'm a person made in the image and likeness of God, and as Voitiwa says in Love and Responsibility, the human person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love. So we can state that objectively and we can come up with maybe Aquinas's ways of talking about why that is so, but then that also experience. Yeah. And then if I can have that objective truth of Catholic teaching match my subjective experience,

then I own it. Yeah. Yeah. It becomes real, tangible and possible to you. Not just a Catholic thing I learned as a school kid or something. And I love the way you have that quote down from Love and Responsibility of Oitiwa, which is a masterwork in human sexuality. Actually as I was converting someone introduced me to his thought, I purchased that book and

it was a key feature of my conversion. It's one of the best books out there on human sexuality. Yeah. And at the same time, there's a whole worldview that's communicated with the communication of sexuality. And so I would, in a way, that end story of the soul of St. Therese, I would credit with the two theoretical linchpins of my conversion. Well, it was Hugh Hefner who said of Alfred Kinsey,

if Kinsey is the prophet, I am his pamphleteer. And I think a response to this wicked demonic teaching from Kinsey is Voitiwa. Like if Voitiwa is the prophet, I want to be his pamphleteer. So wherever I would go to speak on pornography, that was the one book that I told everybody, Mormon, atheist, feminist, whatever, you need to read this book. I think if you read it, you have to contend with what's communicated and it's so beautiful and has such a resonance of truth that you can't easily leave it aside. All right, I want you to talk about love and responsibility. Explain to me what you love about it because I hope that

just from hearing you speak about it people will be inspired to go pick it up. Okay, so let's set in the context that you just set up in the Catholic tradition, historically, you have, you could say, a third person objective description of the norm of human sexuality. Human sexuality is such that these things are normal in human behavior. We do well when we do them and we do badly when we don't. Now what Vuitiwa does is he takes that Catholic tradition and he thinks through it phenomenologically and does so from the perspective of the person and personal experience. And he shows that this objective, ethical description of human

behavior shows up in our experience and we can, in a way, touch it in our experience and we can in a way touch it in our experience. So if we then move forward from there to the theology of the body, in the Catholic tradition you have the natural law and the natural law of human sexuality put before us. This is objectively correct. Now in theology of the body he puts before us the meaning of human sexuality and asks you to discover that meaning in your own experience. And so he speaks about re-reading the language of the body whereby you'll discover the spousal meaning of the body. And in the discover of this meaningfulness, you will be capacitated in your own experience to act out of that meaningfulness. And in a way, this will be accorded then with the natural law objectively.

So there's an appeal to the subject. There's an appeal to experience so that you can ground down Catholic thought in your life and discover it as possible. And once you do so, it's beautiful. Like it's. He wrote Love and Responsibility in the late 50s, Theology of Body in the 70s and promulgated in the early 80s, and they really are an answer to many of the ills in contemporary society. I suppose he wrote Theology of Body in response

to human evite and how human evite was received by the Catholic populace and those beyond. And yet it really is not just a response to the problem of contraception, but a response to really is not just a response to the problem of contraception, but a response to same sex attraction, a response to gender dysphoria, a response to many of the ills we're experiencing in contemporary society as such something really prophetic. What does the spousal meaning of the body mean? He doesn't ever define it with a succinct pity formulation, but there are areas where he speaks about it in pity ways. And one of those areas would be it's the power to express love through self-gift,

whereby a communion of persons is formed out of which we can generate human life, new human persons. So the power to express love, it's our bodily ability to be gifts to one another, man to woman, woman to man, in a loving communion that is generative of life. And in love and responsibility has this great line, we must reconcile ourselves to the greatness of human sexuality. What is that? Say that again. We must reconcile ourselves to the greatness of human sexuality. There's a power contained in it for communion and life that's in a way so awesome that it's hard for us to grapple with it appropriately. We experience it in. We tend to try and treat it in ways casual because we can't grapple with its greatness. Yeah. Yeah. That's profound.

Yeah. Wise older man once said to me, most people aren't afraid of what people do to them, but they're afraid of their own power, their own ability. And I think something of that is communicated love and responsibility. We want to debase and treat sexuality casually because we can't grapple with its greatness. It's like, we know this firsthand in the way this past week with the birth of our boy Orrin, when he was born, there was such an experience of wonder.

And to think that a sexual act, the conjugal act of myself, my wife, could bring about with the help of God, this human person who will now exist forever. It's just, it's too much. It's too great. It's easier to debase it. It is. It's the same thing with blasphemy and why we speak, why we trivialise religious things and Yeah, yeah, it's too big. It is I remember when My wife gave birth to my eldest son Liam I remember seeing my wife breastfeed for the first time and it was like my experience to use that language of her breastfeeding showed me in a

Very deep way the evil of pornography. It was like once I saw the reality of her body and the beauty of it. Yeah. Pornography was disgusting to me. And that's the kind of inoculation you need against it. It's one thing to know I shouldn't do this or to be told you shouldn't do this. But it's a whole other thing to experience yourself. Wow, this is. This is not only something I shouldn't do, but this is awful. I don't want to do it.

And you do experience something like that with childbirth, with nursing. There's such a wonder to it. And the woman is really close to it. Us guys, it's just amazing to look on. Yeah. You referred earlier to living maybe something of a hedonistic lifestyle and things like that. So how did John Paul II, when he was Voitiwa, by the way, for those at home, Voitiwa was his name before he became John Paul II, we're not talking about two different people. How did that kind of convert you in the realm of sexuality? Yeah. So I was suffering the consequences of my hedonistic lifestyle and I was crying

out to God in prayer, began to explore the faith again and discovered it was answering various questions for me. Oh, that makes sense. Oh, that makes sense. And then this old priest gave me the catechism and I started reading through it and it was like, it was like water in a desert. It was making sense of my life. But the one area that remained insensible to me in Catholic thought was human sexuality. I was troubled by this. I couldn't see my way through to seeing the truth of it. I could accept it and you could say, obey it, but I couldn't see that it was true. Then I was introduced to love and responsibility. It was around the time that our Holy father died in 2005. And as I began reading it, it was, it just

