Professor Joshua Hochschild argues that Aquinas' proofs for God's existence, specifically the first way, are simple, accessible, and not merely spiritual exercises, but rather starting points for a deeper understanding of God and the relationship between faith and reason.

This lecture was given on November 4th, 2024, at University of Texas at Austin.

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About the Speaker:

Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Keywords: Aristotelianism, Causality, David Hume, Empirical Fact, First Cause, Natural Theology, Proof of God's Existence, Reason, Skepticism, Unmoved Mover