answered all of those last questions. And before I'd even finished it, I was all in, this was like, I'm now going to give my life to the Catholic faith. There's no question about it. Every question is answered. I want what he is revealing in that text. I love that idea. That's actually a pretty good argument for Christianity. The experience of everything making sense. You know, you try to interpret yourself through a secular lens or many other different lenses, but then when you start to hear the truth of the Catholic faith being like, oh my gosh, this is an instruction manual for something that makes sense of that thing and I am that thing. Therefore, maybe without even understanding

arguments for God's existence or proofs for the Catholic faith, since this lines up with my experience and makes sense of it in a way that my view of reality becomes broader and more coherent in a way that gives me freedom, I'm going to give myself to it. Yeah, that's a wonderful description. I thoroughly endorse it. It's like a jigsaw puzzle that just comes together and then presents this beautiful picture. And we all as Catholics experience a struggle with God throughout the course of our Catholic life. And that struggle with God is in a way eased or to some degree answered by the fact that actually reality fits together for me and I can step forward now and wrestle with God

as I step forward because in a way this jigsaw puzzle is showing me a beauty that I've been drawn toward. Yeah. Let's talk about Edith Steinmore because I don't know a lot about her. I know a little bit about what she has to say about empathy, which, if my understanding is correct, modern neuroscience is now validating. Did you ever get into that with mirror neurons and things like that? Yeah, I haven't gotten into it in a scholarly way, but I am aware of the neurological research

that's showing her concept of empathy is being confirmed by neuroscience and is also helping some neuroscientists to develop their neurology of empathy. You'd know more about it than me, but we'll talk about that in a second. But first of all, who was Edith Stein? I'd love, I know you're a devotee of hers. Yeah. So a German Jewess born in the 19th century to an Orthodox Jewish family. Her father died shortly after her birth, and her mother took over the lumber business they had and ran it successfully afterwards. She was the last of 11 children,

and as a child she was incredibly precocious, very gifted in many areas, particularly in learning. So her early schooling was an easy task for her. In her teenage years, she experienced at least agnosticism, if not atheism, and began and stopped praying. And so in some way, inwardly distanced herself from the practice of the Jewish faith, though she continued to go to synagogue with her mother and continued to perform the outward observances. When she was in her early 20s, she went to university. Now in Germany of her day, it was only recent

that women were allowed to attend university. So she would have been in the first couple of generations of women attending German universities. And she studied, I've forgotten now, but she did find interest in psychology as well. Through that, she came across the logical investigations of Husserl and there discovered what she was searching in her search for the truth of reality. Through phenomenology, she began to

approach questions of faith again, because phenomenology takes all questions without a priori resolution. I'll approach everything and think through it. And so Phenomenology opens the way to thinking about angels as possible or God as possible and thinking about them. And then also she had a many personal experiences of people with faith and began to move toward the Christian Catholic faith. In January 1st, 1922, she was baptized and immediately wished to enter the Carmelite order, but she had, I suppose, a public persona to some degree as a philosopher who studied under Hisurl.

And so she was recommended by her spiritual advisor to stay in the world. And so she taught at a Dominican school for a number of years. Eventually, she taught at a Dominican school for a number of years. Eventually she taught at a Catholic pedagogical institute and had to give up her position there because the Nazi regime had risen to power in Germany. And so she was finally released to enter the Carmel and she entered the Carmelite order in Cologne in 1934, I think 1933, 34. And the name she took? She took Theresia Benedicta Acrucia, Teresa blessed of the cross or blessed by the cross.

And so she did devotion to Teresa of Avila. She read her work, her autobiography, and this was a vivid moment of her conversion. And she was also in some way devoted to St. John of the Cross and recognized in suffering and the Christian answer to the question of suffering, something of defined import. And interestingly, she was born on the feast of Yom Kippur, which is the Jewish Day of Mercy, their holiest day. And her mother at least thought that this in a way marked the course of Stein's life. It begins to show up then in her own life and her own sufferings.

And eventually she's martyred. She's taken from the Carmelite convent because the Catholic bishops in Holland published a pastor letter against Nazi socialism. She'd moved from Cologne to Ecton, Holland prior to this. And she was transported to Auschwitz and was gassed on August 9th, 1942. So she was a contemporary of Hasserol and was his secretary. How did she come into contact with him? Maybe you've already addressed this, but what was it specifically about his work that captured her? She was studying German and history at university, but she did find interest in

psychology and was going to do further studies in psychology. But the discipline of psychology was only a newly developed discipline at the time. This was early 20th century. And during the course of her psychological studies, she, she read the second volume of logical investigations and there she discovered the answer to her psychological questions and then also undergirding philosophical questions. So she moved from her home city, University Breslau, now modern day Wroclaw, it's a Polish city today, but I can't pronounce it correctly, and moved to the university which Husserl was teaching, Göttingen. And there she did doctorate studies under him on the problem of empathy,

and later became his secretary, collating his writings and preparing them for publication, and also teaching new students phenomenology. Husserl was a great thinker, but he wasn't easy to understand as a student. So many of his early students like Stein and Adolf Reinach would have taught introductory classes in phenomenology so that students could then enter into the Husserlian way of understanding philosophy. What's the problem of empathy? What did she mean by it? Yeah, so when you begin with the subject, you then have a question. What is our relationship to the world and what is our relationship to other subjects? And so in phenomenology, you have this focused attention to me as the personal subject experiencing

the objective world. But Stein recognized that a key feature of our experience of reality are other personal subjects experiencing the world together with us. And so for her, then the act of empathy is my experience of you as an experience in subject. So if we set up something of a problem, I could be in this room and notice a lot of objects. And I could, from you and Thursday's actions, infer you're a unique kind of object. You're different than all the other objects. You're a personal subject. You're moving like me.

You're looking like me. You're talking like me. But for Stein, actually, our experience of one another as subjects is much more immediate. I don't form a rational argument. Matt is moving his arm. Matt is looking in this way. I immediately experienced you as living like me and as experiencing the world. So right now, I see you seeing me. That's the act of empathy. I experience you experiencing the world, in this case, seeing me.

And so this then becomes, you could say, absolutely central to Stein's thought. And it seems to me also in a way to Husserlian thought. And later in his works, he writes about empathy and a particularly defined reference to it in his Cartesian Meditations, one of his last published works. So for Stein then, our experience of the life world, of the world of experience has a unique feature, this experience of other subjects experiencing the world. And without that, we can't really engage properly with one another. Like, let's take a funny example. Just say I was to treat you and Nick as mere objects. Thursday?

Sorry, Thursday. You treated him like an object then by misnaming him. That's not my real name either. Just so people know we're trying to hide his identity. So say you treated me on Thursday like what? As mere objects. Just say I was walking down the corridor and you and Thursday were standing in the corridor and I just pushed you aside.

Right. There'd be a problem. I'd have a moral problem. Yeah. But if I was walking down the corridor and there were two chairs in my way and I pushed them aside, there's no problem. The chairs are mere objects, but you're personal subjects. And so I have to experience you as a personal subject to act rightly in relation to you.

I can't just push you aside. Empathy is what gives us others as personal subjects. Gives us what? Gives us the other as a personal subject. You're experiencing the world like me, and then I'm going to act in relation to you in very different ways than I'll act in relation to everything else. Then think of this in relation to human sexuality.

Yeah, well first of all, before we get to the human sexuality, to think of it this way, it's not that I'm not using you because I needed an episode for my show. Like I am, I'm using you, but I'm not using you merely. Yeah. Is that the distinction as a means to an end? Like if I said, you passed me, I mean, and maybe I'm wrong here. I'd love you to correct me. But if I said pass me the cup, I am using you to pass me the cup. I am, I need to, I am in a sense using my wife to bear children because I don't have that ability

and I desire it. The problem isn't when you use people. The problem is when you don't, when you subordinate their dignity to whatever it is you want affected maybe? Or do I have that wrong? Yeah, yeah. And this shows up wonderfully in Voitiva and Love and Responsibility. And in a way Stein's understanding of empathy is somewhat an undergirding structure for that. Voitiva didn't read Stein before Love and Responsibility, but at the same time, when you read their works together, you see many strands that can be drawn between them. Yeah. But yeah. So if you asked me to pass pass you the beer, you would be using me to pass you the beer. But you're not treating me as a mere object. Because that's very different to you pushing me out of the way. Yeah. Yeah,

it is. But also, you could like or let's set up a slightly different example. If you were a general, this is in love and responsibility. If you were a general in an army, you're sending your troops into a battle. You could send them in using them as mere objects, cannon fodder for the battle. Or your relationship to them could be differently. You could be the one who's coordinating the battle and they, your soldiers, also want to win the battle. So all of you as personal subjects, you've chosen our aim is winning the battle here. We have a shared end. We have a shared end and that's the key feature. Personal subjects choose ends in their

actions and when we act in relation to one another we have to be cognizant of one another's ends and when we act together, when we use one another, we have to be cognizant of one another's ends. And when we act together, when we use one another, we have to agree upon the end we're doing, we're using one another for the sake of. And then it's not mere use, using one another's objects, but it's treating one another's personal subjects. Hey, I want to say thank you to the greatest prayer and meditation app in the history of prayer and meditation apps. You history of prayer and meditation apps. You know what I'm talking about.

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Does it return to use if you deceive the other? Like if the person, like if you thought, like if you were in the example of the battle, if you were to say like, you tell a specific group of soldiers that they're important to winning the battle, but you are actually using like that platoon as cannon fodder. Like you're just using them as cannon fodder and you don't make them aware of that.

Like you could perceive a situation in a particularly awful war where you could tell them, like yeah, 90% of of you probably gonna die. Yeah. Yeah, and so I am using you for cannon fodder for the greater good and if they if they You know are okay with that then that's a separate issue. But if you don't tell them that is that Yeah return to the issue of use. I'm just trying to make that up. Wonderful. Sounds like, oh, very good. Thursday, you set that up. One of your name, Nick.

It's actually not my name. Like, we're not trying to like, if it was my name, we just be like, yep, don't say that again. But it's not my name. I'll give out your number later. OK, cool. Ladies is a good looking chap.

No. So that's it. Exactly. There has to be a coordinated cognition of the end and choice of it for the act to be properly personal. Yeah. Or at least the soldiers should be choosing that as their end, the winning of the battle. But the general could well revert into a situation where it would become immoral when he uses them in the example you gave, like canon fodder, pure canon fodder, rather than, I know 90% of you are going to die,

but we're fighting for our homeland here and this is important, we all want this. I'm going to coordinate what's happening. I don't will your destruction, but I foresee it. Yeah, yeah. And that's different. The other thing is we can both agree to engage in an activity for a bad end. So it's like, well, it's okay if both parties consented. Well, it depends what they consented to, because if two people consent to fornicate, in a way, you have to be really careful here, but in a way that's worse.

Like both people are choosing evil. Yeah. So let's give the principle of Oitea to clarify that. Yeah. So you said earlier that the only proper response to a person is love. That's like a positive formulation of what's called the personalistic norm. A negative formulation would be when I act in relation to another, I must remember that he or she has, or at least should have, his

or her ends. Then, qualifier, of course that end must be a true good. If the action is to be moral, both the end has to be true and we have to coordinate ourselves with respect to that end. So if a woman approaches a videographer and says, I would like to be a pornography performer and you have the means to make that happen. And could you please help me? And they both agree to that. What happens? What is that? Yeah, that would be a bad end. They would be not using one another in an impersonal way, but they would be aiming at an incorrect end together.

Augustine would have a wonderful phrase for that, oh, friendship unfriendly. So we desire for, I think as human friendship above and beyond everything. Friendship is the context we seek the happiness of God that Aquinas is so eloquently set forth. And we must choose good friendships. And those friendships are the ones that aim at good ends, not false, merely apparently good ends. Then we've a problem. When you teach theology of the body, how do you distinguish between, I mean, apart from the fact that one is a series of speeches and one is more of a philosophical work, do you distinguish between the theology of the body and love and responsibility or do you just sort of lump it all under the

title TOB? Yeah, when I teach it, I usually teach it in two parts, love and responsibility first and then the man and woman he created them the theology body properly. Is that sort of how like philosophy needs to undergo theology? Is it the same? That's the way I conceive of it. I like that. Yeah, and in a way love and responsibility it's a complex work, but it's easier to enter into because it's so experientially grounded, whereas when you enter into the theology of the body, because you're performing a biblical theological analysis, it's a little bit more distant from you. And so there's a certain respect in which, at least how I understand it is, you have to come to grips with human sexuality in your own person first

and do so through love and responsibility to be able to properly engage with the theology of the body, because sex isn't distant from us. Like you're a man, I'm a man. Nick is a man. Yeah. And, you know, we have it as a key aspect of our experience throughout all of our lives. So love and responsibility is just a concerted reflection on that, laying it out appropriately.

And then when you come to grips with it, then the theology of the body is like luminous. It glows. I'm thinking of this excellent line in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which, correct me if I'm wrong, feels like a phenomenological statement about an objective thing. And it's when it has to do with chastity, it says, the alternative is clear. Either man governs his passions and so finds peace, or he allows himself to be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful line. Yeah. In the theology body, the way he sets that up is we tend to want to master human sexuality externally, contraception, take mastery over the natural powers of the body rather than mastering ourselves inwardly.

And it seems to communicate the very same truth. And it really is, it seems to me, the more and more I taught and worked with the text, that that was a central principle of it. Like we're reluctant to master ourselves because of the difficulty involved and we want to grapple with the greatness of sexuality from the outside. I'll make this impotent by some external act rather than I'll take hold of my own desires and focus them appropriately. I find when talking to older children about human sexuality and certain sexual sins, an analogy of food is really helpful. Especially when children understand that, say, certain children have had a really bad

diet and they're clearly obese. And you say, well, what's wrong with that if he wants to eat whatever he wants or whatever she wants to eat? Why is that a problem? And they can kind of tell you why. And here we do get to that idea of if I do whatever I want, what I want may not be ultimately what I want because it's to my detriment. Yeah. And the same is true in the sexual realm. And it won't make you happy. And that's, yeah, that's, and that's, that's so good. Like so good. Like that's not a modern talking point, right? Like Aquinas, when he talks of happiness, what he means is the fulfillment of our nature.

So you should do whatever makes you happy. But what that is, is virtuous acting out. Yeah. You could take a list of the Catholic issues and say, the church is saying, because it won't make you happy. Yeah. Because it won't make you happy. Yeah it won't make you happy yeah I remember I have this memory that just came to me I was inside of my house in Australia as a teenager

and I overheard my mom's friend saying to a relative who was my age who was thinking of shacking up with a boyfriend well do whatever makes you happy yeah that's what we say to each other do whatever makes you happy i think the uh the quote from saint john bosco what did he do his or he he ran that orphanage it's that was his great active uh sanctity was that beautiful orphanage he used to tell his boys when they would ask him what he should, what they, you know, the, Don, what should I do today? Whatever you want, just don't sin. Hmm. Yeah.

And what's interesting is, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't, I don't mean to drive a hard distinction between Thomism and phenomenology, but like that sounds more like the kind of, at least the manualist approach, you know, like don't sin. Yeah. Uh, okay. Why? And then you would have to say, well, because it, have you done it? Yes. How did you experience that three minutes after

fruition say, you know, and you're like, well, it made me feel miserable. Okay. Is that the kind of marriage between phenomenology and Thomism that we want to see? Or would a Thomist say, no, it's already there in Thomas, we don't need... Yeah. In some way, there's an authentic good being performed when we set philosophical traditions or schools or movements in contrast to one another and do a comparison. But often what happens there is you get a highly polarised comparison. And in my work with Stein and Aquinas, I've attempted to, in a way, travel the opposite path. In what way can these been reconciled in ways that are

fruitful to both? And so when Stein takes up Aquinas' thought, she takes it up in her own words as a reverent and willing pupil. And yet she's not going to sit passively before his concepts and just receive them and attempt to understand them. She's really going to think through them. And the way she thinks through them is she does phenomenology with his concepts. And in this way, then she can go, yes, that concept gives me reality luminously. Or I need to adjust that concept. Or, whoa, that concept is problematic.

I need to correct it. And so she'll take it all reverently, whoa, that concept is problematic. I need to correct it. And so she'll take it all reverently, willingly, but she'll think her way through it phenomenologically and then confirm it, adjust it. Isn't that the only way we learn anything? According to Stein, that's the only way to be a philosopher at least. An historian of philosophy could grapple with the Thomistic schema,, present it coherently, and that's sufficient. But for a philosopher, no, I have to think my way through it. I have to see if it's true.

And phenomenology helps me to bring the concept back to the thing and go, yes, that brings that reality before me luminously. And if it does, I leave it alone. This is why children are sometimes the best philosophers because they don't have the language to say the thing objectively, correctly. They say it as it appears to them. My son Peter and I were at a wedding in Minnesota several months back and there was a heat lightning or heat? Yeah, sheet lightning? No, heat lightning? What's that called when you've kind of got like lightning in the distance, but it's I don't know. Is that the wrong way? I don't know. I'm going to Google heat.

It's probably another thing at all. But do you know what I mean? Like when it's when you're not seeing direct lightning, but it's like flashes all over the place. So my point was just that Peter looked at that and went, Dad, come here. And I got down like, what is it buddy? He went, it looks like the sun's running all over the place. That is one of the most beautiful things a human being has ever said to me. I almost have tears in my eyes.

Heat lightning or silent lightning or summer lightning or dry lightning. Yes. I got it right. I got it right objectively, but Peter got it right. That sometimes called is simply cloud to ground lightning that occurs far away with thunder that dissipates before it reaches the observer.

Yeah. At night, it is possible to see flashes of lightning from very far distances, but the sound does not carry that far. Or the sun running all over the place. Like that's another way of saying that thing. Yeah, Peter, you have a basic phenomenological description of the experience Ryan. And, Peter has a basic phenomenological description of the experience of Ryan.

And then with your conceptual knowledge, you can help him unpack it. This is what's happening there, Peter. But it doesn't undo the original experience. It's like that's still true. Now, I once gave a talk in Baltimore. Yeah. At the Basilica, I think it was. And it was on pornography and a quote-unquote sex worker was there.

I would never say that that's work, but someone was there and they raised their hand and they were a, God bless her and save her. She was a pornography performer, a prostitute, these sorts of things. And she got up to tell me, to kind of challenge me. I was super okay with that. And she said, you're painting people in the porn industry as helpless victims, but you have to understand like, I'm very happy doing this. And my response was you're wrong to be like, you're wrong to be happy, which is something that just sounds so, it just rings bad against our ears in this modern age.

But it's like, I mean, but I think we've all had that experience, right? Or especially women. Women seem to resonate with this more when I've shared it than men, but you know, a woman might say, I know a friend and she's with this guy and he's bad for her. She's not herself when she's around him. Her personality isn't in full bloom kind of thing. But when I approach her, she'll say, but I love him. I'm happy. And in that context, you can see why it might be right. Well, you're wrong to be. Yeah. I suppose the question there is what is true happiness? And at least for the Catholic theological and philosophical tradition, true happiness is the authentic and full flourishing of what it means to be human. And of course we can get happiness in fragmentary ways

and in things that aren't actually helpful for us like the fourth donut. I really could have left aside. It's not tempered to go for the fourth donut. But right now, for the next five minutes, you're trying to gain weight, which Thursday is trying to do. He brought in a box of donuts this morning and said, what one? I said, get behind me, Nick. For you, for you, you caught me

Satan. Oh, Nick, there for you, Nick. That for donut is perhaps good. But for me, in my own context, it would no longer be good. Just to be clear, Thursday did not eat four donuts. Yeah, I didn't eat four donuts. And in doing that, I have vindicated you and have brought this back to Thursday before

you accidentally become Nick. Yeah. Yeah. But what is happiness? It's not a fleeting emotion. It's not subjective contentment. No, it's the full flourishing of what it means to be human. And for Aristotle, that was to live in accord with right reason.

And, and one could think of this as a kind of clinical description, but reason shows us reality. Reality becomes manifest for reason and included in reality is the good. So the good becomes manifest for reason. So do I want what is truly good? Then I'll search it out and I'll try and live in accord with it. manifest for reason. So do I want what is truly good? Then I'll search it out and I'll try and live in accord with it. If I don't, I'm doing something by definition unreasonable.

That's not truly good, but this part of me wants it. I'll satisfy that part for a short period of time, but in the end will degrade in my happiness in general, and so it really is sensible to act in accord with right reason. The whole life of virtue is to live in accord with right reason. And it's basically simply the same as saying to attain what is truly good, what is truly good, because reason will show that for us. So the theologian calls sin what the moral philosopher might call unreasonableness. The two mean the same thing. And you think Aquinas is like, kind of like he would gel with this idea when he says that whenever we act, we act for at least a perceived good.

It may or may not be, but this idea, and I'd love you to put some flesh on this, that you have never done anything intentionally in your life that didn't in some way seem good. He says, I think that even the person who commits suicide perceives the good of not suffering. So something objectively evil is taking place, but it wasn't chosen for the objective evil. And you say, well, okay, but what if somebody does something to kind of give the middle finger to God? Yeah. Okay, but like even that is perceived as a good, perhaps to establish one's autonomy or freedom. Yeah. Even that, I'm perceiving something as good, but I'm wrong.

Yeah. What do you think? Yeah, for Aquinas, the object of the will is the good and reason presents to the will the good and thereby specifies what we can choose. So it doesn't make sense for Aquinas that the will would make any movement if there is not a good before it. And then the question becomes ethical. Well, is this a real good or an apparent good? Is it true or is it merely apparent and in fact false? And we can be incredibly mistaken about that. Or we can also see this is a merely apparent good. It's actually false. But right now I'm going to take an exception because I really want it. But

for Aquinas, yeah, the will's movement is toward the good period. It's like the eye sees color, the will wants the good. But is it a false good? That's the question. That reminds me of Chesterton's line, don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out. The mind is made for truth. Yeah. And I think it's a really compelling view because then when we speak to our contemporaries who don't adhere to the faith or perhaps think philosophically about matters, you can appeal to their experience. Like you're on to, like this guy who made her happy was really bad for her. You can say, well, I see you're seeking some good here.

I see you're seeking some fragment of happiness. Now, what I want for you is a more full picture of happiness. And because this is impeding you, you're actually for you is a more full picture of happiness. And because this is impeding you, you're actually closed off to this fuller picture. And again, I, sorry to cut you off, but again, I think of the child, right? Who only wants to eat ice cream. Like we could say to our slightly older children, what about the kid who only wants ice cream, who thinks this will make them happy? Can you understand why they would think that? Of course. Will it? No. How would the child respond to the parent who

said to them, you may not only eat ice cream, they would be angry. Why would they be angry? Because it would appear that they're taking away something that's good. Okay. So when we look at God's commandments towards us in the realm of sexuality or any other realm, could it be the case that God loves us and sin hurts us as Ralph Martin says, sin always hurts, sin never helps. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great way to start talking to our kids about this. Yeah and parenting actually teaches an awful lot about life. Like when we think of parents we primarily think of them as doing the education but when I'm with my kids I'm learning as much about myself as I'm learning, as they're learning from me.

Oh my gosh. And they're teaching you about yourself and they're teaching you about God and they're teaching you, they're giving you analogies to the whole of reality. Reminding you how to be human. Yeah. Like Peter when he saw that flashing lightning. Like sometimes we just pass those things by and we don't notice them anymore. And then a kid will go with open eyes. Look at that. Love kids so much. Yeah. And Peter does have eyes of wonder.

Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. He's terrific. All my kids are terrific. Terrific in different ways. Yeah. Yeah. Great neighbors to have. Yeah, indeed. Um, what light bulbs go off when, by the way, Dr. Rob McNamara teaches at Franciscan University of Steubenville. So when you send your children here, he'll be one of the excellent professors that you'll get if you send them here. What are some of the light bulbs that go off with your students as you begin to talk about this? I mean, they've been raised in a pornified culture. They may have heard fragments of what the church teaches about human sexuality, but

what are some of the things that when you delve into it, people are like, yes, the scales fall from their eyes as it were. I'll go through them in terms of what first occurred to me, but they might not be in the order of importance. One of the things is what we already talked about, recognizing that while a theologian calls sin, a philosopher calls acting unreasonably. And once you see that, it unpacks in a way Catholic teaching in an undergirding way. Oh, this I'm advised not to do. I'm commended not to do this and commended to do that because that's actually untrue, unreasonable.

That's true and that's reasonable. And that gives them a sort of rest in the Catholic faith. Okay, I can I can see these things for myself if I impact them properly. Another thing is, is reading the writings of Augustine. So in many of our courses, in the undergraduate courses, we teach them chronologically for the most part, and Augustine often appears in that chronology. And his work, Confessions, is like a masterwork in what it means to be human.

And so for them to see philosophical problems show up in this, you could say, ancient journal is really compelling for them. Like that quote I gave you earlier, friendship unfriendly, or my one joy was to love and be loved. Like everyone can reconcile themselves to these statements. Wasn't Confessions like the first autobiography? Isn't that generally understood to be?

Yeah, if it isn't it's definitely the principle autobiography. I wanted to do a quick shout out to Locals. We have a seven-part series on the Confessions by Dr. Chad Engeland from I think the University of Dallas. So people, if they become a supporter over there they can get access to that. That is one of the greatest books that has ever been written. It is. It is. You could read it. And it's so, it feels like it was written yesterday. Yeah. And indeed what we talked about earlier, that turn toward the subject that appears in the modern era, that already began with Augustine. You already have the seeds of that in Augustine.

And so the turn toward the subject is not un-Catholic. That's a lovely. I know we hear it here all the time. I've kind of stopped hearing it. There's a train in the distance. What was funny is I remember doing an interview and hearing that train blaring its horn I'm like for goodness sake. Why do they have to bear so many times? I get so abrasive and then someone who watches the show who I guess Manages a train wrote to me and showed me the very like the the legal things Yeah, why they have to blast it so many times. All right, fair enough And maybe your listeners like it because it grounds down what we're doing here concretely.

We're doing it at a dead steel town. Yeah. One of the other things that really is light bulb for students is when we look at Aquinas on the presence of God. So in the opening questions of the Summa Theologiae, question eight, after he's proven the existence of God and a certain subset of his attributes, he speaks about how God is present. And often this question is passed over because we're really interested in

presenting who God is from a philosophical perspective and that he is and his attributes. And we're less inclined to show his intimate relation to created reality. But as they begin to grapple with how intimately God is present to all things, including themselves as one of his creatures, it really unlocks for them the depth of reality. And so for Aquinas, God is present by his being or essence, because from him all things have come. He's present by his power because essence, because from him all things have come. He's present by his power, because he is the first cause of all activity in created reality.

And he's present by knowledge and by love, because he sees all and he loves all to be. And there is in a way no distance between him and created reality, even though he's utterly distinct from it. And to just think about his intimacy, how close he is to me. And then this makes sense of them of sense for them of Augustine's phrase. God is more inward to me than my innermost self. And he really is. He sees me more than I see myself. He understands me better than I understand myself.

He loves me more than I love myself. He wills me to be more than I will myself to be. And it's like he's there whispering, be, be or be Matt, be Rob, be Thursday, be yourself, you know, be the creature I've made you to be. And for this, at least my students just take to it like ducks to water. They love it.

And it's it unpacks prayer for them. When they sit down to prayer, it's not like they have to, um, put themselves in the presence of God, they have to just go, Oh, actually I'm already in the presence of God and I have to recognize it. That's right. Yeah. What about in terms of human sexuality? Are there things that you teach that resonate?

I think, I'm sure there are, but yeah, yeah. I think for them, it goes back to what we talked about in relation to experience. They begin to recognize that what they've held to be true throughout their Catholic life is actually the case, and they can feel through it themselves. It becomes tangible for them. Like when you step through love and responsibility, read it together, discuss it together, and then step through the theology of body in the same way, it can't but appeal to your heart. And you feel that tug and it in a way,

I think, like you had in relation to the experience of pornography. I don't want that. I want that over there. I want marriage, family. I want to see my wife nurse. I want to see my children born. I want to see my children born. I want to see them grow up. You know, when my wife first heard about the theology of the body, being a choleric, are

you familiar with the temperance? So cholerics tend to, one of their first kind of responses at an injustice is anger. So my wife was watching these video tapes because she was sick and she had a bunch of time on her hands and she found some tapes and she played them. It was Christopher West who met the theology of the body. Her immediate response at this truth anger and namely, why did nobody tell me this? Yeah. Christopher was doing was inviting her internal experience to meet what the church's teachings were and when they came together she finally saw it. Yeah, yeah. And then you wonder, like we have such a wonderful wealth of teaching in the Catholic faith and you wonder why we're not more forward with it, why it's

not more known, why, like I grew up in a Catholic country. Why did I in my 20s have to discover the Catholic faith in a way for the first time? I knew it devotionally growing up. I had a prayer life and what I recognized now was actually quite a wonderful prayer life. I recognized that actually when I tried to pray in my 20s and realized this is actually quite difficult. What was I doing when I was a kid when it was so easy? Oh, wow, there's something here that, and I've distanced myself from it greatly. But when you enter into the wealth of it, you do experience something of why didn't I know this?

And in a way when I converted, that was part of my impetus to teach because others should know this. Other young men, other boys, they need to know this growing up. Because maybe if you had, you wouldn't have ended up in the place you ended up in and suffered so much. So just, I want to circle back to Stein before we wrap up. Because when I was doing a lot of writing on pornography, I was learning more about mirror neurons, right? And so I guess neuroscientists have been talking about these maybe for the last 15 years or so.

And it's the idea that when I experience, let's say pornography, right? Like if I watch pornography, my brain doesn't make the distinction, even though in one sense I understand that I'm not participating in this act, my body receives the experience as if I were. And so the analogy I like to give is

Men often understand this if you go to a I don't know some sort of sports game and a man is hit in a tender area yeah, men react as if they were hit in that tender area and My understanding of Stein and am I saying is it Stein or Stein? Yeah, Stein English, Stein German. I'm trying to be fancy. Go between the two because I just don't ever remember which, yeah. Well, you correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that she says, and also when we think of empathy, we often think of, I feel your pain kind of thing. But hers is, her honesty is broader than that, right? It's like, I feel your jubilation.

It's not just pain, but that she says something something or she seems to mean I don't deduce from your facial expressions that you are in pain Remind myself what that was like last time. I was also in that state and then sympathize with that Yeah, but I'm actually experiencing your pain your jubilation Yeah actually experiencing your pain, your jubilation. And if I'm right in that, then that really does seem to, modern neuroscience really seems to confirm that rather bizarre insight in a way. Yeah, so let's track through what you said there.

So yeah, you're at a stadium or you're watching on TV and you see the athletes hurting in his masculinity and then you wince. What you're doing is you're experiencing his experience of the pain. And so what she says is it's primordial for the athlete and it's non-primordial for me. It's not my pain, but it's con-primordial. I'm in a way experiencing it together with you. Now that doesn't mean I have the pain in myself. I don't experience the pain directly.

I see. But I do experience you experiencing pain and can relate myself to it. And as you said, this is not a deductive. It's not an inference from an argument. It's like an immediate experience. And interestingly enough, some of the problems with understanding empathy is

that I see you experiencing pain and I experience the pain together with you. That would be to conflate the subjects. We're no longer two separate subjects, but we're now one thing experiencing pain, you directly, me indirectly. First I know you retain your separation of subjects. I see you and I experience you experiencing that pain. And in a way it relates me to you as a subject and keeps our independence. It's a kind of unity and distinction maintained in it. That makes sense. Yeah. In the Summa, Thomas talks about five remedies for sorrow. Yeah. And one of them is to share with a friend what you're experiencing. Yeah. And he says,

with a friend what you're experiencing. And he says, this relieves or assuages sorrow for two reasons. The first is he says, when I see you experiencing my pain and being saddened by it, I'm reminded that I'm loved. Which is just a beautiful thing. The second thing he says is, in sharing my burden with you, it's like you helped me carry this weight. And so I'm not carrying the full force of it on my own. Yeah, I would say that Stein's understanding of empathy shows up there. And I would say that there's a certain respect in which you can understand empathy as undergirding the possibility of love. Like if I don't know that you're another personal subject

experiencing the world and I think you're an object, I love you for me. But if I know that you're another personal subject, I can love you for you. And empathy is what gives you as another personal subject. So without empathy, no personal love. And you see this in friendship and like in the ways that friends share life together and can co-experience one another's sorrow, one another's joy. Without that, what would be the vivid heart of friendship? It would be, we'd be isolated from one another.

And then if you think of marriage, like you experience the joy of the other in you and they experience your joy in them. You know, it's like, there's such an interweaving of life that happens to this and without empathy, not possible. Yeah. That's why when you, when say Aristotle or Aquinas borrowing from him would say to love is to will the good of the other. It's important that you tack onto the end of that sentence for the sake of the other Yeah, because if I will if a man wills the good of his wife Let's say he wants her to eat well and get in shape Yeah, but suppose he wants that good for his sake so that he can find her more lust worthy or something like that

This isn't love. Yeah, so in sense, to will the good of the other. Yeah. Well, you might not actually be loving. I need to will the good of the other for the sake of the other, not from what I get from it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The arrow of love has to terminate in the other for it to be for it to be about the other. And but at the same time, it doesn't make your loving of the other for your sake problematic. So so when Aristotle and Aquinas formulate that definition of love, in the text itself, it's actually to love is to will the good of someone,

that someone being yourself or the other. And so you can see how this reconciles them with the theological tradition. Christ said, you must love the Lord your God with everything and love your neighbor as yourself. So there's certain respect in which love of self is the principle of love of the other. Not that it's the love of the other is derivative of your love of self, but you see, oh, you're another just like me. And you identify with the other and take them to yourself. I will will your good just like I will my own.

And then in a way, my will, so to speak, leaves myself and inhabits you and seeks your good, just like I will my own. And then in a way, my will, so to speak, leaves myself and inhabits you and seeks your good just like I seek my own. And unless we enter into relationships like this, we really do remain isolated from one another. So and yet at the same time, to love your wife is not only to love her for her own sake, but it's also to love her for your sake. Like your wife wants to be desired by you. I see.

I see. There's a unique coming together of a love of the other for oneself. Right. Because if I just want her good for her sake, in a way, there's no reciprocity. Thank you. There's no reciprocity there. It's like, I could exist on a different country and just orchestrate events in her life so that she flourishes and she doesn't know about me. She wants to be wanted by me. Yeah.

And that's a unique interweaving of life. She wants to be wanted by you, you want to be wanted by her. And you also want to want one another's good. And if, if the balancing of these things goes out of kilter, then you have various different. So, um, what's it like? How do you recognize in yourself when you perhaps at times have ceased to want the good of your wife for her sake or something like that? I mean, I mean, cause I mean, most people experience this, but having, I mean, you teach this stuff and you've studied this stuff. So what's it like for you when you experience yourself not loving your wife or children? Yeah. It seems to me to come along with a kind of self-consciousness. So I become kind of,

more aware of myself, my own needs. And it takes me away from my awareness of my wife and my kids and their needs. And we don't really need this self-consciousness to adequately love ourselves. By nature, we want our good. We want our own good. And so that can, in a way, move along with a kind of automatic character to it. But I need to be, in a a way attentive to those around me. And the focus point of my life has to, in a way, rest in them if I'm not to become self conscious, self centered. And so I notice it with self consciousness. And at the same time, a kind of sadness sets in with that.

Like, it seems to me that when one is really conscious of oneself, one is also at the same time not abundantly living. I'm like more depressed, not clinically, but the world is a grayer place. And when my consciousness is out there, it's more lively and it's more abundant and it's more wonderful.

This is exactly what we're talking about. Reflect on your own experience. Are you happier when you're locked up in your own head or when you're kind of forgetful of yourself in a way? There's a wonderful phrase of Saint Teresa of Calcutta. I don't know if she actually said it, but it's a tribute to her. She's the repository of all misattributed quotes. And Saint Francis. actually said it. She's the repository of all misattributed quotes. And it goes something

like this. The person I need most at any given moment is the person who needs me most. And so what you find here is a kind of interweaving of your good with the good of another. That is my good is to secure your good. My happiness is found in attempting to secure your happiness. And this makes sense for us of the gospel paradox. We must lose our lives to save it. In some way, to be a person means to have the center of gravity of our life beyond us. And if we secure the good of others, we let the same time secure our own authentic good. And it can't be otherwise. If I attempt just to secure my good, I won't even be able

to be, that won't even be possible for me. You won't have the good of your family. You won't have your own good. It's so true. I mean, I mean, we've only after you've had kids and learn how difficult it is to raise them, especially through the toddler stages and teenage years, whatever You start to be a heck of a lot more sympathetic to parents who are losing their patience with kids in a grocery store Yeah, before you have kids you're like, oh, how could that mother treat? But you're like, I get it You're tired. The kid has asked you 8,000 times that said so like wanting to be empathetic to parents who are frustrated with their children, but in a way, the way to, and I say this in the cold, in

the warm light of our reasoning here together, tomorrow when I'm on an airplane with my family, I might forget it, but like if I'm getting frustrated with my kids, just be like, okay, what is this like for them right now? Like, what do they want? Why are they frustrated? And if I can put myself in their shoes, it's like that sorts it out as opposed to stop it. Just stop it. What am I saying? I'm saying like, stop doing this thing because it's making my life unbearable as opposed to trying to enter into their experience and ask why it is they're reacting or acting this way. But if I did that, I would actually.

Yeah. And family is a great way to have that center of gravity shifted. So I was, I was single for many years in my adulthood and teaching along all the while, and I thought I was serving God and I was attempting to do so, but I recognize now that my service was in a way all by my own choice. And it's a whole different ballgame when there's people around you who you love with real needs and wants and trying to help to coordinate all of that and try and give yourself over to all of that. There's a kind of intensity of it. It's an always present, being drawn out of yourself.

And what you said there about sitting on the plane and seeing, well, what do they need now? Maybe that's a key to it. Because, yeah, you often find yourself in the situation of just trying to arrange it so that it's peaceful, not actually responding to the needs of the other person. One comedian who will go unnamed once said, we don't want justice as parents. We want quiet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And then at the same time, if we've quiet for too long, we're like, give me some life. It's true. I feel that way with my wife and kids. Sometimes they'll have to go somewhere for a night or two. And my immediate thing is, ah, thank goodness. I look forward to having some quiet.

Yeah. Four hours go by. I'm like, I don't like this existence at all. Yeah, yeah, true. There's a great Parks and Rec line. Sorry. Literally, always is the... Parks and Rec lines are always welcome on the show.

So it's in the later show. So it's after Ron's gotten married. Okay. And he says there, I love being a parent. It's great. There are a couple of things I miss. Silence, the absence of noise, one single second undisturbed by the, of the tele, of the sounds of a television children's television program

called Doc McStuffins. There is no quiet anymore. There is only Doc McStuffins. Whoever writes the lines for Ron in that show is a genius. Yeah. Yeah. He's very quotable. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, what do you, what, how should we wrap up?

What I mean, I usually would say like, is there a book? Is there a course? Is there a book? So in the further description, so obviously I can't put it in life. So for the description so far, I have a love and responsibility. 100% life. So for the description so far I have love and responsibility. And two others, one of them is the problem of empathy by Saint Teresa Benedicta and then oh, hustler, hustler. Who's not hustler? Yep, can't say it. Logical investigations. Is there anything else I should

throw in here? I mean, it's like as somebody who sort of teaches from the school of phenomenology, is that something you're even interested in, like, telling people about? Or are you like, not necessarily. It's just something that ought to permeate all the other things that you should do. I think it's one of those words that travels in the Catholic air because of Vuituán, his work in theology of the body.

And so it's good to have some clarification about it. And for those who want to go deeper, like that logical investigations is a wonderful place to go, but it's incredibly dense. And so you really want it. If you really want your philosophical chops cut, you can you can go for logical investigations. There's a really short introduction by a guy called Dan Sahavi. Yep. Not going to be able to spell that. Yeah, we can we can include in it.

And then there's a there's a lovely introduction by Robert Zachalowski. Not going to be able to spell that. Yeah, we can we can include in it. And then there's a there's a lovely introduction by Robert Zakulovsky. Not going to be able to spell that. I can give both of these. Why do none of these people have simple names? Well, to be fair, Smith, I can't spell anything. I can't spell end of the sentence. And then I've got a book coming out later this year. What's it going to be about? It's called being a person. Beekeeping. Oh my gosh. All right. What's it called? Being a person,

the mature personalism of Edith Stein. Oh, fantastic. Who are you publishing that with? With CUA. And so hopefully before the end of the year, it's my doctoral dissertation reworked for maybe two, three or four years afterwards to try and make it more readable and more. So it was more for a lay audience. Yeah. So it's for an engaged lay audience. Yeah. And scholars would gain some value from it too. But if you really want to delve into what it means to be a person in the Catholic philosophical tradition, taking it in contemporary Europe,

Stein somewhat Voitiva and going back into Aquinas with its distant roots in in the Catholic philosophical tradition, taking it in contemporary Europe with Stein, somewhat Voitiva and going back into Aquinas with its distant roots in Aristotle, you'll find some resources there. That's fantastic. Let me know when it's out so we can promote it. Great. That sounds great. Thanks so much. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Nick. Yeah.